550 Spyder: Historically, these cars have been over-restored

And there’s a 50/50 shot the next owner will have it completely restored, again. Because money>brains.

no matter what is done to that car...even rusting into the ground...it's a $3 million dollar car just for that chassis number 550-0090   one of the last few made...a true unicorn and priceless rolling PORSCHE history & art

I'm waiting for the day when chassis #550-0055 is completely restored because someone happens to have the original transaxle as a starting point.

But the million dollar question is how much of the original car was kept when it was restored it in the early 2000s?

Answer: Not much!

All but a few of these cars were beat to hell by 1960. Multiple crashes, engine and trans swaps, missing tins, seats replaced, holes cut in them for air flow, etc.

Circa 1980 there were tons of restorations, and I'll bet more half of those were marginal. There just wasn't enough information available to the techs. This is how the CMI replica body was so obviously knackered straight from the molds—and how Chuck Beck's effort was so slightly off the mark, from a rear fenders perspective.

By the '90s the restorations were getting better and "better," owing to the tastes and wallets of the cars' caretakers.

Thankfully we now have Andrew & a handful of others putting the pictures together in one place where everyone can see what they really looked like then and now. And of course they were rougher than most modern restorations depict! These are Porsche guys, after all. Porsche guys hate wrinkles. Most of them wouldn't know a weld fillet from a keloid scar and all but a few would consider them aesthetically equivalent.

That said, fashions change.

Here's hoping the Road Scholars will usher in a new trend toward imperfectionism.