Frame off the floor.
Body off the frame.
Time, on our side.
Ground-up restoration of vintage Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche. Photographed every stage. Sourced from Europe. Built by a Mercedes Master Technician with twenty-six years under the star.
You don’t restore a car. You return it.
I opened the restoration wing in 2012 because Miami has too many great cars and not enough patience for them. The shop already had the bench, the tools, and the factory training. What it needed was a corner where time itself was allowed to slow down — where a 280SL could spend eighteen months becoming itself again, on a Bremen build sheet’s schedule and not a service writer’s.
Every restoration that leaves here is photographed at every stage, documented in a dossier the car keeps for life, and built with the parts the factory specified, sourced from the suppliers the factory used. Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche. Concours to driver. Pagoda to 964. The intention is always the same: when you start the car the first time, it should sound like the car you remember — or the car your father remembered — not a compromise of the two.
Every Mercedes-Benz is a masterpiece made by the best — and for the people who truly love the art of driving.
Four things every restoration earns.
These are not selling points. They are the conditions under which a car gets the badge that says it left our heritage wing. No car leaves without all four.
Period-correct, to the build sheet
Cars are built back to the factory specification on the original Bremen, Munich, or Stuttgart paperwork. Right paint code. Right hides. Right interior pattern. Right fasteners.
Body off, every time
At the concours and show tiers, the body separates from the frame. Every weld, every bush, every brake line inspected and renewed. Nothing assumed. Nothing buried.
Photographed at every chapter
Disassembly, discovery, body, paint, mechanicals, trim, reassembly, commissioning. Every chapter receives a photograph set in the dossier. Nothing happens off the record.
Sourced from Europe
Direct supplier relationships in Germany, Italy and the UK. NOS where it still exists. OEM where it must. Period-correct upholstery, brightwork and trim through channels the dealers themselves use.
From the day it arrives, to the day it leaves.
Every restoration follows the same twelve chapters. The duration varies with the chassis and the tier; the order does not. You will know which chapter your car is in at every conversation.
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01Week 1
Intake & brief
The car arrives. You arrive. We sit down with the paperwork, the photos, the family history, and the goal. Every restoration begins with the answer to one question: what does this car need to be when it leaves?
Owner Conversation · VIN & Build-Sheet Pull -
02Weeks 1–3
Survey & estimate
Mechanical assessment, body survey, paint depth gauge, panel-by-panel rust audit, road test where possible, factory data scan. A written estimate with line-item parts, labour, and a chapter schedule lands in your inbox before any bolt comes off.
Written Quote · Chapter Schedule -
03Month 2
Documented teardown
The car is photographed at three angles and every panel, bagged-and-tagged into labelled crates. Every fastener catalogued. Body separates from frame for the concours and show tiers. Discovery items — the things you only see once it’s apart — are quoted before they proceed.
Bag & Tag · Discovery Quotes -
04Months 3–5
Frame & chassis
Frame straightened or sectioned where required. Subframes rebuilt to factory specification. Brake lines, fuel lines, hardware renewed in cadmium or zinc plating per build-sheet. Suspension geometry recovered.
Frame Square · Plating · Geometry -
05Months 4–7
Body & metalwork
Rust cut out and replaced with period-correct panels — NOS where it exists, fabricated where it must. Gap-set to factory tolerance. Lead loading on pre-1972 chassis. Acid-dipped and epoxy-sealed before primer.
Panel Sourcing · Gap-Set · Acid Dip -
06Months 6–9
Paint & finish
Factory-code paint mixed to the original Mercedes-Benz, BMW, or Porsche formula. Block-sanded between every coat. Three colour-coats over a sealer; three clear-coats over that on modern formulations. Single-stage on period-correct concours builds. Cut and polish to depth.
Factory Code · Block Sand · Cut & Polish -
07Months 7–10
Mechanicals on the stand
Engine and transmission rebuilt on the bench, not under the car. Hand-assembled, torqued to factory values, balanced where appropriate. Carbs jetted to original Bosch spec; mechanical injection set on a flow-bench. Cooling, fuel and exhaust systems renewed in OEM hardware.
Engine-Out · Bench Build · Bosch Spec -
08Months 9–12
Trim, brightwork & interior
Chrome stripped and replated by hand — not flash-coated. Stainless polished, not buffed off. Interior retrimmed in period-correct hides through our German upholstery channel. Headliner, carpet, door cards, wood, dash plastics all renewed to original pattern.
Hand-Replated Chrome · Original Hides -
09Months 11–13
Reassembly
Body returns to frame. Mechanicals into the body. Trim and brightwork last. Every assembly photographed at the moment it goes together. Wiring loomed to original routing and clipping pattern. The car becomes a car again.
Body-On · Loom & Clip Pattern -
10Months 12–14
Commissioning
First fire-up on the bench. Cooling cycle. Fuel pressure check. Timing set to spec. Brakes bedded. Suspension settled. Every system signed off by the technician who built it.
First Fire · Bedding · Sign-Off -
11Months 13–15
Road test & correction
Three hundred miles, mixed conditions, mixed temperatures. Anything that surfaces — a faint vibration, a hot-running gauge, a window seal — goes back on the bench. The car only leaves the shop when nothing surfaces on the test loop two visits in a row.
300 Miles · Two-Loop Sign-Off -
12Delivery
The dossier, the keys, the drive
You come to the shop. The leather-bound dossier is on the bench beside the keys. We walk every chapter together. Then you drive it home — or we deliver it to your driveway, your trailer, or your concours field, anywhere in the country.
Dossier · Walkthrough · Concierge Delivery
Three cars. Three stories.
A sampler from the last decade of builds. Each one followed the same twelve chapters; each one earned its dossier the same way. Click for the long-form write-up.
280SL Pagoda — W113
Barn find from the Carolinas, returned to its original Astral Silver over cognac. Frame off the floor. M130 inline-six rebuilt on the bench, jetted to original Bosch spec. Delivered to Coral Gables, shown at Amelia Island.
560SEC — W126
Inherited from the owner’s father. Bornite Metallic recovered from a faded original; OM-series V8 rebuilt; air conditioning converted to R-134a discreetly. A driver that still wins at Cars & Coffee.
300D — W123
The owner wanted his college car back — reliable, period-correct, drivable to Key Largo on a Saturday. Mechanical refresh, paint correction, full interior retrim, OM617 turbo-diesel back to factory psi. Now does 300 miles a week.
Three marques. Six decades.
Mercedes-Benz is the speciality — chassis codes from W108 to W126 are most of the calendar — with BMW and Porsche heritage builds on the same bench, under the same standards.
Mercedes-Benz
- 300SLGullwing / Roadster
- PagodaW113 · 230–280SL
- W108 / W109250S — 300SEL 6.3
- R107350SL — 560SL
- W123240D — 300TD
- W124300E · 500E · E60
- W126380SE — 560SEC
- 600 GrosserW100 · By appointment
BMW
- 2002 / 2002tiiE10 Neue Klasse
- E9 CS / CSL2800 / 3.0
- E24 6-Series633 — 635CSi
- E28 5-SeriesM5 · 535is
- E30 M3S14 evo specialist
- E34 M5S38B36 · B38
- E36 M3EU · US spec
- Z1 / Z8By appointment
Porsche
- 911 Long-Hood1965 — 1973
- 911 G-Body1974 — 1989
- 930 Turbo3.0 · 3.3 · 3.6
- 964Carrera 2 / 4 / RS
- 993Last air-cooled
- 356A · B · C
- 9144 · 6
- 928 / 944 / 968Front-engine
From a sympathetic refresh to concours.
Not every car needs a frame-off. Pick the tier that matches the chassis, the goal, and the budget. We’ll tell you honestly which one your car wants.
Concours
Frame-off, body-off, engine-out. Period-correct to the factory build sheet. Documented disassembly. Plating, paint, hides, brightwork — everything to original spec. Suitable for judged competition at Amelia, Boca, or Pebble.
Show
Body-off mechanical & cosmetic rebuild. Concours-grade finish without the historical-purity premium. Modern upgrades allowed where they preserve character (R-134a, electric fans, period-correct sound).
Driver
Mechanical refresh, paint correction, interior refurbishment. A turn-key vintage daily — reliable enough for the school run, lovely enough for Cars & Coffee. The most common request, and often the smartest.
Preservation
Sympathetic mechanical refurbishment that retains original paint, trim and patina. The right answer for survivor-class cars where originality is worth more than restoration. The hardest tier to do well.
The trades that still matter.
Half of restoration is mechanical. The other half is craft — the trades that survived because cars like these still demand them. Some we do in-house. Some we entrust to specialists we have worked with for decades.
Chrome, hand-replated.
Stripped to base metal. Copper, nickel, then chrome — not the single dip that lasts a season. Stainless polished, never thinned by buffing. Aluminium anodised through our long-time plater in Hialeah.
Hides, hand-stitched.
Period-correct leathers and MB-Tex pattern through our upholstery channel in Stuttgart. Wool carpets where wool carpets came from the factory. Hand-stitched piping. Headliners and door cards renewed to original cut.
Factory codes, factory depth.
Paint mixed to the original Mercedes, BMW or Porsche formula. Single-stage where period-correct demands it. Block-sanded between every coat. Cut to depth, not buffed for shine. Booth controlled to dealer specification.
Bench-built, hand-balanced.
M130, M117, M110, M119, BMW M30/M88, Porsche flat-six. Engines come off the car, onto the stand, apart to the block. Rebuilt with factory tolerances or improved on documented owner instruction. Dyno verification on request.
Burl, refinished correctly.
Original walnut and zebrano refinished through our trim partner in Sussex, England — not replaced with veneer copies. Dashboard plastics restored where new is unavailable.
NOS where it lives.
Decades of supplier relationships in Bremen, Munich and Stuttgart. We find the panel, the trim clip, the original Hella lamp. Where NOS is gone, we use Mercedes Classic Center or specialist remanufactured.
What stays with the car.
Every restoration receives a leather-bound dossier and a matching digital archive. It accompanies the car for life — through every future sale, every concours entry, every conversation with the next owner.
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VIN & build-sheet research Original Bremen, Munich, or Stuttgart build sheet recovered from factory archive where available.
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Disassembly photo set Three angles, every major component, captioned and dated.
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Parts provenance ledger Every OEM, NOS, and reproduction part with source, invoice and date of installation.
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Chapter progress photos Two photo sets per chapter, owner-shared in real time during the build.
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Commissioning notes Compression, leak-down, idle, timing values. Recorded at first fire and at delivery.
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Road-test & sign-off 300-mile test loop log, with technician signature and final delivery condition report.
Lester restored my father’s 1972 280SE 4.5 over almost two years. Every conversation was a phone call, every cost was on a written quote, and the car came back better than I remember it from when I was a kid. Nobody else in South Florida was even in the conversation.
The ones we hear at every consultation.
If yours isn’t below, the phone is the fastest way. Restoration consultations are unhurried and free.
Call (305) 740-3440 →A concours-level frame-off restoration runs 12 to 24 months on the bench. A show-tier restoration is typically 9 to 14 months. A driver-tier mechanical refresh is usually 3 to 6 months. Each project receives a written schedule at intake and progress updates at every chapter.
Driver tier typically begins around $35,000. Show-tier restorations generally run $80,000 to $160,000. Concours frame-off builds on rare chassis range from $180,000 to over $300,000. Every project is quoted in writing before any bolt is loosened, and discovery items are quoted before they proceed.
Frequently — and often the right answer. A large share of our work is targeted: paint correction, interior retrim, mechanical refurbishment, or chassis rust repair on otherwise sound cars. Tell us the goal, and we’ll scope the smallest project that gets you there.
Yes. Many of our highest-impact projects begin as parking-lot finds, estate cars, or restorations another shop started and couldn’t finish. We begin with a full diagnostic and structural assessment, photograph the state we receive it in, and quote each phase honestly. Sometimes the right answer is to walk away from the car — we will tell you that, too.
Yes. Direct supplier relationships in Germany, Italy and the UK. NOS Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche parts where they still exist; OEM through Mercedes Classic Center, BMW Group Classic and Porsche Classic where they do not; period-correct upholstery, brightwork and trim through specialist channels. Every part is documented in the dossier.
At the concours tier, yes. We build to factory build-sheet specification with documented parts traceability, period-correct finishes, and original-specification mechanical assembly. Several of our concours-tier cars have been shown at Amelia Island, Boca Raton, and Cars & Coffee Coral Gables.
Where a chassis has a market, a properly documented restoration almost always retains its investment and often exceeds it — particularly on Pagodas, 560SECs, air-cooled 911s and E30 M3s. The dossier matters as much as the work itself; provenance is what survives the next owner’s scrutiny.
Always. Owners are welcome on the floor any working weekday by appointment. We also send chapter-end photo sets, and you have a direct line to the lead technician throughout the build.
Bring us the car. Or just the idea.
Restoration consultations are unhurried and free. Bring the car. Bring photos. Bring your father’s photo from 1973. We will tell you honestly what it wants and what it’ll take to get it there.