Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Car Lovers

Good things come in pairs. For instance, gloves, work boots and even coveralls come in a pair.

    Ok. We don’t always have cars on the brain, with Valentine's Day being tomorrow, we do have couples, and love and passion on the brain! A couple of Buick Rivieras, a couple of F100 series trucks, a couple Chevy coupes and a couple Cadillacs. Why settle for one when you can have two? That seems to be our motto lately when it comes to client cars. Not that we are getting two of a kind in a a time but it is not uncommon for us to have two of a same yr/mk/mdl or at least two of the same makes in the shop simultaneously.  Just as we are wrapping up on one Cadillac for instance, another rolls through the door!

    As we were finishing up Tonya Kay’s Buick Riviera (click here to see more about this one of a kind lady and her Grape Space Coaster)  a new client, named Joe from Laguna Niguel, hires us to finish the restoration and repairs of his 1965 Buck Riviera —the same year, make and model as Tonya’s. Can you believe it? And Joe did not even know about Tonya’s car (despite the fact that she has been great about posting and sharing photos and stories and mentioning us on social media). Joe did find us online however, and his car is what we would consider as a project completion under our list of services offered on our website. A “project completion car” is perhaps one that had been started at another shop but the work did not progress as the owner might have hoped or maybe the previous restoration company just gave up or sometimes the shop goes out of business before the car is completed. Joe and his Riviera had been in one of these types of situations. Despite a sour taste left in his mouth he decided to take another leap of faith and chose us to help him bring his car back to the glory that he once desired. We welcomed this poor neglected car with open arms into our shop six months ago. Since then we have made tremendous progress which in turn has made the owner feel happy and excited again about a car he previously experienced feelings of contempt and resentment for after feeling as if he had wasted time and money elsewhere.  

     In addition to the pretty pair of Rivieras, we also happen to have two 1960s Ford trucks in the shop at the moment. A 1965 Ford F250 and a 1967 Ford F100. The F250 is in the final stages of completion — after sorting through, sandblasting, powder coating, chroming, painting, color sanding, polishing and reassembling the pieces that another shop had left it in we are just wrapping up a few loose ends to get a few final systems functioning.  The F100 is one that was granddad’s that our client wants to see on the road again to be used as a daily driver. In order to make this happen it is undergoing numerous system repairs, replacements, rebuilds and even some performance upgrades.  Stay tuned for full feature articles on these two fun Fords and the owners that love them!

    Next up on the list are the Cadillacs. When it comes to Cadillacs, I’d say we have had quite a fleet of them come through the shop. More than a pair, multiple pairs of Caddys in fact! What can be said about that? Well, they are great and popular classic cars. Since there are so many variances in the Cadillac from year to year it makes them somewhat of a burden to work on but we have happily and successfully assisted numerous Cadillac owners.

    The last good looking pair that I will mention is a couple of cool custom classic Chevy’s that we have the pleasure of performing a ton of rust repair and metal fabrication on! If you follow our social media pages you are sure to have seen photographs of the progress made on the 1950 Styleline and the 1951 Fleetline. Owner, and operator Matthew Means, loves all things automotive but metal fabrication is what he is most passionate about.

    Everyone at Anaheim Rod and Custom has at least one special car in their life that they love, so we get it. For some of us, it is a love that is hard to describe in words. It seems to be an unspoken love and mutual respect understood by one car lover to another.  We understand that our clients are passionate about their cars and we love that they have chosen us to work on these vehicles that are so near and dear to them. The majority of us out there are not just monetarily invested in our car’s progression or restoration but also emotionally invested, which can cause us to experience a wide range of emotions during the progression ( I can honestly relate). The process of a vehicle restoration is never an easy one. Not just from the builder’s standpoint but for the owner’s either. But in the end these vehicles have evolved into something that both parties are proud and passionate about, even more so than when they started. That’s what it is all about!

So with Valentine’s Day a day away we look around at all these lovely pairs parked in our shop and smile as we reflect on all of the love and passion that will surround each and every one of them for as long as they are on this earth!