Words explained
Twelve terms that come up in every workshop conversation.
- Recommissioning
- Returning a stored car to safe running order without changing its appearance.
- Rolling restoration
- Restoring a car in stages while continuing to use it, rather than taking it off the road for years.
- Patina
- The honest surface wear of an original car: faded paint, worn trim, light surface marking.
- Sympathetic repair
- Work that retains as much original material as possible rather than replacing whole assemblies.
- Bare metal respray
- Stripping a car back to metal before repainting; thorough, expensive and permanently ends original paint.
- Repair section
- A pressed panel covering a commonly rusted area, welded in place of the corroded part.
- Strip-down
- Dismantling the car before work; the stage where labelling and photography matter most.
- Stage payment
- A payment tied to a defined milestone rather than to elapsed time.
- Provenance
- The documented history of a car: ownership, work carried out, invoices and photographs.
- Marque specialist
- A workshop or supplier concentrating on one make, usually with better parts access and knowledge.
- Rechroming
- Replating brightwork; slow, costly, and often bettered by sourcing good original parts.
- Contingency
- Money held back against discoveries, conventionally about a quarter of the estimate.