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Really good video, you are bang on with everything you say. I know for a fact that a lot of the TV car restoration show is fake. They are just light entertainment. Like you say, Tim Shaw and Mike Brewer going round blagging free parts off everybody, I really wish that was real life, but it isn't. Some BMW and Mercedes Benz dealerships are over £180 an hour now, which is just ludicrous. I ran my own electronics service business for 40 years, nobody wanted to pay me for my skills, people don't realise how hard it is. You cannot charge for every hour you work unfortunately.

Got to be talking 50K for body parts welding paint materials and labour not reassembly.

Everything you say makes sense. Don't worry about the stupid comments, that's life. You sound very grounded and I wish you well.

I was suprised when you said £65 an hour, that seems cheap. I have two classic Porsche restorers near me which I must admit are top of their game one who's hourly rates is over £100 an hour and one who restored my car was £80 and recently gone up £85 an hour.

In the 1970s there was a firm in London that did same day drive in drive out resprays for 25 quid.

Looks fantastic! About 35 years ago i painted one of these in my shed and managed to get a paint sag about as long as the rear fender lol! Great car to drive in a straight line: whisper quiet and effortless power

Thanks my man. Im the owner of simmilar workshop in Ireland, my lads and me have to be fckn magicians in mechanic, welding, paintin, fitting, stripping..all that require ton of skill and patience. People simple do not understand that. Flat polishing for example.. small mistake and do it again. Or wrong angle or preasure on english wheel.. all fucked, do it again. Or broken crome stripe. Or windshield. Thanks on this, you gave me currage and support. Classic car restorer Ireland

With vintage aircraft we come up with an estimate of time & cost. Then we double one & triple the other. The last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time. :)

Great video. I have "real" world experience with taking a solid stock 1960 Ford Falcon and through several specialists transforming it into a prize winning custom car. I used a friend's recommendation for bodywork and paint after all the mods were done. I admit this was 20 years ago, but when the guy gave me an estimate to do base coat clear coat paint it was $5000. I'm in the midwest US. I checked around and the best estimate I was able to get from well known body/paint guys was $12,000. I made the deal with the first guy and the results were fantastic....however, the final job ended up being $7500 because of items I added to the job. No one believed I got the quality of work for just that amount of money. $15,000 would have been more like it, but the two guys doing it worked for a friend of mine who ran the shop and I suspect I got the "friendly" price. I've watched lot of the car shows like wheeler dealer who give numbers, but I know better when they say how long and how much. My car was painted in 5 months, but I waited a year before they could start. The higher than expected prices for parts and materials today (Or any day) and a long wait time is typical and I suspect a reason why some cars disappear into sheds or the earth never to be seen again.

Ouch and that is love well done ❤must he a 40k up build?

The Wheeler Dealer idea that you can buy a budget project car, complete a restoration, then sell on for a profit is absurd. Don't let the these shows devalue your great work. Classic cars are expensive.

Those buckled MKII Jaguar panels aren't there for continuity 🙂

Great video 👍 The best thing to do is do you want the tv price or the price 😅😅😅.The what we tell people get some estimates from other panel shops.

Where are these guys based?

I have to agree totally with you, I worked in the body shop game over 40 years ago and it was the same then joe public excepted the job done for nothing, how much for a respray , it’s probably 40 hours this could easily double depending on what the customer wants to do a good repaint all the bits off and this doesn’t include welding just basic bodywork. Today parts are just unbelievable expensive and depending what paint your using huge costs, I watch Restopower Uk and there paint jobs must be 100 k sometimes given the work that goes into it. And Wheeler dealers does give a false idea of the costs never including the real labour time.

How many hours went into this repair??

Excellent presentation, hope all of our customers see this!!

I totally concur! These TV programs are pure fiction and basically entertainment. They make a lot of money for Motor Trend and Discovery channels. I think this is one of the main reasons why Edd left Mike years ago. These TV programs do not help the classic car owner and the classic car restoration workshops.

Excellent explanation of how it is in the REAL world of restoring & painting costs. I have had people's jaws drop when I tell them the price of a litre of solvent based base coats, and that's before the thinners, lacquer & hardeners etc. The prices of materials is just astronomic. Also, I have spent a whole week in the past just block wet flatting & polishing Bentley re paints. Even the cost of flatting papers & compounds etc is eye watering. Joe public really have no idea. Thanks again.

Increase your hourly rate to £85 plus vat per hour. Mad not to.

Nicely thought out and communicated piece. In my experience, people will see an hourly rate and start comparing it to their full time salaries behind a keyboard in an office and then think they are being ripped off without taking into account any overhead cost or the fact you actually want to make a profit from what you are doing. You're not alone in your observations...

it is hard to see restoring normal classics being viable going forward

bangers and cash restoring classics shows you the reality

great video and honesty

I'm amazed that the repairers managed to straighten the Jag to the point of no remaining sign of any accident damage or even that it was in a hard frontal smash - it does amaze me that some people out there think that pop rivetting sill on an old car is a good and safe fix , just goes to show what some exseptional repairers can do - an amazing job ,

Anyone that believes 'Wheeler Dealers' was anywhere factual needs medicating. Sometimes the figures where so out of whack they mentioned, nobody would be eating.

A c lassic car , maybe an investment, certainly not if driven on the road and insured for that . A very rich mans hobby and have the correct car as well , thank you ...good informative real video of fact ...

Mike Brewer after selling a car they had worked on that they made a small profit, but no mention of the hours Ed China spent on it no mention of cost of running the workshop rents, rates, etc. It's more likely that the were thousands of pounds in the red. On the other hand if Ed China could do all the work he did for what they say it cost, they would be swamped with work.

Excellent video, we can never get away from the old addage 'you get what you pay for'. The antique shows are the same, nothing but entertainment and everyone now thinks they can walk in a shop and buy something for half the price!

The three pillars of Project Management: Time, Cost, Quality. You can have 2 of them but you can never have all 3! Great video. Check out Metalworks in the USA. Love watching people paint cars. Thanks

WD (but as you say the programme is not alone) is synonymous with bodging.

I've known for a while that Wheeler Dealers is scripted nonsense (as are most of these shows), the "sale" at the end is staged (i suspect even the "buy" at the start is too), mostly the cars were bought at auction then went back to auction, some were left in a compound to rot away.

Best one at the moment is Richard Hammond, Smallest cog, let's people know what hours are involved, the cost of the business and what hourly rate should be to Keep the doors open, feel for you with rising costs. When I left the body trade we were charging £27.00 per hour for insurance and they were arguing over that😆

Ten years ago a mate had a 77 Pontiac Firebird restored and painted, needed new rear 1/4's got new door shells and some other repairs and all repainted, bill was 14K which seemed insane at the time, that'd be pretty reasonable now, saying that the car still looks amazing. I just got a classic Mini to restore, a rear Subframe used to be £150, they are now £350, my last Mini in 2008 had twin SU carbs i bought brand new for £550, the same carbs are now £1500, prices are just insane now.

Fantastic work! You are clearly passionate about your job. Keep it up so we can enjoy seeing classics like this one on the road

Your so true in everything you said as a small bodyshop for 47 yrs i,ve come across so many idiots that don't understand costing . I restored an old Lambretta for a pal but made him come in every weekend and do the donkey work , it took over 12months and he realised what goes into this type off work and costs also using Novol products. The end result was lovely and still looks great 3 years down the line. Great video .

Everyone knows Edd China works for 7p an hour! I do bodywork and the amount of hours behind every job is huge, people thinks it's just wheeling it in the spray booth and hey presto. Could not agree more. Most vehicles it's more than the cars worth to re-paint

I've been following you on Instagram for awhile. I'm glad to see you on RUclips! From Springfield, Oregon, USA.

Brilliant work! My poison of choice is MGs - the Z series saloons being the favored sub species... This era of British cars is right at the cusp of unibody construction, and a very steep learning curve for the manufacturers (to put it nicely). Add a few decades of inspired "repairs" and the ravages of time, and you have a stiff challenge on your hands with this kind of damage. To see the thoroughness and meticulousness of your work is inspiring. The results are very much a tribute to your skills - a bit of fettling, and this owner and all subsequent owners should be very pleased with what you have accomplished. I would add that to even be able to get reproduction bits is a blessing - for the Z series, any replacement sheet metal is solely in the hands of a single example of the finest in British craftsmanship - hand formed in a garden shed with love for the marque - and hand tools... with less than 1000 of them remaining, there is no such thing as actual "stamped" body panels OEM or otherwise.

To have spent $10,000 bargain on a pristine condition car The peanut would not quality from krap just get the car out The door As Quick possible

Theirs a whole team of them doing it and ant big head amstead don’t even get his hands dirty car sos it takes them 3 weeks to do them look in the background they have all the other cars in the program in bits in the garage at the same time

Where i work its £40 per hr for bodywork the mechanical side of things has changed with the tech in a modern car the skills needed are more than ever

We used to get people coming in and having cars resprayed yrs qgo it dont happen now its too expensive we did a vw van and the bill was 6k for a respray with various repairs to the body

Also people think that charging £65 per hour labour is a very good wage, but it isn't a 'wage' in reality. I think it is a lot to do with how we produce invoices. Consider the two examples below, and then folks may realize what really goes on in the real world.......... Parts £8000 Materials £1500 Labour £3250 (50 hours @ £65 p/h) SubTotal £12750 VAT £2550 Total £15,300 Parts £8000 Materials £1500 Wages £750 (50 hours @ £15 p/h) TAX & NI £250 Insurances £168 (£7000 per year divide by 2080 hours of a 40 hour week) Rent £1080 (45000) Rates £480 (20000) Electricity £204 (8500) Accountancy £36 (1500) Machinery &repairs £282 (11731) Sub Total £12750 VAT £2550 Total £15,300 Just an example, but much more realistic.

I couldn't agree with you more!!!

I paint my own cars. Average costs me around $800. Not including panels, rust repairs: that's not painting. So if you do it yourself, out of pocket is around $800 per car, good paint, superb results if you put in the hours of course.

Where's Morse.. down at the pub?

A beautiful job done sir!

Even watching only about half of your video, I can ABSOLUTELY state that it IS EXACTLY then same in building. People ROUTINELY compare ONLY the price instead of a "apples to apples" detailed scope of the work and THE MATERIALS !! So one electrician is quoting a "romex" electrical system while the next guy is quoting a "hard conduit" system. You will get the same voltage coming out of your receptacles but those two systems are definitely NOT THE SAME !!! For one major thing, try and modify the wiring "WITHOUT OPENING UP THE WALLS" with the romex system as compared to the conduit system. Between the materials and labor, likely double the cost with the conduit system. Yet people don't even realize they are NOT comparing the same job !!! In your case, might be like comparing glued, flanged, panel repair seams VS welded, butt joined, panel seams.

My local powder coater drives a Porsche Macan with a private plate. Even ignoring materials, people are expensive. Mortgages, kids, holidays, nice cars, etc.