00:00The car was built over a course of six years, it took 22,000 man hours to build it, just
00:06a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
00:11This fully customised Buick Riviera has been a labour of love for Canadian J.F. Nornier.
00:17He's been renovating vehicles since the age of 13, but in 2014 this Buick finally earned
00:23him the coveted Riddler Award for America's most creative and innovative custom car at
00:28the Detroit Autorama.
00:32The project began with a 1964 Riviera, bought from a junkyard for just $400.
00:39People always ask me why a 64 Riviera, well the long and the short of it is, when I was
00:4321 years old I had a 64 Riviera, I sold it to start my first business and I thought to
00:48myself, I'm going to have another one of those cars one day, I didn't really know I was going
00:52to take it this far.
00:54What followed were countless modifications to the original Buick body.
01:00The 1971 Riviera roof, with its unique shape and sloped rear window, was fitted to the
01:071964 chassis.
01:09The car was shortened by removing sheet metal from behind the doors and rear wheel openings.
01:14The front wheel openings were moved forward to make space for a 6.2 litre Chevrolet V8
01:20engine, which provides 784 horsepower.
01:24JF estimates that he spent $300,000 on the project in total.
01:29The car was built over a course of six years, it took 22,000 man hours to build it.
01:35It was everything I could afford, it was my parents' house got remortgaged, my house got
01:39remortgaged.
01:40The math's pretty simple, it's 22,000 hours, $75 an hour shop rate, you're looking at a
01:47million and a half just in hours.
01:50JF named the finished car Revision, and in 2014 he proved that one man's trash is another
01:56man's treasure by winning the Riddler Award.
02:00But despite his success, JF warns that budding car customisers shouldn't take such projects
02:06lightly.
02:07It was ups and downs, it was always a battle to try to get enough money to buy parts, to
02:11find enough time in the week to balance family, business and a project of this magnitude.
02:18I always felt like giving up, there wasn't a day where I didn't feel like it was too
02:21much, we had taken on too much and we had just gone too far with it.
02:25Be very prepared, don't just build your first car and think it's going to win, this is our
02:30fourth attempt at it.
02:32You got to be prepared, you got to be prepared to give up everything for a long, long time.
02:37There's no doubt though, that he's proud of turning a rust bucket into his most prized
02:41possession.
02:43There are people that love it, there are people that hate it, there's kind of nobody in the
02:46middle.
02:48This car is what I wanted in a race car, this car is what I wanted in a show car and it's
02:53beyond that on all aspects.
02:55I have drag raced the car, I have road raced the car, I have won the biggest award in the
02:59world, those three have never been put together and I drive my kids to school in it and take
03:04the kids for ice cream.
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