Vasilis Kasiotis

Some of the vans that come through the shop aren't restorations in the usual sense — they're conversions. This one came in as a stripped shell destined for a Rolatop elevating roof, and the bodywork had to be sorted before any of that could go on. The panels came off, the rust got cut back to clean metal, and every crossmember and mounting point got checked before anything went back together. That part of the job doesn't photograph well — it's grinding, patching, and a lot of bare steel — but...

This Jeep Wrangler YJ came to us as a Sahara trim, tan over tan, the kind of Jeep that spent its working life outdoors and looked it. The photos from the teardown, dated October 2020, tell most of the story on their own. The exterior was straightforward: HELLA driving lights mounted low on the front bumper, off-road tires already fitted, the kind of setup that tells you the previous owner actually used it rather than kept it as a garage piece. It's the parts you can't see from the outside...

The car was found sitting in a field in rural Indiana. The inspection photos we took before agreeing to buy it tell the real story: surface rust along the trunk lid edges, heavier corrosion on the rear leaf springs and the underside, a body that had clearly spent years outdoors. Nothing hidden, nothing dressed up for a sale — which is exactly what we want to see before committing to a project like this. It lets us plan the actual scope of work instead of discovering it halfway through. What...