00:00Master Craftsman Lance McCormack owns one of Britain's best classic car restoration
00:05businesses, Romance of Rust. Helping him manage it is his son Merlin, the cutting-edge salesman,
00:11who also runs his own classic car dealership. Together they turn Rust to riches. Lance is
00:19one of the country's leading metal work and restoration experts, and today he's working
00:24on a classic Porsche that's seen better days. This is a 61, 62 Porsche 356 Coupe. This
00:33one's in for a customer. I'm doing all the hard metal work for him. He's stripped it.
00:38I've got to put a new nose section on. These are so popular now and these have good value
00:42about them. This finishes about 80 or 90. If I were buying one of these, I would be inclined
00:48to buy a restoration project from California or Texas. That way you haven't got the rust
00:53that's got into its very soul. If you get a car from a dry state, the bodies then, my
00:59California car, we stripped it down and there's very little rust on it at all. There's some
01:04damage from racing, but it was a pleasure to work on then. This one has been through the
01:10wars. Now it's stripped to bare metal. It's showing signs of its history, warts and all.
01:16We've got traces of race history crashing. This is high here. This was too close, so they
01:22bashed it all back just to get it on the road quickly again, you know.
01:25It's the fitting of a new part that's revealed how far from the original shape the car has
01:29become. This is a replacement second-hand bonnet from California, so it's dry state, all the
01:36correct datums on it, but it shows now quite how bad the front was damaged. The other bonnet
01:42actually lined up, so the bonnet was in the wrong shape completely. When I put this on, it
01:48will be in accordance with the data that's around here, the levels, the clearances, the
01:52fit and finish. These were campaigned. You can see, it's not just about the rust on it.
01:56This has had several bad accidents. I'll take care of all that. Once the front's off and
02:01I've made it weak, I'll use a hydraulic device to push this across before I even think about
02:07putting a new panel on. I'm certainly not going to put a 2,000 pound pressing on there in the
02:11wrong place. Given the chance with my hand and my eye and my history with these 356s, I know
02:16what they should look like, and they certainly shouldn't look like that.
02:21While Lance contemplates his latest restoration challenge, Merlin has been expanding his stock
02:27of cars to sell.
02:29A week ago, I bought this. It's a 1984 Mercedes 380 SL of the R107 Mercedes chassis. It's a great
02:36little car. It runs fantastically.
02:39Although an advocate of using modern technology in his classic car business, Merlin is also
02:44aware of the pitfalls of the internet. I actually found this car on eBay. It had been up there
02:50a few times. To anyone who doesn't know any better, it's a presentable car. When I saw
02:55the car and pulled it apart, we both knew then why it hadn't sold. The danger of the internet
03:00is a lot of cars out there are bought blind. You really can't tell what a car's like without
03:07seeing it in the flesh. I have so many people coming to me telling me their car's worth so
03:11much and asking me to sell it for even more because they've bought it on the internet and
03:14therefore it must be worth more. It's nonsense. People need to get a grip and the reality
03:19of it is, unless you've seen a car in the flesh, you are taking a huge, huge risk.
03:23He was able to call on Lance's expertise and knowledge of these cars to predict exactly
03:28what might be wrong with this one.
03:30Dad said to me, he's done plenty of these. He knows where they're going to go. Lo and
03:35behold, we've done a bit more further investigation into this car and all the places he's predicted
03:39will have gone have gone. The rear arches are famous for rusting out on these 107s. These
03:44have been done to a fairly atrocious standard. I don't know if you can see down here the ripple
03:50effect we've got here and it hasn't helped. Somebody has scraped it as well. They need to
03:56be completely stripped back to bare metal and even probably new pattern arches fitted.
04:01What we do is we weld them in beneath the surface. They get a skimmer filler and a nice finish
04:06which will eradicate this ripple finish you see before you.
04:09So how exactly does Merlin intend to turn a profit from the beleaguered Mercedes?
04:14I picked the car up for what I think is fair. We're looking at spending about £2,500 on
04:19the paint. I'm then going to market the car at about £12,000. It's the complete wrong time
04:24of year to be selling a convertible as far as the public are concerned. What I tend to
04:28do first is offer it out to other people in the trade or my customers who I know might
04:32be interested. Beyond that it goes on to online marketing. There's plenty of classic car websites
04:37out there. What's more likely with this car is I'll send it to auction and see what she makes me.
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