Think of me as your older brother. I'm not in the car business, though I have bought a lot of cars and sold a few.  What I will tell you below is mostly common sense, but I have learned it from painful experience. You can learn from my mistakes and avoid them, or you can look back and wish you had.

Rule Number One: You are going to lose money.  If you don't, something is probably wrong. Driving a car costs money and some of that cost is depreciation worked by  using the car.   Unless you do a lot to counteract that depreciation, you SHOULD lose money.  You are more likely to win the lottery than you are to make money buying and selling your first project car. And, as your Big Brother, I can tell you the lottery is a sucker's bet. Of course, people do win the lottery and I hope you are the one who does. Just don't count on it.

If you are thinking of restoring a car, or paying to restore one, do this first: Look at cars for sale like "yours" that have already been done. Do you see listings like this?   "$15,000 in receipts, will sell for $10K"   You can plug in any numbers you like, but  the second one will be smaller than the first.  Maybe you should buy one of these cars and let the seller give you the benefit of his education. He is already willing to take a loss. Maybe you can convince him to reduce it a little more.

Remember that  the time  and labor it takes to restore an average car costs roughly as much as the time it takes to restore a wonderful car. Not  the amount of hours, but the price per hour. This means you are probably better off fixing a car that others will want to buy, rather than the ugly duckling that only you desire.  Put another way,  pouring $10,000 into an MGA is likely  going to work out better than pouring $10,000 into a Magnette. And most buyers would rather have a Corvette that is at 80 percent than a Chevette at 100 percent.

Having said all of that, if you are dead set to buy and refurbish a car, do buy one you like personally and plan to drive for a while. And when you must sell it, consider that many of those hours you spent on it were hours you enjoyed and would have paid someone else for otherwise- like you pay to play golf or watch movies. Most of us don't get paid for entertaining ourselves. Consider it cheap therapy.

Pessimism is necessary in this business, because you are already unrealistic in your infatuation with this car, aren't you?  You need someone to be the devil's advocate and the voice of reason. If you can't succesfully defend this purchase to the authority figure in your head, you should probably wait a little longer. Additionally, if you haven't spent at least 50 hours researching the value and availablity of your dream car, you should probably not grab the first one that comes along. Don't say you weren't warned.  You are reading this on a computer. Take some time and do the research. Almost everything that shows up once will show up again.

When you do buy, try to buy as far "up the food chain" as you can afford. Many times, the dollar you "save" when you buy a less than perfect car becomes two dollars you spend making it that way.  Unfortunately, when you go to sell it, the next buyer will only give you that one dollar more, if you are lucky.  This is true for interior condition, chrome, convertible tops, almost any part that can be broken,  worn out, or lost, not to mention rust, dents, or bad paint.  Of course, a merely "good" car may be more enjoyable and affordable than a "perfect" one, but do remember the buying public may be pickier than you are.

Lastly, try to apply these two rules when shopping for an unusual car: 1) be sure you have a proper place to store it, meaning a closed garage where you can go and sit and look at it, even when it isn't running, and 2) be sure you have a reliable alternative to drive regularly.  Your patience with that idiosyncratic Lucas electrical system will increase greatly if your backup is some soulless, but infinitely practical Japanese box. Just be sure not to block yourself in.