Wood You Like to Restore This Ford Marmon-Herrington Super Deluxe?



If you're interested in buying both of these Ford trucks and combining them into the foundation for the restoration of a rare vehicle, they can be yours for $30,000.

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Besides the front fenders and grille, what part of it is a station wagon?
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Why 30k? Hahaha!!

 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, no.

 

Somewhere today is this Merc M-H sedan that was itself cut and patched into a pickup. No doubt it is today a high dollar M-H woodie. It was ten or more years ago that Chuck and I swapped notes about it. He tried to buy it but found it had been sold out from under him. IIRC it sold for about $3000. Seems prices have gone way up for similar projects. Stu

 

Is the OP's photo photoshopped? That is a '42-'47 cab with a '46-early'47 car front end. I believe the car cowl would be to wide for the fenders and hood to fit a truck cab. I do like the car front on the truck though! There is a wagon if you click the link at the bottom of the post. There is virtually no wood left worth saving.

 

$30,000 might be worth it after about 10,000 hours of labor to restore, and in mint condition. I'd pass on this one.

 

A restored Marmon-Herrington woodie will today sell at auction in the $250,000 neighborhood. Stu

http://www.rmsothebys.com/na09/nick-...ction/results/

 

Just the labor at a good restoration shop might bust the 250 thousand mark tho. And I wonder how they document those M_H cars as original and not just someone putting the M-H running gear and plaques on a regular woody to make it worth another 100G.

 

Think that's an exaggeration. But agree it'd take $50k to $100k to do a professional job. Outta my league.

Edit - missed seeing your edit while I was typing. The answer is they don't have a way to document an original M-H woodie, unless there are original M-H tags included. Since all M-Hs are conversions, the serial number doesn't tell any history. There's probably more M-H woodies today than when new. Stu

 

Yeah, I don't really have a clue on how many hours but at $100+ per hour, it could pile up pretty fast. In todays market you almost certainly will loose a wad of money to pay for a restoration and then sell the car. And to start with something as decomposed as the one we are talking about, it would be a money loosing situation I'm afraid.

 

Some guys are making money at it. Watching the Mecum and Jackson auctions there are shops that specialize in certain vehicles. The guy that comes to mind is Kurt Tanner of SoCal, San Diego iirc, that specializes in Healey 100/6 and 3000 restorations. I sold him some stuff when I got out of Brit cars and was told by his transport driver that Tanner has a contract to provide Barret-Jackson with Healeys for auction. Big Healeys aren't easy to restore, so I know they have real work to put in to their project cars. Probably are some similar woodie shops on the left coast. Stu

 

Yeah, that's a little different deal than a paying customer. I doubt they recover shop rate for the time invested, even though they can make money by specializing and having a good inventory of used parts. If all you did was 40s Ford woodys, you would have all the patterns, probably cut several sets of wood at a time and not one-off. But I still contend the market is soft and the cost of restoration spiraling upward, it is increasingly difficult to make any money. Just the paint/body and chroming can fly past $40,000 on a lot of cars real fast.
I still contend it would be a rough go to pay for the restoration on that project and come out. It's basically a couple junkers and a dream they are selling.

 

No quarrel on that. Most of the sellers at the auctions are giving the car/truck away and MAYBY getting back paint, chrome, and interior investment. Stu

 

This MH Pickup looks like such a contraption. I would rather take this approach and then make it a 4X4: