Taking an old car apart and putting it back together is hard. It’s expensive and complicated, not to mention dirty, and people who don’t love cars might struggle to understand why we do it. For those of us who love cars, the attraction is pretty clear. It’s a chance to bond with a machine, to make something truly yours, and to leave something better than it was when you found it.
All of these things are true for YouTuber George Karellas of Soup Classic Motoring. He’s not a professional mechanic or restorer. He doesn’t have a big budget or a huge shop dedicated to the work. He regularly gets things wrong or messes things up, but that doesn’t matter because he’s not trying to teach us anything. Instead, he’s working to humanize the process of restoring an old car. To show that anyone with some tools, a willingness to learn, and a whole lot of patience for doing things more than once can take something that looks like it was found at the bottom of a lake and make it something to be proud of, even if it’s not perfect.
Take, for example, his Lotus Esprit project. His 1978 series 2 Esprit isn’t the most clapped-out Lotus we’ve seen, but it’s far from the best. Like many classic cars, it’s also hiding many crimes under its sleek, Giugiaro-designed wedge-shaped body (and by crimes, I mean rust). Is it an ideal candidate for restoration? No, but it is a perfect candidate to learn how to restore a classic sports car.
This series has been going on for nearly four years, and we’re just getting to the point where the chassis is done. If you didn’t know, the Esprit (and many classic Lotus models) use a steel monocoque chassis with a fiberglass body bolted to it, so when I say chassis in this case, I mean the steel backbone and suspension arms are done. There’s a long way to go, but getting to this point has been worth it.
Along the way, we’ve seen George learn to weld, work metal, use a plasma table, try to lighten an already light car, and then explain it all in a gentle Irish accent.
The Lotus project is a departure from much of his previous automotive work, which includes restoring a 1980s Mercedes-Benz sedan and, my favorite, a Range Rover classic. He even did a long video of restoring the Land Rover in stop-motion (a regular feature of the channel) and it’s one of our all-time favorite videos.
So, if you need some inspiration or some catharsis, or maybe even just something to do on an afternoon when you should be working instead, check out some of George’s work.
