412usa said;The time and facilities I use to restore my cars are why I call my cars a Hobby. The purpose of any hobby is to consume time and money and hold my interest. My hobby does this perfectly. Not all collectors are speculators.
That's just what I was saying - you are quite rightly looking at it as a
hobby but so many people complain about the cost of getting a car restored
professionally and compare the costs to what someone like you will incur (not
including your set up costs and times) and I'm only saying that you can't compare
the two.
We look on the costs of running and upgrading the 412 as necessary and
equivilant to depreciation of a new car. My Golf GTI and the 412 have swapped
places since we bought them. The Golf is now worth what we paid for the 412 and
the 412 is now worth 10k more than the Golf cost! That to me is a strong
argument for owning a classic. It of course only works for us as a lot of the
basic work on the 412 had already been done by BCL when we bought it and it is a
great everyday, useable car and is not sitting gathering dust.
Philippa
p.s. I'm not running anyone down if they choose to restore from scratch I
just challenge the assumption that it is the only "proper" way to have one of
these cars.