The reason custom cars take so long...

YUP YUP YUP! Gordon absolutely, positively NAILED it.

I couldn't agree more. I don't charge myself labor on my own projects. My customers don't get charged for thinking/visualization time, they only get billed for time worked.

Now do this day-in day-out for a living, fielding calls from nincompoops who change their minds every day, and also think this stuff isn't all that hard to do.

"How hard can it actually be?"

Indeed.

dittoes

And add the pressure of a few hundred backlog customers wondering when their car will be started.

It's tough to be in this business even when you've only got yourself for a customer.

Some of my builds were for specific individuals who would decide to do upgrades and changes as the assembly went along. That would have a reverse snowball effect sometimes on what was already completed and many times I just ate it so to speak. Unknown to most non builders are the costs of hardware, seals, caulking and other related miscellaneous bits that quickly run into hundreds of dollars.

And that is why my Intermeccanica 6 build took over two years.  Not because of last minutes changes I wanted, but just because each detail had to be considered and engineered.  The making of these cars by today's builders can be standardized to a certain extent, but veer away from that, and you are into weeks/months of extra build time.

Patience and understanding are virtues that anyone commissioning a build needs to have in spades...along with a good degree of compassion for the guy(s) doing the build when you ask for something special.

@Michael Pickett posted:

And add the pressure of a few hundred backlog customers wondering when their car will be started.

It's tough to be in this business even when you've only got yourself for a customer.

I've had discussions with Carey and Greg both about customer's custom requests, and with Henry while I was making them back in 2005.

To a man, they are unbelievably gracious and flexible - as people color way, way outside the lines, and think it should be easy and/or free. It's a rare thing to find a true craftsman left in this world (which conditions us to "buy" rather than "build"). It's a one-in-a-million thing to find a craftsman willing to enthusiastically build something that fits the customer's dream, rather than the dream of the guy actually doing the building. Imagine using all of the skill you've accumulated over a lifetime of doing something to build a thing you aren't particularly fond of.

That's what being in this business would be like on some days.

A few years ago, Intermeccanica built a pink Speedster for a female customer. I cannot imagine going into work every day, into the business my father and I built over two generations, and working on a car that looked like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. It would make me stop caring what anybody else wanted. I'd say no to most anything I didn't like/want, and that would include most of the ways that people want to personalize their own cars. It would make me grumpy and old, long before it was time to be old (I've been told it's never the right time to be grumpy). I talked to Henry about it. He said, "yeah, it's kinda' cool in it's own way".

Wow.

All three of these men (Henry, Carey, and Greg) have the capability and will to build almost anything, no matter how outlandish the request. The fact that they ever did, and that two of them continue to build in a world where customers want pink Speedsters, etc., and where the government i actively working against them is astounding.

We should cherish them as the treasures they are.

In the words of our own Stan G., I could write 2000 words about this, but I won't...

The above is so very true, and then it goes even deeper...  now scale that up into production, couple that with part supply issues/changes, and the custom detail you perfected last time has to be done differently this time, and wait the client "thought" it would be this way not that way.... it's a challenge that may will never understand.  BUT I love it and thats why i do it.

I dunno....

The "Bunnies" at the Playboy Club in Boston had hot pink Mustangs in the 70's.

They always looked pretty good - The cars did, too!

NY Coliseum Auto Show 1971, 1932 Deuce Coupe in the right shade of pink with all chrome done in a copper...stunning !

I'll go a step further.  In client based professions, there's times when you recognize customers aren't happy with something, but they don't say it or deviate from the plan because they're too nice or know it will add time/cost, whatever the reason.  Some companies train their people to talk around those things to avoid the hassle of the change.  When I spec'd my speedster, I had done the research, made my choices and didn't deviate at all, full well knowing what changes would do to the process and the team's time.  With one big exception...  I blew it on the exhaust and knew from the first picture that I'd made a mistake.  I was willing to live with it though.  I made the bed, I intended to sleep in it.  Honestly without me saying a thing though, Carey somehow could sense I saw it as a miss and just offered to revamp it to better meet my intent.  He could have so easily never brought it up, talked around it, and I wouldn't have said anything.  But he did, I was thrilled with the outcome, and my car is 100% what I dreamed it would be.

That was an impressively positive customer experience now imagine it x 500 cars, x 3 year wait list.  I'm exhausted thinking about it.

And sometimes when the customer says "I want something interesting for the exhaust, but I'm not sure how to do it," and the builder says "I have an idea.  Do you trust me?" you just have to go with it and you get something like this.

Yeah, baby!!

@Sam Brown posted:

I'll go a step further.  In client based professions, there's times when you recognize customers aren't happy with something, but they don't say it or deviate from the plan because...

I went back to your build thread and found pics of your Speedster with the stainless Dansk exhaust- what did you originally go with?

@ALB posted:

I went back to your build thread and found pics of your Speedster with the stainless Dansk exhaust- what did you originally go with?

Tri-Mil. Would have sounded great, but fitting it required some bends to the tailpipes that were very visible.

Today was a day of running errands so not a lot got done on the window, but I had all of the seals and weatherstrip cut out and ready to go so I finally peeled off the protective layers from the Lexan (I always get nervous when the bare Lexan is exposed) and got two of the three gaskets glued on.  I use 3-M Extreme Weatherstrip Adhesive and love it.  Easy to apply, put the pieces together to spread the glue, pull them apart to let the stuff start to air tack and then re-assemble them, clamp them and that’s it.   (Just don’t get any glue on’ya unless you like bathing in Acetone.)

Like a lot of things we do on these little clown cars, it’s a good thing I’m not paying mechanic labor rates for doing little projects like this - I’d pro’bly have gone broke a long time ago.

@Alan Merklin posted:

NY Coliseum Auto Show 1971, 1932 Deuce Coupe in the right shade of pink with all chrome done in a copper...stunning !

@Alan Merklin posted:

Especially when one is shade color blind...you should see me wiring a Speedster :~)

@Alan Merklin posted:

Interesting posts as when I was a senior in HS I wanted to be a Lineman for NJ Bell. Ma Bell came to the school to recruit seniors I passed everything except the dots thing  - color blind test.   Yes there are times I have to have Connie show me what's purple violet pink brown green etc.  In a pinch I can hold a piece of white paper behind a particular wire and I usually get it right... ....that's what fuses are for ~

I respect Al too much to chalk this up to anything besides his self-confessed color blindness.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

I dunno....

The "Bunnies" at the Playboy Club in Boston had hot pink Mustangs in the 70's.

They always looked pretty good - The cars did, too!

I'm not sure what to do with this, though. Lust?

I’m a little baffled by this, too, Stan.

I don’t like pink cars, either.

The only explanation I can come up with is that those of us growing up in the 1950s were routinely exposed to things like this on the public roads.

These were available to the public for purchase just like normal cars. It’s hard to imagine now, but they actually achieved some degree of popularity.

As far as I know, no studies were ever done of how exposure to these may have affected young children, but we may be only now learning of the consequences.

Teach thy children well.

That explains my uneasiness around those Mary Kay hawkers.

Funny!     I'm not color blind but do experience shade color blindness, a condition that restricts how certain colors are perceived and are difficult and sometimes impossible to differentiate from others. Certain purples and violets, black and browns, light blue and light grey, darker greens and browns, maroon and some browns. Spraying flat red primer over a black surface can mean I may miss a spot unless the part is under bright lighting or sunlight.  The text I am keying now could be black or brown or maybe dark green ...no wait is it a dark grey ? Primary colors are not the issue but it's best to never ask me to spray a panel and blend on a car........But yet with good spray booth light I can still shoot a car with very good results as long as it has contrasting primer and or base coat.  Danny said it best that being keep me away from a large pair cable ...Anyone else experience this shade color issue?

I'm guessing this translates to the car building world, but in the construction world, one thing that occurs due to changes mid construction revolves around momentum.  There's a certain momentum that is created during construction; which stems from preparation through execution.  When changes occur mid-stream, and hiccups are created, it takes some time to build back that momentum.

My clients always have a difficult time understanding this.  Their explanation is usually "it was only a 'simple' change".

Don't get me wrong.  I want everyone to get what they want (within reason)......but changes do have costs-both in timing and financially.

^ that. All day long, that.

The photos above remind us that there was a time when Buicks looked like Buicks, Chevrolets looked like Chevrolets, and Fords looked like Fords.  Each had a distinctive design language.

Not so much today. It feels like something was lost.

I know, right?  You look across a parking lot at a sea of little SUVs, all pretty much the same - Lots of black and white, the occasional red or silver and that's about it.  Kinda makes you long for the days of two-tone cars!

Maybe that's why we all drive our little clown cars - They don't look like anything else out there (OK, so maybe a Karmann Ghia).

@Alan Merklin posted:

Funny!     I'm not color blind but do experience shade color blindness, a condition that restricts how certain colors are perceived and are difficult and sometimes impossible to differentiate from others. Certain purples and violets, black and browns, light blue and light grey, darker greens and browns, maroon and some browns. Spraying flat red primer over a black surface can mean I may miss a spot unless the part is under bright lighting or sunlight.  The text I am keying now could be black or brown or maybe dark green ...no wait is it a dark grey ? Primary colors are not the issue but it's best to never ask me to spray a panel and blend on a car........But yet with good spray booth light I can still shoot a car with very good results as long as it has contrasting primer and or base coat.  Danny said it best that being keep me away from a large pair cable ...Anyone else experience this shade color issue?

have U had ur eyes checked for cataracts,after surgery all the vivid colors came back, amazing.

I am color blind about like Alan. Red-green. Low light exacerbates it. It's super common especially among men.