A clone can save you many thousands....If your reasonable....

There's a finite number of premium musclecars, and even if you have an unlimited bankroll-depending on what you want-often the problem is just finding one for sale at any price. As long as you don't try to re-sell it as an original I don't see a problem with clones, although a lot of purists do. Tell me-how does some guy dressing up a '66 Mustang fastback like a GT350H "diminish" the value of your "real" one? Everyone knows his is a fake, and yours is numbers-matching, and the "Real" Shelby will always be worth more than a fake. Get over yourselves. Pontiac only made 697 1969 Trans-Ams. If some guy wants to take one of the other 113,000 V8 Firebirds built in 1969 and contact Year One and dress it up like a T/A-so he has a cool car for say $25,000 instead of the $100,000 plus that a "Real" '69 T/A would bring what harm is there in that? If a guy spends 15 grand on a Mopar Performance 426 crate Hemi and puts it in a nice '69 383 Coronet 2 dr he paid 8 grand for and paints it like a Super Bee,and has 30K in a Hemi Super Bee clone-does that really diminish the value of a real Hemi Super Bee that's worth 150k?  I have a friend who back in the '80's bought a six-cylinder, 3-speed '69 Camaro for $1,000. He dropped in a mild 350, a Saginaw 4-speed, and bought a "Cowl Induction" hood, some Rally wheels from Wheel Vintiques, and painted it like a Z/28. Total cost-$3,500. Everywhere he went people "oohed" and "aahhed" over his "Z/28". He loved it, and eventually put a snarling Rat motor in it, which people at "Show-n-Shines" derided him for for "Ruining" a classic!! These assholes who insulted a stranger for modifying his own car had no Idea that it wasn't a "Real" Z/28!!! He got many laughs out of that!!  So if you wan to buy a '69 LeMans and fake a "Judge" by all means do it! As long as you don't try to sell it as an original, who cares?  Mastermind