George hit it on the head..This car is a major ambitious project .It is however a #'s car.I do heavy collision frame off body restoration for a living and it scared me.It can be fixed no doubt just I have easier projects I need to attend to.Who knows it may never ever be restored just flipped over on to the next dreamer.This cars been off the road for close to 40 years.The buyer certainly has the skill and resources to bring her back to life why the change of heart who knows?
What's the price difference between a rebodied, numbers-matching, restored GSX and an original body, numbers-matching, restored GSX? Same options. Which would you rather have?
Price will depend on the number of drunk wallets at an auction and their ability to spot the rebody. It may sell once to a ‘wallet’ and then become his albatross that gets discussed here in the future. ‘Remember that GSX from ‘21…’ ‘Yeah-here’s the thread!…’ Patrick
hey dano, i figured it might ruffle a couple feathers. was feeling a little frisky lol, but seriously some people get to wound up in this car stuff. we must remember they are just toys to make us smile! charlie
So all of the panel date codes are going to be correct? Very unlikely unless you find the right donor body.
do you think body date codes would be visible on THIS car after sanding/blasting/2 coats primer/2 coats paint? besides this is a base,auto,gsx. not a 69 camaro zl1. who in the world is gonna be looking at body panel date codes.
There is re-bodied GSX floating around now and it has been shamed and has even lead to a lawsuit. Tread carefully if someone plans to illegally swap the VIN tag of this car to another rust-free body, it could come back to bite you. If I bought a restored GSX, I'd be checking the car very closely, especially if it had previously been listed for sale as a rust bucket. I'd also require photos of the restoration showing that the car was not rebodied.
Is that the one that someone used a '71 body on? The question always comes down to what constitutes a re-body or maybe more so, what constitutes a car? Every piece of sheetmetal, including the inner structures, was at one time available as a replacement part. VIN swaps, as had been discussed on here, are common on damaged vehicles and not necessarily illegal but let's say for arguments sake that it is illegal to remove those 2 rivets - As long as you don't & you swap the dash over to the new shell is it not a body swap? As long as you go through the motions/pain/time/expense of cutting the original body up and saving whatever original sheetmetal is possible does that save face wrt calling it a body swap vs. "cheating" & swapping it all as one big piece? Of course if one is stupid/lazy enough to swap a '71 body onto a '70 all bets are off. How about a frame swap? That, along with the engine/trans is the other piece that has a VIN. I have a car that when I bought it, I only got the original engine & shell - No frame. The shell, sans the floors, is actually in remarkably good shape & much of it will be reused. The PO didn't get a frame w/it either. What does actually constitute a car? One could argue it's just the two little metal VIN & Data plates. They're really the only original/unique/custom made parys for that car that you couldn't order replacements for @ the parts counter. The example in this thread is about as close to "not a re-body" as you can get short of just swapping the dash into another shell: https://v8buick.com/index.php?threads/72-skylark-custom-resto.353273/page-2
In the real world no ones looking at date coded fenders and frames etc..they look at vin , cowl tag maybe crawl around get the trans #.Most folks aint as anal about this as you would think.They wanna know how the car runs and haggle the best price.
Exactly - These are 50 year old cars. Do we do whatever it takes if someone is willing to spend the time/$, be it a re-body or frame swap or NOM/trans to "save" a rare (or sentimental or whatever) example or just say "oh well, that GSX is too far gone." Maybe at some point it is too far gone? At some point you start entering "air car" territory I guess but if a "car" really is just those 2 unique plates, then unless they're missing, there's no such thing as an air car.
It all depends upon who’s looking at one. If it’s a non-V8 member at an auction or dealer, it’ll be evaluated by how shiny it is, how many stickers and maybe the receipts. Those potential buyers won’t look at body panel date codes or frame numbers. A rebody can go unnoticed ‘out there’ and a car could exist for years without being ‘outed’. In our V8 world it’s different. I know I wouldn’t buy an X without having it checked out by the folks on here. Patrick
i did not mean to marginalize a gsx in any way. was comparing a zl1 camaro vs a base /auto gsx buy market dollar only. i have friends who only will own ford muscle, friends who would only own mopar muscle, ect,ect, i have been working my way through a bucket list of cars for most of my life and loving it. i want to go to the carnival and ride on EVERY thing they have. sometimes its hard posting as you can sound like a a$$. when your not trying to be. btw i am blessed and lucky enough to own a 4 spd/stg1/X. its a 10 footer as they say but it runs drives and smokes 1 tire lol.
I am just joking, but has anyone ever done a reverse tribute? Instead of taking a less-special car and adding parts (such as GSX spoiler and hood tach and stripes etc.) to make it look like a special edition, taking the rusted remains of a special car and choosing to not replace the special parts and then painting it so it looks like a more run of the mill car ? I know it would be blasphemy in this case, but what if there were a rusted hulk of, say, a '70 Stage1 GS that was too far gone to cost-effectively restore back to original configuration, and you could buy it for $1000 to save it from the scrapyard. You know that restoring it to factory condition would leave you upside down. What would you do with it?
