Old Timer Garage

 

If you haven't read the ninth part of this restoration you can find it by clicking on this link: 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville - part 9

10. Start of the restoration

In the last chapter, I was saying that I was going to enjoy the fact that my car was now in Mexico without thinking about the problems that were certainly going to come my way in the future. Well it wasn’t going to be long before I was going to be proven right.
The car having been handed over to the Mexicans on Saturday, the work on it was supposed to be starting on Monday. So on Monday I contact the guy to organize the work and officially launch the restoration project but the first thing that he tells me is that he is not going to be able to deal with my car because he is awaiting judgment and will probably have to spend some time in jail!
Yes you read that right. I imagine you blocked on these last few words in the same way I did when I first read them. Anger quickly overcame the surprise, I refrained from answering his message right away in order to calm down and think about how this should be handled and how to reply to him in an appropriate and professional way. Saying that I was furious in an understatement. After over 4 months discussing this project and organizing it, he hasn’t thought even once that it could be a good idea to let me know this detail until after he got my car handed over to him and on the day the project is supposed to start… He says that his uncle has another restoration shop in town and that he could take over the project and deal with the restoration of my car while assuring me that the quality and the delay of the work wouldn’t be changed. I don’t really have any other choice so I tell him to drive my car to his uncle’s workshop and to call me once he is there. I want to have a video call with the new guy to see what he looks like, see his workshop and discuss the project once again.
Knowing what I know today, I am better off having changed guys then but on that day over the video call and still under the influence of anger, I must not have been an easy customer to deal with for the uncle.

Anyway, the new guy assures me that the work is going to be started on the same day and I end the video call on that note while making him promise to send me pictures every day so I can follow the progress made on the project.

Later on the same afternoon, several videos of my cars come through. The dismantling has started and the Mexican show me what he thinks is going to be required and ask me questions about what I want to do about specific points of the work.
As I was expecting, it didn’t take long before he came back to me asking for more money saying that the quotation from his nephew wasn’t going to cover everything they have to do on the car so he asks me for more money than what was agreed at the beginning.
Fortunately, I was expecting it so I had time to prepare my answer. So I refused to give him more money saying that the change of plan was their fault and not mine. The work was very clear on my side from the get go and the fact that it is a different workshop doing the work now is nothing to do with me so it is their job to adapt to it. I had to insist for a few minutes but he soon realized that I wasn’t going to move from my position and he gives up.
The conversation ends by summarising the last points to be taken care of on the car and I stop it so that they can get it done. There is going to be two people at all time working on my car, plus another one for the engine and a fourth one for the interior. They work six days a week from 9 am to 7 pm.

In just a few days, the car is completely dismantled and the body is taken off the frame. The next job now is to remove all the old pain and primer, then everything will be repaired and prepped up for the paintjob…

To be continued… here: 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville - part 11