At the end of the day, regardless of how important a car is to you, with today's restoration costs it is hard to justify doing a ground up restoration on a car unless you are very wealthy. Putting 25 grand into a car you'd be hard pressed to sell for 20 grand isn't a big deal to most people. 5 grand for the pleasure and the pride is a small price. But if you put 100 grand into a car that is worth 50 grand, 50 grand is a lot of money to most people. My project got out of control at some point, I tried to plan things out, worked hard to estimate costs, allowed for overages, but a shop jacked up costs and padded bills far beyond what I could ever imagined and put all my planning to waste.
At some point I realized I had at least 100 grand tied up in the project, in a car I bought when I was in high school for $2300.
$100 grand is around 2 years take home pay for me. Certainly the car has a lot of sentimental value, but all the "it's not about the money" talk aside, I have been asking myself often if I can afford to own a car I have that much money tied up in.
Now if I made a multi six figure salary and was a multi millionaire, I probably wouldn't give much thought to how much I had tied up in a car.
My car will be worth over 50K when done, probably 80-95, but again, it is hard for a guy in my position to have that much money tied up in a car!
