Should I Restore It?

A basic charter for any museum is to conserve the objects placed in their care. The Simeone Museum in Philadelphia (www.simeonemuseum.org) believes that certain cars because of their place in history are deserving of the term "historically important". These cars are like fine buildings and should be restricted from changes in their originality.

 How does that apply to you? Do you, as an individual, really have any responsibility for conserving or preserving the car in your garage? Should the car in your garage be preserved? Or, does it require a restoration?

Preservation: The essence of preservation is stabilization. Preservation is an effort to decrease the rate of deterioration. It involves maintaining the condition of the car. 

You should also drive the car on a regular basis. The engine seals and brake components need to be used on a regular basis.  Letting a car sit idle for long periods of time can result in significant damage to a variety of parts. Not driving a historic car is not the same as preserving a car. Indeed it may be just the opposite.

A properly preserved car will never deteriorate. At least any further than it already has. It may not get any better either but I’ll get to that later. A preserved car is one that resides in an environment with the best possible conditions to ensure that there will be no further deterioration of the car. 

The car you found in a shed, or barn, is generally an example of poor preservation. Several decades of rain and snow, not to mention rodents, have not preserved this car. A barn find is normally not a well-loved car. If you happen to acquire a car that was stored in a barn you may face some rather serious decisions regarding whether you should even attempt to preserve what is left of the car.

Conservation: Conservation is an intervention to protect what’s there. Conservation is an attempt to manage, or at least reduce, the effects of decay that takes place on a daily basis. This is very similar to preservation except that conservation involves some type of active intervention. 

Conservation is where objects are cleaned and stabilized to ensure their survival. This must be done without removing the evidence of their past life. Conservation may also mean that you do things to the car in order to make it more acceptable for display or in an attempt to enhance the car’s condition and operation. Again, these things should be done in such a way that no evidence of originality is removed. 

Conservation is not an attempt to return the car to its original state. That sort of effort is called restoration. Conservation retains the history of the object. When cleaning you should always use the least aggressive materials. If you use an approach that is too aggressive you might very well damage the original finish. That’s called destruction. 

A conservation professional is the one who says “No” a great deal. A professional conservator’s task is to protect the car. Too many shops get aggressive with historically significant cars. They cause far too much damage using incorrect tools and improper procedures. When in doubt doing nothing is generally the best course. 

Restoration: A restoration is an intervention that permanently changes the car. It’s an attempt to return the car to some previous state. In some cases this may be a state that never actually existed. A lot of racecars have been restored this way. Almost all the cars at Pebble Beach have been restored to a state that never previously existed. 

When you replace significant parts, whether original to the period or not, you’re altering the historical integrity of the artifact, or car. The original manufacturer’s work is no longer intact and the research value of the artifact, or car, has been reduced.

There are also various types of restoration. We have the Pebble Beach type of restoration where every single component is replaced or renewed. Then we have restorations where the intervention is done with minimal damage to the historical integrity of the car. 

There is no reason that a restoration must involve the entire car. Many times you might only need to restore a component. The decision to restore a car has to be the object of serious reflection. The current condition of the car has to be considered. Some cars have been so poorly cared for that restoration is the only solution. There is so little of the original history left that a complete restoration really can’t cause further damage.

Because restoration is an intervention that actually alters the car doing nothing, at least for a while, is often the best path. The first step in any new acquisition is to preserve what was just acquired. That may be as simple as placing the car into a facility where no further damage can take place. 

The most serious, and perhaps the worst step, is to embark on a restoration too quickly. The restoration of any object is generally not reversible.  In order to replicate the finish of a part you normally remove the existing finish. Returning the car to some previous state means you have to destroy the current state. This is why restoration should only take place after a great deal of discussion and even greater reflection.

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