[ROVERNET - UK] Restoration, re-shell, or clone?

[Glen Wilson]

Chris,

Is your RHD NADA car a 3500S like the Federal cars we got in th states?  
Door panels, bumpers and all that stuff?  Does it have power steering 
and AC? I have some recollection of there being a problem making the car 
RHD because some component was in the way.

Glen

Wilson wrote:
> I would tend to agree with the other opinions and call it a clone. As far as
> I'm aware, there is only one real RHD NADA car, and that's the one currently
> in my garage. It has a NADA VIN and was built by Rover as a RHD car.
>
> For cars that have been re-shelled, I believe that it could be classed as a
> restoration, depending on how much of the original car has been used. Many
> purists tend to say that re-shelling a car cannot be classed as rebuilding
> that car and therefore it is not the same one, yet many of these people will
> also spend countless years replacing 90% of the metal in their restoration
> project and still class that as being the original car.
>
> When I restore OXC140H, the RHD NADA car, I'm going to use a replacement
> chassis. I have no choice, as it's rotten to the core. However, I will be
> using all of the original running gear, the engine and everything being fine
> and only showing 30,000 miles. Most of the interior will be used, but with
> new carpets, and about half of the panels are repairable. I'm not going to
> do a full restoration and bring it up to showroom class, but rather put the
> car back on the road, keeping it as original as possible.
>
>
> ~Chris
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 15:12:23 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Geoff Kirkpatrick <britcarnut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [ROVERNET - UK] Restoration, re-shell, or clone?
> To: rovernet at lyris.ccdata.com
> Message-ID: <472157.85331.qm at web36204.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Yes, it's a beautiful car.  But is it a real NADA car?  That's probably a
> question that has no definitive answer.  It appears that he started with a
> UK RHD car and meticulously converted it to LHD NADA spec.  You could call
> this car a clone, or a re-shell.  So what does that mean for its
> authenticity?  I don't know.  Does it retain its original UK VIN?  Was the
> VIN taken from an NADA donor car and transplanted to the new shell?  Even if
> it has the correct NADA VIN, is it still just a UK car in drag?  Personally,
> I think it's something less than a real NADA car because it's not the
> original shell.  Any answer to these questions is really just an opinion
> though, and someone else's differing opinion is just as correct as mine.
>
> But what about a Mini or an MGB which has been re-shelled with a new
> Heritage shell?  Is this a clone?  I tend to think differently about this.
> Inconsistent, I know, which just reinforces how gray this whole area is.
>
> Ultimately it's probably not particularly important in this case.  Nobody is
> going to bother faking an NADA 3500S to deceive potential buyers and try to
> make an illicit profit.  If we were talking about, say, a Cortina Mk 1 GT
> being turned into a Lotus Cortina, though, authenticity takes on a lot more
> importance..  Not to mention the difference between a slant-six Plymouth
> Barracuda and an original, fully documented 426 Hemi 'Cuda.  And there are
> at least a couple of cases where two mega-buck vintage Ferraris share the
> same ID number, because two people each got hold of different bits of a
> crashed car, and each built a complete car around their bits.  Which of the
> two is the "real" one?  Nobody can say for sure.
>
> Geoff
>
>
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