The wire transfer cleared 3 days later. Owen saw the notification on Caleb's phone screen and grabbed him by the shoulder. Caleb allowed it for about 2 seconds before stepping back, nodding once, and walking to the workbench to pick up where he had left off on the Camaro.
Diana said something before she left the lot that lodged itself in the architecture of what followed. She told Caleb, as she was putting on her driving gloves beside her car, that she had friends in her circle of collectors who were actively looking for quality restoration work. She told him that if he came across anything worthy, he should call her before posting anything publicly.
He told her he appreciated that and meant it. What he did not tell her was that he had six more vehicles in the building behind her. At least two of which she would likely want herself.
Within 2 weeks of the Mustang sale, Diana had passed Caleb's contact information to two people in her network. Both reached out. Within the month, he had sold the 1958 Bel Air, restored to a high standard, in its factory-correct Snowcrest White over India Ivory two-tone for $28,500.
Between those two sales, he had cleared $122,500 in revenue against an original outlay of $19,000 in purchase price and restoration materials. He moved on the land immediately. He contacted the owners of the two vacant lots directly behind the garage, not through a broker, not through a formal listing, and purchased both through a straightforward private transaction totaling $67,000. The owners, neither of whom had current knowledge of the phase two zoning development, were content with the price.
Caleb filed the deeds, began the business registration paperwork, and took a third lot on a purchase option that would convert in 60 days. He hired two additional technicians, a body specialist named Kevin, who had previously worked for a restoration house in Pennsylvania, and a part sourcing expert named Ray, who had spent 15 years tracking down rare components through private networks. Owen became, by function, if not yet by formal title, the technical director of the operation. The business registered under the name Merritt Restoration & Auto Works.
The De Tomaso Pantera consumed 6 weeks and tested every skill the team collectively possessed. The engine, a Ford Cleveland V8 mounted amidships in the Italian body, had been seized from inactivity and freeing it without damaging the block required a chemical process that took 11 days and an amount of patience that Owen described as almost religious.
Sourcing the correct body components meant importing specific panel fabrications from an Italian specialist who worked from a small shop outside Bologna and communicated primarily through a fax machine. The interior required sourcing correct specification vinyl and carpet from two separate suppliers, one in Germany and one in New Jersey. The wheels needed to be rebuilt from the center out. The electrics were, in Owen's professional opinion, a deliberate attempt by the original Italian engineers to make future maintenance as challenging as possible.
But when it was finished, when the car sat in the garage under full lighting, its deep red paint restored to a depth that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, its wedge profile as aggressive and controlled as it had been when it left the factory in 1971, it was, without question, the finest single object that any of them had ever had a hand in producing.