There's nothing I love more than bringing a car back to life, restoring it.
Whether it’s for the maker or the owner of the vehicle.
To work with enthusiasts like our partners.
Because today, someone who isn’t an enthusiast
cannot entirely restore an automobile.
It takes patience to work more than a million hours on a restoration.
We get the chance to work on extremely beautiful cars,
therefore we try to do our best work to make a beautiful product.
Oh yes, a perfectionist always likes to go further,
always aware of the details, always…
It’s hard to find someone capable of working on our cars,
while never having worked on them before.
So far, I haven’t come across anyone else, and I don’t think it’s possible.
Today, we have partners that’ve been with us for more than 20 years
for the most part, and we truly do see the difference around here.
Today, we will be finishing some bodywork.
We only have our mechanic’s manual and the dimensions we took.
We compare these to the measurements on our designs,
which are those of a traditional car.
You have the component completely shaped: we start with a flat sheet,
a square piece of sheet metal.
Therefore, we start in relation to our slopes, with the templates that we can make.
Every day we learn.
In our trade, it’s different every day. Different shapes...
therefore we work differently each time we make the forms.
The problem we have today with a Ferrari like this one, is that it doesn't have the shaft.
We have to manufacture a shaft by symmetry with respect to the mechanical point of the chassis.
To check that the chassis wasn’t bent,
we can put it on a level base.
Today we have a team here at Provost Automobile
capable of meeting all the expectations of a person that wants to restore their car
or keep it well maintained.
I really think that with every service, every partner,
we are able to achieve quality restorations
while respecting the original criteria.
My job is to take the car, rough it up a little bit, and finish the body work.
That is to say, take it from full of small bumps to polished.
This is the foundation of the work I do here.
Shaping the sheet metal… we apply an epoxy, we sand the epoxy;
here we use some finishing putty, sand that too, and polish everything.
We put one on after finishing.
Everything is installed by hand, of course.
After we sand them, on to the… actual finishing.
For the paint, we put two base coats,
or three (depending on the shade),
and three layers of top coat.
If we were making a table, the process would be the same.
We leave our mark on beautiful things.
And some cars, like this Maserati,
or a Ferrari MM 166 I worked on,
can be magnificently restored to when they originally won a man’s heart.
This is a black and red paint with stripes,
but everything was done by hand, like it was originally.
It's really satisfying to work on these cars.
For me, when I do the finishing, it’s as if we're making a wedding dress!
This is the body of the car,
this is the part that you see.
This is what gives the car its beauty.