You’ve got the car of your dreams parked outside in your garage. It’s fresh off the truck and you’re still assessing the situation to see what kind of project you’re going to be doing. Frame-off? Minor details while keeping the ability to drive it? Do you need a new engine, or is it better to keep the old one? Etc …

You’ve got some decisions to make, the more important ones being: how much you plan to do, the order you plan to do it, and how much time, energy, and money you plan to invest in your project car.

To start, though, you at least need an idea of how much work your new beauty needs to get it just right. Even if you bought a fully finished car from a shop, chances are good that you need to at least add an air freshener or fluffy dice. While not as extreme, these are things that you can still do.

Though, that’s not really the point of all this …

One thing that you need to take into consideration when it comes time to start your build, if you’re doing the actual building, is how much of the car you plan to keep original. Keep in mind that the more original the car is, the more value it will have once it’s all finished (most of the time).

Another thing to consider, is that original options are paramount when considering how much your car is actually worth. Your car’s options include everything from the engine the car came with, to the type of seats you sit in. A little digging should be done to figure out if you’re sitting on a priceless gem before you modify it.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you have two very similar cars, say, a 1967 Corvette. One of them came with a big block 427/435, and the other one with a much less potent, more affordable (at the time), and therefore more popular 327.

If we were to compare the prices, it’d be like night and day.

The 427 car, numbers matching, is easily a 6-figure car. Many of the ones on the market today are worth more than $200,000, while the 327 cars go anywhere from 60,000-80,000.

At the bottom of the barrel, if there is such a thing when considering the 67′ Vette, is an aftermarket engine. For the sake of this example, let’s stick a generic 350 in it. In this case, it’s worth even less at 40,000-50,000$.

Still a gorgeous and rare car, just not worth as much as the other two in original form.

What’s the point? If you happen across a car that’s worth a fortune the way it sits, it may be a good idea to keep it that way instead of modifying it. A restomod usually becomes a good choice for one of two reasons.

The first reason is one of necessity. In other words, you’ve got a 427 car but cannot find an engine for it. To make matters even worse, the original was blown up some time in the 1980s and was junked.

The second reason is because the point of the car is to be a restomod. It’s supposed to be wild, not stock.

Knowing where you stand is important, and there are instances where people bought a really special car and didn’t realize it. Doing the right amount of research beforehand can save you heartache later on. Have you ever bought a car, and later on found out that there was more to it than you thought? Let us know in the comments below.