How to Avoid Buying A Flood Car

Despite the seemingly constant amount of rain we experience in the Pacific Northwest, we seldom have any major problems with flooding in our main cities.  Sure, Tillamook floods every ten seconds in the winter and there are regional flooding issues in more rural areas of Washington and Oregon, but for the most part the major population areas avoid this environmental fiasco.

The same can't be said for the Eastern part of the United States.  During the hurricane season, flooding is an unfortunate disaster to be reckoned with and one of the bi-products of floods often shows up on Portland and Seattle area used car lots.  We're talking about flood cars.  The Internet has tons of write-ups about how to spot one of these cars, so we're going to dedicate this entry into knowing where the cars will likely show up and what cosmetic detailing tricks are used by dealers to hide evidence.  The idea is to avoid them all together.

According to online surveys, it's estimated that more than 200,000 cars were damaged in the floods caused by hurricane Sandy.  Where do they all go?  Are they all salvaged and turned into hunks of metal?  The unfortunate reality is that they don't just go away.

It should be no surprise that these cars end up on used car lots.  Often dealerships will send buyers to flood ravaged regions to purchase salvaged flood cars at auction.  Then they will bring the cars back here to the NW and reconstruct a clean title.  They'll clean the car up and sell it to you without ever saying a word about it being in a flood.  Of course, when asked the used car sales rep will say that they "...took the car in on trade."  More reputable dealers (e.g. those with new car dealerships) usually will not bother with this tactic and often do spend a great deal of money bringing the used cars they do sell up to the best possible standards.  Used car dealers are different.  One used car dealer that I know admitted to me that nearly 70% of the cars they sell come from auction houses.

When a car has sat in a flood, it may not show signs of it right away.  In fact, you could drive your car into a lake and leave it there for a few hours, pull it back out and there would be no effect on the factory paint.  Salt water is different though and many flood cars from the east coast have been effected by it.  It is much more damaging to the paint and often you will find that these cars have a sort of bleached ring noticeable at the bottoms of the doors (for trucks and higher SUV's) and mid-way through the body panels on sedans and lower cars.  On lighter color cars it is not as noticeable, but on darker cars it is unmistakeable if you know what you're looking for.  Behind that compromised and bleached paint is rust.  Lots of rust!  In some cases just repainting these rigs will not solve the problem.  The metal has been ruined and would need to be cut out and replaced or each individual part would need to be replaced and painted to match.

On trucks, used car dealers will often put a cheap bed liner over the back to keep you from seeing the paint in the bed.  It is usually completely ruined since it sits so low.  Also in a truck you will often find carpet pulled and replaced by cheaper rubber liners or find that the carpet in a sedan looks new while the rest of the upholstery looks horrible.  Often they don't even bother to replace bad carpet.

Check to see if the car spent anytime in Texas.  Texas has real lax rules about licensing cars and many times dealers will run a car through Texas, roll the odometer back, and then bring it to another state.  A flood car will have excessive rust and damage to components like brakes.  When the time comes to do a brake job, it will be very difficult to get the rotors off and a 1 hour job can turn into 2 or 3 hours.

Leather will be severely damaged by flood.  It will get stretched and will lose it's topical color coating.  This can be fixed but it will cost several hundred dollars to do so.

Avoid used car dealers if you can.  You are always better off buying a car from an individual seller since the price will be cheaper.  Also make sure you can trace the ownership and geographic history of the car.  Never buy anything that has spent some time in Texas.  Buy local cars if you can and if you must go to a dealer, go to one with a series of major manufacture brands who deals primarily in new cars.  Ron Tonkin is a good example.

How to Avoid the Top 5 Used Car Dealer Scams

Towards the end of summer we got involved with a used car dealership that was running an event in Vancouver near our shop.  We ended up agreeing to detail a few of their rigs to help with overflow that their 2-man detail team was struggling to keep up with.  We did about half a dozen cars in just a few days.  It felt like going from Johns Hopkins to a MASH unit--forget technique--just go fast.  Only 1 of the cars we did was worth anything, the rest were basically auction house garbage.  (They were literally some of the worst cars we had ever seen.  The garbage from one of them actually filled a grocery bad to the top!)

Suffice it to say, we will never work with a used car dealership ever again.  Over the course of the few days we had our disagreements with the dealership and how they wanted their cars done.  I thought letting my readers know what used car dealers do to their cars before you get to test drive them might be interesting.  First, I challenge any of you to go to a used car dealership and find a sales rep that will admit to you that the car they are selling came from an auction house.  Each week here in the Portland area, a company called Manheim coordinates an automotive auction for dealers only.  They sell between 400 and 500 cars each Tuesday to used car dealers in the Portland Metro area.  In fact, they have offices all over North America and likely sell tens of thousands of cars per year.

500 cars a week into a metro area as small as Portland is a lot of cars (2K per month), yet I can't find a single one on any used car lot in the area.  Every single car is "taken in on trade", according to the dealerships.  This is an obvious lie.  But why do they lie.  Here's why.  I went to an auction back in the middle of summer with a dealer friend and watched as car after car was bid on and most of them sold.  I had my eye on a 2001 Jaguar because it had very poor leather and I was interested in talking to the owners about fixing it for them.  I met the young husband and wife who ended up with the winning bid.  It was just a hair above $5K which was higher than most thought it would get.  I followed that car to it's final resting stop on their dealership.  The bad leather was never repaired, dressing was sprayed all over the engine (making it shiny) and the price went from just above $5K to $12,995.

I asked them to see a breakdown of what was done to the car.  Guess what!  Nothing was done to the car, yet they more than doubled the price.  Used car dealers can do this because they prey on a certain type of buyer; the one looking for convenience.  I've met several people who have purchased from used car dealers and I've done it myself once.  Used car dealers do make getting a car convenient and this leads to them being able to get away with a lot that a private seller can't.  They can finance the car of course, but they can also coordinate licensing, insurance and so on all in the time it takes you to peruse the rest of the cars on their lot.  And they can tie all of these expenses into one financed amount.  When I did buy from a used car dealer, I paid cash and so I took away one of the biggest control features the used car dealer relies on to take advantage of you.  The rule is, always be prepared to walk away from any car, even if it seems perfect for you.  There is always another car and another deal.  When buying used cars from a used dealer, patience is the best weapon you can take with you.

How do you know if the car they are showing you is worth what they are asking?  What do you look for?  Surely not all the cars they have on the lot are clunkers?  You've noted that the cars look really good when you looked at them on the lot.  Some of them do, however, used car dealers do some things that are basically akin to parlor tricks to make their cars look better than they really are.  Everyone knows they put five gallons of varnish on the engines to make them look new.  However, they also put what is basically a silicon grease on all the bumpers and dark material on the car, even the wheel wells.  This gives the appearance of being newer or in better shape, but not only will that not last, when you drive your car in the rain the first time, the dried silicon will begin to mix with the rain and drip from the rubber components all over paint.

We've tried it and we don't like it.  When we find a rubber component that has been damaged by years of exposure to the sun, we completely respray it with rubber paint in the original factory color.  This is going to last much longer than a cheap, greasy quick fix that you can buy at Walmart, but it takes time and time costs money.  Used car dealers are about flipping as many cars as they can for as high a mark-up as they can.  They are not interested in spending money on the car, only in selling it to you.  This doesn't mean that you will not find some very nice cars at a used car dealership; certainly there were nice cars at the auction, it just means that among the nice cars there will be others that were repossessed by banks and sat under a tree for 2 years, and others that were completely destroyed on the inside by dogs, cats or whatever, a few that were in floods and the dealer has done everything they could (without spending money) to hide the evidence and so on.

The simple truth is that if a dealership wants $9995 for a car on their lot, they probably have less than $5K total into that car.  When they detail the cars, they will cut corners and instead focus on doing the parlor tricks (hiding scratches, putting grease on sun damaged parts, etc.)  I watched the two guys this used car dealership was having prep their cars.  After one of them lectured me (I'm a guy who has restored Ferrari's) on how to detail a car, I watched him buff out a Ford sedan in direct sunlight on a 90 degree day without so much as having taped off the seams and not even a cheap little canopy system to block the direct sun.

Yea kid, you really know what you're talking about.

Buyer beware everybody.

How to Make Your Old BMW Look Brand New

Over the course of 15 years or so and two different detailing companies, I have worked on quite a few BMW's.  For whatever reason, the BMW's I've worked on have predominantly been the 5 Series cars.  So when a client came to me whom I have known for the better part of a decade saying he wanted his older 5 series gone through and given the works, I wasn't worried.  Maybe I should have been.

This particular BMW was a 2001 530i with the sport package which I believe meant they stuck the steering wheel from the M5 in it and not much else.  (Which isn't all that bad, it's a nice steering wheel and goes for $600 used on EBAY!!!)  The challenge was that the car was a former salvage title vehicle which means it was in a pretty nasty wreck and was slung back together.  Cars receive a salvage title when the insurance company determines that the cost to repair the damage from the accident exceeds the net result value of the car.  There was no telling how much it had been neglected till I saw it.

Historically, the 5 Series has been one of the most significant models for BMW, both financially with consistent high sales, and critically having won virtually every award car magazines put out including being listed in Car & Driver's Top 10 list six years in a row.  The 2001 model was the 4th generation of the 5 Series and it unilaterally was considered the finest production sedan in the world.  The example I renovated had the venerable BMW straight six; very smooth, tons of torque.  Although in need of a minor tune the engine in this example was strong and didn't miss a beat.  The 5 Series has that signature BMW handling characteristic so lacking in Mercedes of the same era.  With proper steering wheel feel and amazing cornering ability for a car of it's size I was impressed with the machine.

2001 BMW 530i

The Original State of the Car

 Like anything now 12 years old, however, this BMW needed some love.  Lot's of it.  The wheels were almost completely hidden behind years of brake dust accumulation and embedded road grime.  The interior, although sound, was showing heavy signs of wear and neglect.  The seat surrounds which housed the buttons for the adjustable seats were heavily  scratched and looked awful.

The Renew VALET Process

Our detailing and restoration process is pretty regimented, especially on larger projects like this.  Starting with a normal wash,  we reviewed the engine and began a full detailing process on it.  It wasn't as bad as we expected but it was apparent that when the car was in a collision, oil and radiator fluid had been spewed onto the bonnet insulation.  It was really soaked with it and when we washed it, it drained oily water for 45 minutes. After about an hour we were happy with the results and closed the hood.  We used a variety of dressings on the engine finishing it off with Meguires "Engine Kote".  (This is a professional product that looks like fat free milk but works really good.)

We then went through the exterior panels, claying the entire car, buffing out scrapes, minor scratches and other imperfections.  We used special brushes to go into the small seams of the car and remove mold and built up grime.     Then we compound buffed all the panels. While doing all that we had quite a bit of work with the wheels.  The BMW wheels on the 530i of this era are a two-piece wheel consisting of a conventional hyper-silver painted inner-component and a clear-coated brushed aluminum lip.  It was the lip that was the most damaged on each wheel and we opted to wet sand the lip with 1200 grit sandpaper and then polish out the minor scratches left behind.  This worked perfectly and the wheels looked much better.

                                                     

     






The leather interior was what BMW called "medium gray" during this era (1998 - 2004).  We were able to secure an exact match of this color from SEM which calls their version "Presidio".  It is a spot on perfect color match which is amazing considering that custom leather sprays can cost as much as $75 per can and this shelve color was $15.  We prepped the leather, sanding some areas down and literally spent half a day cleaning it with toothbrushes (over and over) until we felt got everything.  Then we sprayed the seats and other components.

The interior came out as near to perfect as you could hope on a 12 year old car where you don't replace the leather.  We were even able to put the texture back into some of the most damaged areas (which had been worn smooth) by using and SEM texture template specific to BMW.

                                                                                        
                                              

                We will be posting a two part video about this detailing and restoration project that will walk you through all the techniques used to bring the BMW 530i back to its former glory. In the meantime don't hesitate to check out our website:  http://www.blmmobiledetail.com

Future Collector Cars

With some of the record prices recently paid for vintage Ferrari’s and historic machines from other great marques, a question I often ask myself is…what will the future collectible cars be?  It’s an interesting question and many car magazines attempt to make such predictions although they rarely seem to use a systematic methodology for making those decisions and the selections tend to be vehicles favored by the editor or article writer.

34 years ago I saw a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa for the first (and without knowing it the last) time in person at the Forest Grove auto show.  For years I could not understand why this car was worth less than the GTO.  The GTO is an amazing machine, without question, but the pontoon-fendered Testa Rossa is its’ equal in racing pedigree, rarity and surpasses it in the looks department.  I guess I knew what I was talking about because the Testa Rossa has eclipsed the GTO as the top money car in the whole world.

Some six years later my path would cross another Ferrari in the twilight of its appreciation.  This time it was a light metallic blue Ferrari 330 GTS in the parking lot of Ron Tonkin’s Gran Turismo.  Back then the little side lot adjacent to the showroom was smaller and was often jeweled with Ferrari’s and other exotics of more vintage fare than inside the showroom itself.  I was 16 years old and for me Tonkin’s Gran Turismo was about the best place in the world to hang out.  I would ride my bike down there on Saturday’s and just look through the window.  Once, Mr. Tonkin himself gave me a personal tour of the showroom and I was virtually speechless.

That 330 GTS was a stunner.  At that time two of my older brothers each had fairly well restored early T-birds, a 55 and a 56.  They were attractive cars and the 56 at least was a bit fast having been professionally modified with a 390 tri-power engine from a 62 bird.  They were worth about $10k a piece in the mid 80’s and both of my brothers had felt the itch to sell them and get something else.  But what?  I suggested an early 190 SL Mercedes which could be had for $4-$5K in reasonably good shape.   They were good looking machines but nothing like the 330.  On a fluke I went down to the Gran Turismo and asked about it.

1967 Ferrari 330 GTS

I knew a fair amount about Ferrari’s even at that age, but I had little knowledge of the 330 series.  I remember that the GM told me they were asking $24K for it and that they only made 100 of them.  $24K seemed like a huge number back then but that other number (100) stuck in my head.  They had made more than 100,000 of the 55 and 56 T-birds collectively by comparison.  It was apparent from inspecting the car that a total restoration would be needed.  The paint was chipped and worn and the original Borrani wire wheels were dull with age.  The black canvas top was fading and damaged from exposure to rain and sun and the tan leather interior was severely cracked and worn.  My understanding was that it was still a pretty good drivers’ car and the engine and other mechanicals were strong.  Still, it had cost more than 6K (of mid-80’s money) to restore 1 of the T-birds (and that was with us doing much of the work) and a vintage Ferrari would likely cost many times that.

I pitched the idea of selling both of the birds and getting the Ferrari to my father and brothers.  They shot the idea down immediately.  In fact, my father’s comments were that the Ferrari was “Italian trash” and the T-birds were classics.  Only one brother liked the idea and was out-voted 2 to 1.  You probably know where this is going.  Today both T-birds would be worth around $40K-$50K or so if they were kept in the condition they were in at that time.  The Ferrari 330 GTS is now worth around half a million dollars unrestored and is around 7-figures for a properly sorted one.  It seems that Italian trash turned out to be worth quite a bit—benefitting tremendously from that tiny production number of 100.  The Mercedes 190 SL's that I also suggested to them (which could be had for $4-5K then) trade hands for upwards of $100K in Concours condition.  So my brothers could have sold both birds, drummed up a bit more cash and got the Ferrari 330 GTS, sat on it for just a few years and sold it when Enzo Ferrari died in the late 80's (they were already worth 20X what Tonkin wanted even then).  Or they could have sold 1 Bird, got two Mercedes 190 SL's and had a couple hundred grand worth of cars now.  Here's what actually happened:  Brother 1 with the yellow 55 sold his a year later for a significant loss because he was ansty to buy a boat.  Brother 2 did even better.  He traded his white 56 Bird in on an 1985 Toyota MR2.  It was only a down payment so he ended up making payments on a depreciating mass produced Japanese commuter car which is now worth maybe $1500.

The 1955 T-Bird

For those of you that still cannot resist the urge to go out and capture that future auction darling, here is my advice and my personal tips on some cars that might echo my predictions from the mid-80’s.

Rule 1:  The car needs to have a low volume.  Regardless of the name on the badge and how much the car costs when new, high volume numbers mean nothing but depreciation in the future.

Rule 2:  The car needs to look at least somewhat good.  The less attractive a car is the less likely it will ever register as worth having.  There are exceptions to this rule which you can witness at auctions today but why press your luck?  Believe it or not the old Ford Mavericks are actually steadily climbing in value????

Rule 3:  Buy the car when no one else considers it to have future value and then have the patience (and resources) to sit on it.

Pick number 1:  First generation Mercedes SLK AMG32.

This is basically a supercar in secretary clothing.  The 349 horsepower 1^st gen AMG version of the quintessential baby Benz roadster meets all three of my criteria.  Only a bit more than 4,000 were ever made so it’s rare by modern production standards, it’s arguably the best looking of the SLK AMGs’ thanks to being penned by Bruno Sacco, and no one has completely figured out how amazing this machine is yet.  Let’s put it this way, it will outrun every small Ferrari ever made (except the new 458 Italia) to 60mph.  Despite this a clean example can be had for $14-$18K.

Mercedes SLK32 AMG

Pick number 2:  86 Ford Mustang SVO

Ford’s venture into making an upscale sophisticated version of the venerable Mustang that could give European sport coupes a run for their money never really took off with its traditionally blue-collar buyers.  Ford only made the expensive turbo-charged special vehicle operations version of the Stang for three years and the 1986 model had the lowest production numbers at just a hair over 1,600.  It meets the rarity criteria easily and some would argue that the simple yet effective styling cues that set it apart from its V8 sibling made it one of the best looking Mustangs ever built.  Few collectors have managed to keep an eye on it and values are still very reasonable.  I doubt that will be the case in another 20 years.

Ford Mustang SVO

Pick number 3:  NorthStar Powered Cadillac Allante

I’m sure several people will point out that the Allante’ wasn’t a very good car and they would be right.  I have mechanic friends who attest to the fact that it was poorly designed in most of the traditional culprit areas for the Italians (i.e. everything).  GM made the mistake of letting Pininfarina do more than just pen the design when they allowed them to actually produce the cars on GM platforms.  So the wiring is crap, the interior is crap, it cost ten million dollars to replace a brake light housing and not too much actually fits together properly.  But all this just enhances the Italian experience.  The Allante was breathtakingly good looking.  Compare it side by side with the Mercedes SL of the same era:  the Allante looks like a Marathon runner while the German Wundercar looks like a fat banker.  It’s even better looking than the super-expensive Cadillac roadster that replaced it, the XLR.  The design was so good that it still looks fully modern today—slap a couple of 18-19 inch rims on it and it could pass for a 2012 model.  And we haven’t even got to the engine yet.  The early model Allante’s suffered from anemia courtesy of a V-8 sourced from the GM parts bin.  Couple the crap engine with front wheel drive and the early Allante’s were little more than a smaller, prettier Oldsmobile Toronado with a removable top.  The later models had the ground-breaking Northstar V-8 sandwiched transversely up front.  They were still front wheel drive but now they had 400hp and a billion pound feet of torque (okay not quite that much).  Test drivers in Car and Driver commented that the later Allante didn’t feel like a front wheel drive car.  GM likely tweaked the suspension geometry when they dropped the Northstar in but some of the improved handling feel could have been the result of all that additional power.  So the caddy has a couple of the criteria going for it:  looks and some decent performance, but what about scarcity?  In truth, the Allante was never a big seller.  It was expensive and the build quality wasn’t up to the standards of the Mercedes SL (it’s biggest rival).  People with the money chose the SL over the American/Italian hybrid.  By the time GM tried to salvage it by dramatically improving it, it was too late and the whole line was scrapped.

Cadillac Allante

Cars that just won’t make it but everyone thinks they will:

1). Dodge Viper.  I’m going to make a lot of enemies but I have never liked this car.  It was butt ugly when it first came out although it’s looks have refined over the years.  It has developed some great handling over its evolution, but it's still a heavy bucket with a truck engine, pretending to be a modern Shelby Cobra.  I originally wrote that they made quite a few of these but according to the International Viper Registry, the actual documentation of how many were made was somewhat hit and miss.  They have data that allegedly covers production numbers from 1992 through 2008 showing somewhere north of 20,000 cars total production.  If you take the production trends and push them out five more years you're pushing 30,000 units which I find hard to believe.  I see Vipers quite frequently--too frequently in fact to believe that the very few Vipers there allegedly are have flocked to the environmentally fanatical Pacific Northwest.  Any of the die hard fans who love this car and especially those who bought one thinking it was a great investment should be a little concerned that the factory has been so foot loose and fancy free with production documentation.  First, if they ever do begin to escalate in price, forging fake records about the authenticity of a rarer version of the Viper lineage will be relatively easy.  Ferrari is a good example of a company that keeps excellent records of its production models which hugely benefits Ferraristi investors.  The Viper just looks like something that would be in a cartoon rather than a serious car collection.  If you want further proof watch the Great Factories episodes about Bentley and Viper back to back.  Considering the cars fenders and body panels are made of bumper material you can see where I'm going.  You can love the Viper all you want.  It's blistering fast no question.  It just isn't ever going to be worth anything.

1992 Dodge Viper 

If you have a show car that you think will be worth something someday, take proper care of it and try and learn some techniques from this blog.  For help along the way, contact us:  http://www.blacklabelmotoring.net

Is the Modern Clear Coat Paint Really Better than the old stuff? PART 1

We recently worked on an older Mercedes SL for a Portland businessman who was looking to sell it.  It was an 86 380 SL that had been pretty neglected and reminded me of all the old stories one hears in automotive lore about the proverbial "barn find".  (You know, where the story teller claims the old farm lady widow was finally selling her sons FIAT that had been in the barn since he went off to war and it turns out to be a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa!!!)

The Mercedes had cobwebs all over it and looked to have been sitting in the same place for years.  When we got there it was hooked up to a battery charger (the battery is in the trunk on the old SL's!) and we were sure it wouldn't start.  It was covered in dirt and in some cases mud and at least one entire body panel was completely flat as if all the clear coat was gone.)  I almost stopped and called the owner right there and offered to leave without charging him anything.  It was that daunting.  The interior wasn't in great shape either but I want to focus on the exterior in this post.

We cleaned the car to get an idea of what we were dealing with.  The paint really looked dull and awful in many places.  I didn't think there was much I could do to the panels that were completely flat, but I gave it a shot.  Using a simple retail scratch remover/compound, I sprayed the rear trunk panel down with water and started buffing with a 3M waffle pad.  I could not believe it but the dang thing looked amazing within 30 seconds of buffing.  When I looked at my pad it was covered in blue paint.

This was not a modern clear coat paint.  This was a hand-painted enamel paint and a very, very good one.  We buffed that whole car and it looked like a different machine when it was done.  I have to say it was one of the best paints I have ever seen from the factory.  It was far easier to an amazing result with this old enamel paint than it is with modern clear coats.  So why did factories go from this two stage method to the current three stage method?  A lot of reasons boil down to environmental regulations and enforcement.  The old paints used lead in their makeup which became a big no-no for the environmental groups and ultimately the old lead based enamels and laquer paints were phased out.  There are some other reasons which we will cover in part 2 of this post.  Check out all of our recent work at http://www.blmmobiledetail.com

The 1986 Mercedes SL with after market O.Z. Rims

Memories of a Beautiful Showroom

Some 32 years ago, I was a 14 year old kid in love with cars.  Of all the cars I loved, none inspired and fascinated me more than Ferrari's.  I was lucky.  My father owned a small convenience store on 122nd east of Portland Oregon and I was literally just a 10 minute bike ride from the United State's first official Ferrari Dealer, Ron Tonkin.  I wondered what kids in small towns in Montana who loved Ferrari's did.  For me, I simply rode my bike down to his Gran Turismo showroom, parked the bike and quietly and respectfully gazed through the windows and meandered through the small Ferrari infested parking that surrounded it.

This became my Saturday routine.  After doing this three times, I remember that Mr. Tonkin himself once came up to the large windows of the showroom, rapped on them to get my attention, and summoned me to come inside (I had never had the courage to enter the showroom myself).  I was blown away.  This guy was a local automotive legend, he was on TV all the time and was worth likely more than $500 million even then.  He greeted me and even took time to give me a tour of the showroom.  He was kind, genteel and genuinely appreciated my fascination of these fine cars.  To this day, I remember every car that was in that showroom: a metallic blue Ferrari 512 BBi, a white and black Ferrari 308 GTSi, another 308 in yellow, a red 400i coupe and a red Alfa Spider Veloce and a deep metallic charcoal gray Alfa GTV6 2.5.

For a 14 year old car nut, Ron Tonkin's Gran Turismo was an oasis.

But that was then, and this is now.
As the city of Portland expanded it's locus of control to include 122nd which was unincorporated area back then, and then added the MAX light rail system, the quaint middle-class region that surrounded the Gran Turismo was slowly converted into a ghetto.  Now it is a crime-ridden dump where drug deals take place on every corner and most people I know don't even want to visit it.  My families' store has been owned by other people for years and it's a dump too. You can also thank the fine people of the Portland Development Commission (PDC) who spent untold millions of taxpayer dollars to move Portland's ghetto from North Portland (remember what Alberta used to be like) to East Portland.  Now they want to renovate East Portland (which begs the question; where will the ghetto go this time?)

I hung out at the Gran Turismo a lot when I was a teenager.  It was a great place to be.  In high school I wrote an article called "Memories of a Beautiful Lady" about my first experience in a Ferrari Boxer down at the showroom, it won a couple of writing awards as I recall.  Mr. Tonkin isn't responsible for what happened to the region around 122nd; neither am I.  The city of Portland (and the short-sighted PDC) should be ashamed of itself for letting a nice area turn into a cesspool of crime and drugs. 

I guess all we can do is remember what it used to be like.  I'm sure Mr. Tonkin does.  The last I heard he lived full time down in Arizona.  I'm not sure if he ever gets up to this cold climate to see the showroom anymore.  I'm sure he remembers the beauty and distinction of his award winning building, though.  I'm sure he remembers the excitement he and others must have felt as legendary car after legendary car were unloaded in front of the showroom to the amazement of people like me (and anger of people trying to drive on 122nd).  I'm sure he has lots of memories of that magical place.

I doubt he remembers me though.  I imagine I wasn't the only 14 year old car nut that stared through the windows of the Gran Turismo.

But I remember him. 

Restoring Leather: Part 2

In my first post I discussed the most basic concepts of restoring leather.  I'm going to go a bit more in-depth on this post and discuss a lot of stuff about how the automotive industry deals with leather and what can be done to restore and preserve the leather you have.

First, although leather is more prevalent now than it has been in the past (even Kia's and Hyundai's offer it as an option), the leather used now is a little different than what my father had on his old 70's Cadillacs.  To begin with, it's much thinner than leather used then and it is dyed differently.  One of my recent clients thought that "spray" dyeing was a cheaper method than pure-through dyeing and he was right, but he shouldn't feel bad.  Likely 90-95% of all car leathers are spray-dyed.  Only a tiny percentage of cars (Bentley, Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Aston Martin) will use leather that has been vat dyed (the color is imbedded in the leather versus sprayed over the top).

Is the leather in the Bentley and Rolls better than the leather in your car simply because it was dyed differently?  No.  It is better leather though, mainly because the cows it comes from are carried around on pillows, never scrape their skin and eat better than you or I do.  The leather from these pampered cows is flawless.  Dyeing this leather in a vat doesn't make it better, but it does  help to eliminate one issue most other automotive leathers have:  Cracking.

Cracking occurs when the flexible color dye that is sprayed onto your leather begins to wear and develops cracks.  Since the leather underneath is usually just a pale cream (natural leather) it can really be noticeable especially on cars with darker interiors.  You can opt to replace the leather.  I was going to do this with my Mercedes ML which actually has German Vinyl rather than leather.  I was quoted from $3,000 to $5,000 to do this.  Or, you can strip the original dye off and replace it.  Take a look at the pictures below.  The first set is from my Mercedes ML:

Vinyl is dirty, cracked and worn

Vinyl is re-dyed, as new

This second set of pictures is from a recent client who had a Hyundai SUV with a full leather interior:

Seat is heavily worn and stained

Seat is re-dyed to original specs

The repairs to these interiors cost literally 1/6 of what it would cost to actually replace the leather and the turn-around time is significantly less.  If your leather is seriously damaged and ripped or if your seats cushions have been seriously compromised then replacing the leather makes sense.  However, if the leather itself is in good shape and only the topical coating is damaged, the re-dyeing method is far more cost effective.

How much will it cost?  It depends on the vehicle but the Hyundai above was finished in one day for under $250.  (That's both front seats!)

Black Label Motoring Website

Restoring vs. Replacing Worn Leather and Vinyl

Some 30 years ago as a teenager, I used to ride my bike down to the Ron Tonkin Gran Turismo in east Portland Oregon.  Mr. Tonkin was the first official Ferrari dealer in the U.S. (Luiggi Chinnetti was not considered a "dealer" but Ferrari's defacto importer).  The Gran Turismo was Tonkin's oasis for his finest cars.  Not only did the building win design awards, but it gave proper respite to his expansive stash of Ferrari's, Alfa's, and other exotics which had to previously share space with Chevy Chevettes and GM trucks on his other lot.

I spent a lot of time there and learned a great deal about high-end cars.  My favorite was the Ferrari 512 Boxer.  I would later own one of these amazing machines fulfilling a promise I made to myself at 18, but one thing I never forgot was the first one I ever saw.  It was used, black and had 14k on the odometer.  It was absolutely stunning and perfect in every way except for the leather on the seats.  Mind you, in the mid 80's this was a six figure car, very spendy and with almost no mileage the leather already had eggshell cracks all through it.  How could this be?  How could leather crack so quickly?

Years later as I restored my Boxer, I learned that leather doesn't crack, the topical paint coating that factories use to color the leather does.  That's right, leather is spray painted just like your car is.  Sometimes, it's given a texture (it looks dimpled).  The more dimpled it is generally the cheaper it is.  I will not go into that now but will cover that in a later posting.  So if it's just the topical coating that is cracking and flaking, does it mean you have to completely replace the leather?  The simple answer is only if you want to spend too much money.

Take a look at the following photos:

These seats are from a Ford F350 Truck that had the front buckets and rear bench of a Expedition custom fit.  However, they were in pretty bad shape as the owner had two large dogs that he hunted with, and they had scratched them up pretty good.  The leather itself was structurally sound so we stripped the dye off and replaced it.


It can costs thousands of dollars to replace leather upholstery vs. hundreds to simply redye it.  Recently we finished a project on a customer's car and completely redyed and repaired his leather for under $500. 

If you have leather or vinyl that needs repair, don't just cover it with a cheap seat cover.  Get it fixed like new.