If you found one of these race cars today how would your restore it?
 

Restore the car stock

Restore the car to as raced

Let’s assume they are all dealer owned cars raced by the dealer themselves . Not privateers
Only because ( for some ) it narrows the complications to some extent.

I know it’s not an option and doesn’t answer your question but if I found one then I would leave the sucker as is. Old, lettered up race cars peg out the cool meter in my book. Especially if they have original paint and lettering!

Really loaded question. To me, if it has a pedigree, keep it as raced. Otherwise feel free to do whatever your preference is.

I would fully agree w that, but for arguments sake let’s assume they need a resto.
I’m just trying to gauge which way people prefer these old race cars stock or race. It’s kind of an ongoing ( friendly) argument between two friends. But let’s also assume it’s not totally hypothetical because we are trying to decide if people actually had to put their hard earned $$ up for an actual resto which way they’d go.

For me it would depend. If we were talking a super rare Camaro for instance, like a ZL1, the car is worth a ton restored.

If we are talking a somewhat rare car but it spent it's whole life as a race car, a '69 Z/28, I'd probably restore it as a race car if it was all cut up already and had ladder bars, tubs etc.

I think when the car has the potential to be worth 6 figures most folks would restore to stock.

Ok well most of those cars pictured are 6 figure + cars

I don’t want to interject what I think at this time because I don’t want to sway things .

Didn’t want to leave the olds guys out.

And since this is probably gonna get ugly w out some parameters let’s assume it’s a stock eliminator car appropriate for the year of the car, pretty much in its stock class form not all caged, tubbed and changed
From
It’s regular form . It’s basically stock w bolt ons and blueprinted, headers, slapper bars or bolt on ladder bars, basically a day 2 race car .

Sorry guys thought this would be easier .

It would always be a race car to me.

I say there’s plenty of fully restored cars out there and limited old warriors I’d leave them in race car apparel!

I would lean toward restoring as delivered, unless it was a significant race car with great history.

If it was just tired looking race car I'd leave it alone and preserve. Nothing wrong with a little patina and preserving history.