An old race car is a money pit and a pile of frustration....

I've touched on this issue before, but I feel it's worth re-visiting as I've had a guy ask me me about helping him restore a 1969 Pontiac Trans Am race car, that he was thinking about buying.  He's all excited about it, but for the wrong reasons. I asked him- "Do you want to sell it to some museum like Floyd Garrett's or the Peterson Auto museum?" "No."   "Do you want to race it at vintage car races that they have at the Monterey Historics, or at Reno-Fernley, or Laguna Seca?"  "No, I want to restore it to original and drive it on the street.".  "Forget about it." "You'll never finish it, and you'll want to kill yourself, and you'll eventually give it away for less than you have invested." "Why would you say that?"  "Because I know people who have done it."  "What does it have for an engine?"  "A 302 Chevy." "You lost half the value right there."  For it to be worth anything to a museum or a vintage race car collector it would have to have a 303 Pontiac V8. As far as I know-there were only between 50 or 100 ever built, and a lot of them blew up in Trans-Am and NASCAR Baby Grand races between 1969-72. You'd have to be able to prove that Milt Minter or Jerry Titus or whoever finished 2nd at Lime Rock or whatever in this VERY car, with this VERY engine. Herb Adams and a group of other Pontiac engineers hand-built the 303s. They took a 400 block, had Moldex make them a special 2.84 inch stroke crank, Carillo make them special 7.08 inch connecting rods and TRW make special pistons to destroke the 400 to 303 cubes. Plus they used Ram Air IV heads which are rare as hell. It's not like-I'm restoring a 1966 GTO-all I have to do is find a 389 with late 1965 or early 1966 date codes cast into the block. These were never a production engine, so you can't find one at any price, and the cost to build a fake would be enormous. Moldex doesn't stock 2.84 inch stroke Pontiac cranks. Edelbrock or Kauffman aluminum heads won't fly; Where are you going to find a set of 72cc Iron RAIV heads? At any price? The SCCA allowed privateers to run the Firebirds with Chevy engines because no one outside Herb Adams's inner circle could get the Pontiacs, and Firebirds in Canada had Chevy engines. "If you want to race it in vintage races, at least there's tons of parts out there for Small-block Chevys."  "Yeah but I want to make it streetable"  Groan. First off-where are you going to get a title? Race cars don't have titles.  You cannot imagine the DMV nightmare you face trying to get a title for a 40 year old car that was never titled or registered anywhere. Good luck with that. Secondly-Do you know what a nightmare you face chasing down taillight lenses, marker lights, wiring harness, every little nut and bolt and screw it takes to put an interior back in a gutted race car?  Heating and or air conditioning ducting under the dash, sound deadening and carpet. Window regulators to make the windows roll up and down. After of course you cut out the welded shut doors and fit new door hinges, latches and mechanisms. What about a drivetrain? Is it an original RAIII car or an RAIV? Is there even an original VIN number on the car? How do you know if it's one of 697 ever made for real 1969 T/A's that was made into a race car? It could be a base-model Firebird that somebody raced back in the day.  He didn't have the answer to any of these questions, but he clung to the fantasy like a man falling off a cliff holding onto that last blade of grass. I made what I thought were two very viable suggestions. "Here's what I'd do-take the money it would cost to restore that thing to streetability- for 35-40K you can buy a for real '69 Trans-Am in good shape."  "Or if you want the race-car tribute look-buy a running, registered, titled,  beater base-model Firebird, put the spoilers and paint and numbers on it, put an 8-point cage in it, and build either a stompin' small-block Chevy or 400 Pontiac, and have fun with it. That car you COULD drive on the street AND play with  at vintage car races, and since it's a clone anyway-you won't want to kill yourself if you put it itno the wall at 120 mph some Sunday afternoon."  Didn't make a dent. Like the posessed Keith Gordon crying over the totalled Plymouth in "Christine" he was completely unreasonable. "I can fight DMV and chase rare parts." "You'll see." "Wait till you see it all done!!" He wailed.  I have to quote Buddy Holly- "That'll be the day."  Mastermind