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.
00:09This 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. The project began with a 1964 Riviera, bought from a junkyard for
00:37just $400.
00:38People 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.
00:59The 1971 Riviera roof, with its unique shape and sloped rear window, was fitted to the 1964
01:08chassis. The car was shortened by removing sheet metal from behind the doors and rear wheel
01:13openings. The front wheel openings were moved forward to make space for a 6.2 litre Chevrolet
01:19V8 engine, which provides 784 horsepower. JF estimates that he spent $300,000 on the project
01:28in total.
01:29The car was built over a course of 6 years. It took 22,000 man hours to build it. It was
01:35everything I could afford. It was my parents' house got remortgaged, my house got remortgaged.
01:40The math's pretty simple. It's 22,000 hours, 75 bucks an hour shop rate. You're looking
01:46at a million and a half just in hours.
01:49J.F. named the finished car Revision and in 2014, he proved that one man's trash is
01:56another man's treasure by winning the Riddler Award. But despite his success, JF warns that
02:03budding car customisers shouldn't take such projects lightly.
02:06It 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 project of this magnitude. I
02:18always felt like giving up. There wasn't a day where I didn't feel like it was too much.
02:21We had taken on too much and we had just gone too far with it. Be very prepared. Don't just
02:27build your first car and think it's going to win. This is our fourth attempt at it. You've
02:32got to be prepared. You've got to be prepared to give up everything for a long, long time.
02:36There's no doubt though that he's proud of turning a rust bucket into his most prized
02:41possession.
02:42J.F. There are people that love it. There are people that hate it. There's kind of nobody
02:46in the middle. This car is what I wanted in a race car. This car is what I wanted in a show
02:51car. And it's beyond that on all aspects. I have drag raced the car. I have road raced the
02:57car. I have won the biggest award in the world. Those three have never been put together.
03:02And I drive my kids to school in it and take the kids for ice cream.
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