I had actually started out with a different car in 2004, but the 1st body shop butchered it so bad, I sold it off for someone to build a drag car.
The shop the was working on my engine had offered to handle all the sheet metal and frame work as they believed building race car chassis is the same as doing restorations. This was in 2006, the beginning of me learning about restoration and dealing with shops. While he did a decent job cleaning up my engine, his restoration, sheet metal, and frame skills were not up to par. I gave him new front frame rails, he cut off the front half of the old ones and added box tubing, wasn't happy about that. Had the car media blasted while I was away, he never primed it, then when he did he went right over the rust. I had bought him weld-thru primer, he didn't use it. By the way, he was doing all this work while I was away in Iraq. Came home to some fun, really wasn't happy, pulled the car right out. Went on the search for a new shop, talked to 3 different shops, felt good about them, 18 month backlog.
