00:02Master Craftsman Lance McCormack owns one of Britain's best classic car restoration
00:07businesses, Romance of Rust. Helping him manage it is his son Merlin, the cutting edge salesman,
00:14who also runs his own classic car dealership. Together they turn Rust to riches. On a daily
00:21basis they work on some of the most desirable cars in the world.
00:24As much as 15 million for some of the top end Ferraris. My own personal insurance should
00:30go up as I touch it.
00:31But Lance had a more humble start to his career.
00:37They stopped making idiots like me about 30 years ago. Now I'm a traditional panel beater,
00:42manufacturing panels, not crash repair. I worked at the Rolls Royce coachbuilders called Mulliner
00:47Park Ward. So it's a tragedy that the skills have gotten and almost every metal worker
00:53that I know from there has either retired or got out of the trade and I just kept going.
00:57That's all I really knew. So from being a dodo to being a go-to man for bespoke metalwork.
01:03Helping to manage the business is Lance's son Merlin, who also runs his own classic car
01:08dealership, Duke of London.
01:10And this is a Merlin.
01:12I've been around Dad's business since I was born. He used to babysit us while we were still
01:17in our cot while he was at work. I started buying and selling cars when I was 11. I found
01:22a gap in the market with eBay. I was sort of buying heaps of junk, getting them through
01:27an MOT and flogging them on. I went into the city for a while. Despite doing quite well,
01:32I decided that I had to come back and do something with cars again.
01:35And Merlin's modern approach perfectly complements Lance's traditional craftsmanship.
01:40I've sold free cars on Instagram. I've sold a couple of cars through Facebook. I've managed
01:44those pages as well as I've managed my website. It's had its ups and downs over the years, but
01:49I think I wouldn't have taken the leap from a full-time salaried job to something like
01:54this if I didn't have the confidence in our relationship.
01:57The father and son combinations pay in dividends. And now the pair have a two-year waiting list
02:03of customers. Their current projects include this amazing Ferrari.
02:07It's a very important historic car and this car at some point in its life would have been
02:12worth tens of thousands. Now we're talking about 10 million plus.
02:21And they look at a rare Aston Martin with engine trouble.
02:30Yeah, I don't think this screwdriver is going to cure that.
02:33Looking slightly less glamorous at the moment is another Aston Martin project.
02:38This is an Aston Martin DB4 shell showing the principle of Superleggera. This one's in for
02:43a hell of a lot of work. We're doing a Zagato replica on an original Aston chassis here. This
02:49thing here has cost us a quarter of a million pounds. Our one finished would be just over a
02:53million pounds. It would be a faithful replica of a Zagato.
02:59Clearly, Lance and Merlin love the cars they have the chance to work on.
03:03At the end of the day, it's a piece of art as well. I've got a huge amount of responsibility
03:07when it's in my care.
03:09These race cars and one-offs, you may own them but you're a custodian of them and I'm
03:13sort of blessed to be able to be a day custodian, shall we say. I look after them for the
03:17day.
03:18I get to drive them, I get to smell them, recreate features that have been lost in them.
03:22The name I coined after a couple of drinks one night. My ex-wife used to work for Vogue
03:29and as a result I used to go to some very swanky parties with all these dowager duchess types
03:33and they would all ask, what do you do? And rather than just say, I work at Rolls-Royce,
03:38I'm a metal worker or a restore, I say, I'm with the romance of rust. Oh really dear?
03:43And they would often leave it at that but it was just a little joke I had going on.
03:47Once I'd started up on my own, I was with the romance of rust. It applies if you think
03:51about it to these cars because there's a great romantic notion. They're often substitutes
03:57for children, wives, you name it baby.
03:59With the current state of the market, things are looking good for Lance and Merlin.
04:04The classic cars have outdone gold for the last two years and they don't seem to be slowing down.
04:08The business is looking very rosy, we've never been busier.
04:11But with all this demand for restoration and sales, Lance and Merlin need to expand rapidly
04:16to keep up. And despite the pressures brought by success, the McCormacks are passionate about
04:21what they do.
04:22It doesn't seem like work. I sort of pinch myself sometimes, I'm being paid to do something
04:26that I love.
04:31Next time on Rust to Riches, the Ferrari's windscreen needs resealing. But work on such an expensive car,
04:38is never without its worries.
04:41A big scratch here in the glass.
04:43If you took it out and broke it, we're in trouble here. It's nightmarish if that happens.
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