00:02 COMM: Master craftsman Lance McCormack owns
one of Britain's best classic car restoration businesses, 'Romance of Rust'.
Helping him manage it is his son Merlin, the cutting edge salesman who also runs his own
classic car dealership.
Together they turn 'Rust To Riches'.
00:20 COMM: Lance is one of the country's leading
metalwork restoration experts, and today he is working on a classic Porche, that's seen
better days.
00:29 LANCE: This is a '62 Porche 356 Coupe.
this one is in for a customer, I'm doing all the hard metal work for him, he's stripped
it.
I've got to put a new most section on but these are so popular now and they at least
have good value about them, I mean this finished is about 80 or 90.
00:47 LANCE: If I were buying one of these I would
be inclined to buy a restoration project from California or Texas, that way you haven't
got the rust that's got into it's very soul.
You get a car from a dry state the body is then, I mean, my California car we stripped
it down and there's very little rust on it at all.
Y'know there's some damage from racing but it was a pleasure to work on them, whereas
this one has been through the wars.
Now it's stripped to bare metal it's showing signs of it's history.
Warts and all.
01:17 LANCE: We've got traces of race history crashing.
This is high here, this was too close so they've bashed it all back just to get it on the road
quickly again y'know?
01:26 COMM: It's the fixing of a new part that reveals
how far from the original shape the car has become.
01:32 LANCE: This is the replacement second hard
bonnet from California so it's a dry state, all the correct data was on it.
And it shows now quite how bad the front was damaged, the other bonnet actually lined up,
so the bonnet was in the wrong shape completely.
01:48 LANCE: When I put this on, it will be in accordance
with the data round here, the levels the clearance.
These were campaigned, you can see it's not just about the rust on it, this has had several
accidents and I will take care of that once the fronts off and I've made it weak I'll
use a hydraulic device to push this across, before I even think about putting the new
panel on.
I'm certainly not gonna put a two thousand pound pressing on there, in the wrong place
given the chance with my hand and my eye and my history with these 356's I know what they
should look like y'know?
And it certainly shouldn't look like that.
02:22 COMM: While Lance contemplates his latest
restoration challenge, Merlin has expanded his collection of cars to sell.
02:31 MERLIN: A week ago I bought this, it's a 1984
Mercedes 380SL of the R107 Mercedes chassis, it's a great little car, it runs fantastically.
02:40 COMM: Although an advocate of using modern
technology in his classic car business, Merlin is also aware of the pitfalls of the internet.
02:48 MERLIN: I actually found this car on eBay.
It had been up there a few times, to anyone who doesn't know any better it's a presentable
car, when I saw the car and pulled it apart we both knew then why it hadn't sold.
The danger of the internet is a lot of cars out there are bought blind.
You really can't tell what a car is like without seeing it in the flesh.
I have so many people come to me telling me their car is worth so much and asking me to
sell it for even more because they've bought it on the internet and therefore it must be
worth more.
It's nonsense.
03:18 MERLIN: People need to get a grip and the
reality of it is unless you see the car in the flesh you're taking a huge, huge risk.
03:24 COMM: He was able to call on Lance's expertise
and knowledge of these cars to predict exactly what might be wrong with this one.
03:32 MERLIN: Dad said to me, he's done plenty of
these, he knows where they're going to go, low and behold we've done a bit more further
investigation into this car and all the places he's predict have gone, have gone.
The rear arches are famous for rusting out on these 107s, these have been done to a fairly
atrocious standard, I don't know if you can see down here the ripple effect we've got
here and it hasn't helped that somebody has scraped it as well, they need to be completely
stripped back to bare metal and even probably new pattern arches fitted.
04:02 MERLIN: What we do it we weld them in beneath
the surface, they get a skim of filler and a nice finish which will eradicate this ripple
finish you see before you.
04:11 COMM: So how exactly does Merlin intend to
turn a profit from the beleaguered Mercedes?
04:15 MERLIN: I picked the car up for what I think
is fair, we're looking at spending about two and a half thousand pounds on the paint, I'm
then gonna market the car at about £12,000, it's the complete wrong time of year to be
selling a convertible as far as the public are concerned.
What I tend to do first is offer it out to there people in the trade or my customers
who I know might be interested.
Beyond that it goes on to online marketing.
There's plenty of classic car websites out there.
04:39 MERLIN: What's more likely with this car is
that I'll send it to auction and see what she makes me.