There's several factors going on IMHO...
People earning $35 or $40 an hour can't afford to pay people $80 and $95 and hour.... It takes 2000 hours or more to build a nice car... and I don't care if you're building a simple 32 Ford -- it's a 100 grand in parts....
Lots of people were using their houses as ATMs to build this stuff - when that got shut down - so did the builds...
As far as decent shops go... there are just too many horror stories in both directions. There's the guys that take their car to a body shop or so called "builder"... drop the car off... 2000 miles from their house... and then find out 3 years later the car hasn't been touched / or it's done hackeymotto.... OR the other scenario is - you go to a good shop - and have no friggin' idea what this stuff REALLY costs to do... that's when it's the OWNERS fault not the shops. People let their ego out spend their wallet then blame the shop.
I remember walking into a shop (nameless) in Huntington Beach when I was doing the Nomad... and after a big discussion -- and a shop tour -- I turned to the guy and said... "do any of these cars ever leave here?" The reason I asked is that there were 10+ cars sitting around that had 1/4" of bondo dust on them... parts strewn all over the place... and you could tell that they hadn't been touched in a very long time... He starts pointing to various cars - with a story about each one... "that guy hasn't paid for 6 months"... "that guy can only afford $2500 a month so we wait til we get 10 grand and do some work".... "that guy got cancer"... "that guy got a divorce"....
The big shops with the biggest names --- you see the cars built at some show -- and the rumors start flying.... "I heard that cost 1.2 million to build"... etc. So with that kind of "reputation" what NORMAL guy that could maybe afford a 250K car is going to even bother to call them!
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