Found this artical,
http://www.gosanangelo.com/...ay-an-auto-business/Quotes from article:
“My guess is there are probably 50,000 kit cars in garages all across the U.S. that people bought and just can’t complete the process"
"Once we find Fiero's that have been well taken care of we go buy those"
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Rodger Hill wants San Angelo to get the recognition for auto restoration it deserves.
The owner and titles manager of I’ll Fly Away LLC, a company he bought in Detroit early this year and brought to San Angelo, said his staff and business contacts can build replicas of classic cars just as well — even better — than the competition on the East and West Coast.
“We’ve bought their cars and taken them apart and found our cars are better and safer,” Hill said. “We want to sell some cars in San Angelo just to highlight that we are a San Angelo-based company and so people can take some pride in what we can do right here.”
The business focuses mostly on building Lamborghini replicas, Hill said, but will also finish kit cars that customers can’t complete.
“My guess is there are probably 50,000 kit cars in garages all across the U.S. that people bought and just can’t complete the process, getting it to pass state inspection,” Hill said. “I get calls all the time from people that say ‘My wife told me if I don’t get this project out of the garage, she’s leaving.’
“So we’ll go pick them up, bring them here and finish them out. The two most popular kit cars are Ferrari or Lamborghini, but it really doesn’t matter to us.”
The Lamborghini replicas, however, are not kit cars, a fact emphasized on Hill’s company Web site.
Hill said the replicas are built from Pontiac Fieros, which are taken apart and reassembled with new parts and customized to suit the customer’s needs.
“We build a car for the customer based on how tall they are, the types of roads they’re going to drive on, do you want a car that’s high performance or do you like to go slow and show it off?” Hill said. “We build that car specifically for them.”
I’ll Fly Away also performs custom wraps, which means a Dallas Cowboys fan can have his or her car decked out in navy blue and silver and stars, or businesses can have a company car customized for advertising purposes.
“I envision Verizon and other companies like that being very interested in these types of cars,” Hill said. “And anybody who wants a school color car or a sports team car for a personal car, that’s where I think we’ll have an edge over the competition.”
But San Angelo already has the labor force, economy, and talent that make the city a match for this type of business, Hill said.
“I believe that there is sufficient demand to support the business,” he said. “What worries me is that we will run into a supply problem where we’re not able to supply as many cars as there is demand for. That would be a good thing.”
Standard-Times: What’s the difference between a replica and a kit car?
Hill: With a kit car you would order the parts from someone who has a mold and you would unbolt the skin from your car — the outer sheet metal or plastic — and bolt that on. We go more than ‘Here’s the parts, put the car together yourself.’ We do it right down to the final finish.
What’s the process? Someone has $20,000, an old Pontiac Fiero, and they bring it to you to have it built into a Countach replica?
If someone already owned a Fiero we could do that. There aren’t that many existing Fiero owners. That car didn’t sell well in Texas for some reason, so what happens is we go and search every day. We look on eBay and every auto trade magazine — anywhere we can go to find Pontiac Fieros. Once we find cars that have been well taken care of we go buy those. We actually buy those ourselves in most cases. We take it apart and build it back like it was new, and we build a car from there to the customer’s specification.
Who are your customers?
Our target market would be the person who can afford a pleasure boat or who can afford a watercraft or a Harley-Davidson. This car can be driven to work and back but primarily it’s a toy. It’s a usable toy. It’s kind of more of a pleasure, recreational vehicle. Although in West Texas, it doesn’t rain a lot, it could be someone’s daily driver, but I wouldn’t think it would be their only car.
Is building replica cars a new trend, or has it been ongoing?
It’s been going on since Day 1. The fact is that these high-end cars — the 1985 Lamborghini Countach that we build a replica of — they only made 200 of those cars so the likelihood that anyone could even own one, most of those are in museums. Even the people who bought those cars realized they wouldn’t be able to drive them on a daily basis, so many people bought replicas of those so they could have a car they could drive on a daily basis and not have to drive their real Lamborghini. Same thing happens with Ferrari. If it’s got more than 10,000 miles on it, you’ve almost destroyed the value of the car.
The replica car business took off from the very beginning, but it’s stronger today. Many of the cars you see you might think are ’57 Chevrolets are replicas because the really high-end cars are going overseas. That goes for old Camaros, old Corvettes ... a lot of the ones you see out there today are replica cars.
How safe are these types of cars?
As far as crash resistance or impact absorption, we take great pride at the lengths that we go to make these cars safe. I encourage our customers to see how we build our cars compared to how some of the top competition builds their cars. Some have taken no care at all in making the car a safe car. I’ve seen cars that have cut out plywood to fill in some body spaces. We use a tremendous amount of steel in each car. We build an impact cage down the side of the car so if the car is struck it’s going to distribute that impact across the original frame of the car. I think it’s a much safer car than some of the new cars on the road — from an impact protection perspective — and certainly a lot safer than the original Pontiac Fiero or original Lamborghini.
How did you get into this business?
I’ve loved classic cars all along. I’ve had several that I’ve done as hobby cars. I bought a Lamborghini replica, and I contacted the person who built the fiberglass body for the car. The gentleman was in Detroit. He told me had the company for sale because of the economy up there. At first I said there’s no way I’m going to do that. But I just believed the San Angelo economy was strong and the work force was strong, and that turned out to be exactly true. The labor force is outstanding here, it’s relatively inexpensive here, the availability of cars is pretty good.
What’s your experience with cars?
Keith Bearden (the chief mechanic) has a lifetime of experience in mechanics; he’s been doing that basically since he was a kid — race cars, muscle cars, and diesel mechanics, all the things that are involved in oil field work. I’ve got some expertise in (mechanics) but mine is more in product design and looking at something and trying to find a way to do it cheaper or better without sacrificing quality.
Keith does all our metal fabrication, but there are some things we can’t do, so we use a local garage. We don’t do our own painting, so if we have a car painted, we have it painted by one of the local body shops. Hargrave Tire does all our wheels and tires for us. Southland Composites — they build boats — they’re the people who build my bodies for me. I own the molds, but I’m not a fiberglass person, so I contract with them to build the bodies for the cars. We have a number of people and businesses involved in building the cars. It’s not like I have a payroll of people — we just have businesses that do things for us.
We focus on dependability and reliability. We want to build a quality product. When we disassemble a car, traditionally if we’re buying an ’80s model Fiero, anything that’s rubber on that car, it’s likely it’s deteriorated, so fuel lines, vacuum lines, any type of rubber bushings, anything in the steering, we replace all that, bring all that up to brand-new specifications. Once you have a car completely taken apart, that’s when it’s easiest to do a real thorough inspection. So Keith and I focus on that bare bones part of the car and the rebuild.
Why focus on Lamborghinis?
The Lamborghini is probably the most striking car. The Lamborghini Countach was built between 1974 and 1989. They made very little change over the life of the car so a lot of the parts are interchangeable on the cars. The same is true for the Pontiac Fiero. We focus on ’85 to ’88 (year models), and most of the parts are interchangeable, so we don’t have to have a big inventory of parts.
I try to get everything I can get done on our cars here in San Angelo. I try to use local parts and stores. We want to be known as a San Angelo company. We want to be able to put our footprint here and say, ‘They do it in LA; they do it in Miami; we do it right here and we do it better.’ ”
