Porsche Perfection: $400,000 Vintage Restoration

My name is Rod Emery. I've been in the Porsche restoration business my entire life. We're in my shop in North Hollywood. This is what I love to do. I love to take these cars and give them a new life. I come from a family that's been building custom cars dating back into the 40s. My grandfather had a shop about a mile from here in Burbank from 1948 to 1962. He was really one of the early pioneers and customizers. And he taught me how to actually use real tools and taught me how to gas weld and how to shape metal. And that led to me doing my first Porsche restoration when I was 14 years old. The people that come to me are the guys that love that classic shape and design of a Porsche 356 or an early 911. But they want it personalized and they want it to have more power and more performance. When Porsche was first building their early aluminum-bodied cars, they were taking parts and components from Volkswagen, but then they built their own chassis and their own aluminum body. They would take a standard 356 and they'd drill holes in it and put hood straps. They'd put fog lights on them. They'd put a bigger engine. So even though there's people out there that'll say, oh, how could you customize these cars? How could you change the characteristics of them? But I'm only doing what Porsche designed these cars to do. And that's to have fun with them, personalize them. And I'll do things like rolling the doors and rockers all the way into the floor to give the body a little bit thinner side view. I'll change the A and B pillars in the car to give the roof a little bit different style or design. Very subtle changes that I do to the car sometimes, but they're all things that take a tremendous amount of work to accomplish. Once we have the car in our possession and it's shipped here to the shop, the first thing the guys and I do is we put it up on the lift. Then we evaluate the car, make sure that it has the components and everything that we need, and then we disassemble the car. This is a 1960 B Coupe. It's got very minimal rust and it's just a good one to build on. After we disassemble the car, the next step is to get all of the paint and undercoating off of them. So we send the actual chassis or the tub of the car to a place that has a large media blast room that they can blast the paint off. But all the smaller parts, bumpers, smaller components, we use our in-house media blast cabinet. It allows us to put the part inside and then we can blast either sand, glass bead, plastic or walnut shells to remove all the paint and material off of it. The next phase of the project is to get it in our metal shop and start doing all the rust repair and fabrication. Right now, we build approximately six or seven cars a year. And it's a combination of restoration parts and parts that are either remanufactured or new original Porsche parts. But then everything that's modified on these cars, we have to build in-house. We created a wood buck to be able to give us the shape of a 356 that we're working on. And so once we have the shape done in wood, then the next step is to make a template or a pattern so that we can do the initial cut of the aluminum. This piece of equipment that I'm using right now is called an English wheel. And it's used to be able to put curves in sheet metal or aluminum. The bulk of our equipment that we use is all 40s, 50s and 60s era equipment to do the metal shaping and the fabrication. This Eckeld is from the 1960s. With a combination of newer technology, even 3D scanners that we use to do some recreation of parts, we just have a really nice blend of equipment. And we take great pride in our tools because that's really what helps us create these cars. After the car has gone through its metalworking phase, it goes through the body and paint phase of the project. When you're doing the final bodywork on these cars, you don't want to over sand an area. You really just have to continue to make that shape smooth. It really is about flowing with the lines of the car and finessing it. While we were doing the metalwork, body and paint, all of the components and parts were all being prepared. So engine was being built, transmission was being built, hardware was being plated. So once we get to the assembly phase of the car, we start putting all the pieces on it. That's really everyone's favorite part because that's when the car really starts to take shape. Once it's assembled, that's when the real fun starts because that's when we get to turn the key and take it out on the road. It looks like this amazing little vintage car. When you get behind the wheel and you start driving it, you realize that it has the heart and soul of the early 356. It gives you that sound and it still has that little bit of vibration and feel and even smell of an early Porsche. It has the performance and drivability of a newer Porsche. It's just amazing to drive. We always put a couple hundred miles on the cars before we deliver it to the customer. We just want to make sure that the engine is broken in, make sure that the car has had all of the necessary adjustments. Everything from suspension to carburetors being perfect. We made sure that that door shuts perfectly and that the window rolls up and that there aren't air leaks. Once we're comfortable, we know that everything is ready on the car, then we move on to delivery. People often ask me, do you find this type of work art? And I really do. I take metal in these cars and rearrange things. I guess technically I am an artist creating rolling art. I love what I do and I get to wake up every morning and just create and build amazing cars.