MEET the father-and-son car restorers who are turning rust to riches by buying, selling and fixing some of the world's rarest cars. Lance, 52, a former panel beater for Rolls-Royce, is the go-to guy for bespoke classic car restoration - while Merlin, 20, specialises in sales and acquisition. Some of the rarest cars treated at their businesses in Brentford, west London, can be worth upwards of £15m. This week Merlin has two Chevrolets in stock, and while one is barely roadworthy, the other, a 1969 Chevelle, is one of the best examples in the country.
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MotorTranscript
00:00 COMM: Master craftsman Lance McCormack owns
00:02 one of Britain's best classic car restoration businesses, Romance of Rust. Helping him manage
00:08 it is his son Merlin, the cutting edge salesman, who also runs his own classic car dealership.
00:14 Together they turn rust to riches.
00:17 COMM: Merlin has a pair of Chevrolets in stock
00:21 and while one of them needs a lot of work, the other one is a bit of a beauty.
00:26 MERLIN MCCORMACK, Owner, Romance of Rust
00:30 This here is quite a rare car. It's one of only a few in the country. It's a 1969
00:32 Chevrolet Chevelle SS based on the Chevy Malibu. Unfortunately, the engine in this car isn't
00:38 the original engine. What can often happen with American cars, a crate or new factory
00:43 engines are put into them which completely deteriorates the value of a car. This one
00:47 has actually had original 396, 325 brake engine sourced for it, which is what it would have
00:52 had originally and it's been meticulously restored. The car was shipped into the UK
00:58 earlier this year.
00:59 Such a prize inspired a risky buying strategy on the part of its current owner.
01:04 This car was actually bought blind by its owner. However, there are ways around losing
01:09 sleep at night when you do these things. He paid for an independent inspection to be carried
01:12 out in America, which provided him with a 350 point checklist of the condition of the
01:17 car as well as 100 plus photos. So he really knew what he was getting himself in for. But
01:22 this I feel confident in saying is by far the best one in the country, if not in Europe
01:27 and it's a show winner.
01:29 With so many ways of selling cars available nowadays, Merlin knows the importance of advertising
01:34 in the right places.
01:35 This is the Chevelle that I've got for sale at the moment. I have chosen to advertise
01:41 this on eBay. We're asking 37,500 pounds for that. I feel that at that kind of level eBay
01:47 is an appropriate place to be listing things like that. Again, were this a 375,000 pound
01:52 car, eBay would be the last place I'd put it. I have also got it on a lot of American
01:57 specific sites, forums, things like that because a lot of the Americans seen in the UK are
02:02 very hot on their weird quirky forums.
02:06 If the car is as good as Merlin says it is, why is the owner selling it?
02:10 The bloke who owns this car actually came to me earlier in the year with a previous
02:14 Chevrolet he owned which he sold to buy this car, looking to restore it with Dad. Again,
02:19 that car needed too much work, he decided to sell it privately on eBay, bought this
02:23 car from the States and it's too good for him. He needs something a bit more road worthy,
02:27 not a trailer cleaner.
02:30 As well as the Chevelle, Merlin also has another Chevrolet on his books.
02:34 Here we've got a 1960 Chevrolet Nomad. It's based on the 60 Impala. The Nomad refers to
02:39 the station wagon, i.e. the estate on the back. It's a 283 Chevy small block engine
02:44 in there.
02:45 While it might not be the prettiest car, the vehicle's had something of an interest in
02:49 history.
02:50 The guy who I got it from had seen it in New York in the 80s. He fell in love with it and
02:54 he couldn't afford it. He came back over to the UK and was driving around Yorkshire one
02:58 day with a friend and the same car was sitting on a forecourt of just a local car dealer.
03:02 He couldn't believe it, he had to have it, so lo and behold he bought it, drove it every
03:06 day for about 15 years. He then decided to race it down a beach, which is fine if you're
03:13 going to clean your car afterwards, and let it sit in a yard for four years afterwards.
03:17 Perhaps unsurprisingly, such treatment has had an adverse effect on the body work.
03:23 On this car the rust is indisguisable. You can see here around the rear wheel arch, it's
03:28 quite literally coming off in your hand. That's an MOT fail beyond anything else. It's unsafe
03:35 both to pedestrians and to whoever's in the car. The engine is running beautifully, we've
03:40 just overhauled the brakes for whoever buys it because it wasn't safe to even move.
03:44 On the outer seal down here, there's a lot of rust bubbles. What worries me is what's
03:48 hiding behind them. The inner seal is arguably one of the most vital parts towards the structure
03:54 of the car. Without it, the car could quite literally snap in half. You'd have to remove
03:58 the outer seal to fix that and I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were opening a
04:02 huge can of worms. The insides of these tend to just completely rot out. You really are
04:06 just relying on the strength of the roof and the body panels to keep the car looking as
04:10 it is.
04:11 It's not just the exterior that leaves a lot to be desired.
04:14 The interior itself has been home to a family of rats before we picked it up for about seven
04:19 years so they've gone to town on the place. We have disinfected the whole thing, hence
04:24 why I'm sitting in it now, but it does still smell in here.
04:27 But being in such poor condition meant it was a bit of a bargain and one Merlin couldn't
04:32 resist.
04:33 We picked this up for three grand. It was something that appealed to me more than anything.
04:39 You shouldn't always follow your heart in this industry but we've had some fun with
04:42 it. Back in the day, Dad probably would have looked at finishing this off, taking it on
04:48 as a project but the thing is we've picked up so much business elsewhere of a higher
04:52 calibre that we really don't need to be doing stuff like this anymore. It is more a labour
04:57 of love when it comes to stuff like this. There isn't a huge amount of cash in it and
05:02 at the end of the day he's trying to run a business.
05:04 So what does Merlin plan to do with it now?
05:06 It doesn't look quite as bad as it is and that's saying something because it doesn't
05:11 look great. Everything from the waist down is gone. I've taken this on as a real project
05:16 for someone who wants something to keep them busy over winter. It's going to keep them
05:21 very busy. There's a lot of people who want it for a rat rod or a surf wagon or something.
05:26 You wouldn't think necessarily there's a huge market for that over here but I've been pleasantly
05:29 surprised over the years as to how big the hot rod and American scene has grown over
05:33 here. Someone's really got their work cut out here but it's going to make quite a cool
05:37 wagon once it's done. It really just needs a lot of love from a welder. We're going to
05:43 ship it on for four and I think there's enough room left in that price for somebody to take
05:47 it on and see a profit out of it once they've restored it.
05:50 Next time on Rustor Riches...
05:52 I'm certainly not going to put a 2,000 pound pressing on there in the wrong place because
05:56 I know what they should look like and they certainly shouldn't look like that.
05:59 [Music]