Saw this article today and it really hit home as I am closing in on completing this restoration nearly 10 years after I started it. Absolute truth, by Jay Leno, that I can personally attest to. Most people have absolutely no idea, nor appreciation for, the amount of time and effort it takes to restore a car to the way it was when the original owner saw it and fell in love with it - especially to very high levels of originality where nearly every component is date correct and factory original (not reproduction). Many of the "throw away" parts (oil/air filters, rubber parts, shocks, etc.), can only be found squirreled away in collections of new old stock parts (NOS) or that have been taken off of another car and survived on a shelf in someones basement or garage to finally show up on Craig's list, Ebay, or a swap meet - usually at a very high price tag. Particularly for the 64 1/2 High Performance K code convertible Mustang I am about to complete, many of the factory installed components were different from the replacement parts that were later manufactured by Ford - making it even MORE difficult to find the "date correct, factory correct" part. It has taken me nearly 10 years to do the research, find parts, replicate and/or preserve finishes - on every nut/bolt, with every one the right type, in the right place (and this car was very complete and rust free to begin with). Every part has been researched and analyzed by it's date, appearance, and compared to parts on other cars of the same time period, to the factory assembly manuals. Since most of the records for the cars prior to 1967 were destroyed by Ford, it can take years to figure out what was original, "factory correct" for the particular date and time of the car's production. I originally bought this car to drive and enjoy, but after getting the story from the original owner of how he acquired the car and fell in love with it, I was hooked on the idea of making it exactly as it originally was, when he first saw it. That includes every preserved perfectly imperfect factory paint drip and sloppily applied glob of seam sealer. Anyone can scour a car down to bare metal and make it perfect, but leaving the imperfections is a way of leaving the fingerprint of the people who hand built these cars 56 years ago. Faithfully doing all of these tedious things results in a truly exceptional example of what the car looked like when new. As Jay says in the attached article, few others will ever have the appreciation of the effort.
