Bought one car from Pacific Classics. It was purchased while disassembled mid-restore so there were several months of interactions. Tried to be fair with describing my buying experience here.
Short take away - from my limited experiences, seems like they sell beautiful and nicely styled classics for typical prices, however, I have serious reservations about the quality and care of the mechanical work. Wouldn't necessarily recommend unless they have your dream car and you have a pre-purchase inspection (to know what you're getting into), a good mechanic, or mechanical abilities. But, that may be true for any classic car dealer.
Longer take-away by category:
Price - about right, wasn't stupendous deal but we didn't haggle. No complaints there.
Paperwork - Brandy was great, process was straightforward. There seemed to be a small misunderstanding with Kelly about payment, but it worked out.
Communication during process - Kelly was nice and easy to get in touch with by phone. Email less so. There were a few slightly uncomfortable misunderstandings, but I think that's just the nature of this type of thing. No proactive updates unless something needed decided or paid, so we just had to periodically call to assess when the car might be ready. Unfortunately, they had us pick up the car directly from the upholsterer, so there was no orientation to car, no one to answer questions before we drove it home, and there wasn't much info on a few important functional issues that would have been helpful (see below).
Interior work - Frank's did a beautiful job on upholstery and headliner. Would go back to him again for any future work.
Exterior - nice new paint & styling, several nice touches (recommendation to tint windows, replace armrests, new tires, etc). It's a beautiful vehicle, we're very happy with how it looks.
Mechanical - *sigh*. With an old car, we knew we are committing to a process of stewardship and eternal maintenance.. However, we thought a freshly restored vehicle with a new motor, clutch, etc, would give us a few months to enjoy the vehicle before it'd have to get more work done. Not the case. Upon pick up, the gas gauge read empty. A trip to gas station taught us that the gas gauge doesn't work. Would have been nice to know. The lights also didn't work. Easy fix, though - the bulbs were just unplugged. Weird, but easy to fix. We discovered the unplugged lights when we popped the hood to figure out why sparks were showering out of the motor... We were surprised to see the battery wasn't secured, so the first time we drove down hill, it slid forward, contacted the metal frame = shower of sparks. A trip to the auto shop for a hold down kit fixed the battery from moving, but there's a nice chunk of metal now etched out at the site of contact. Happily, while under the hood, we also discovered the reason the windshield washer didn't work might be because the reservoir was empty and the hoses weren't connected...but turns out that doesn't really matter for now because there aren't windshield wipers installed. Would have been nice to know given it's winter in the Pacific Northwest...
While these are all relatively straightforward things to address, it suggests to me that perhaps the person doing the mechanical work wasn't experienced, was careless/distracted, or maybe there were multiple people involved and no one checked the basics. No lights, unsecured battery, non-working gas gauge, temp gauge and heater don't seem to work, no windshield wipers, disconnected hoses and empty fluid reservoir, mysterious cord just hanging from dash. If we were purchasing off the floor, I'd have had a pre-purchase inspection which may have alerted us so we could have got things fixed before driving it home. However, we trusted that the car we bought when disassembled mid-restoration would be somewhat complete when we picked it up, or that at least someone would have given us a heads up that some important functional things need to be tended sooner rather than later.
Also - minor disappointment was that the car interior was quite dirty from shop dust, etc, when we picked it up. Over $40K paid for the car and work done, several months of looking forward to it, and no one in the garage even bothered to hit it with a shop vac, wipe the dust and grease from the inside, or clean gobs of dried adhesive from the new floor mat. I can clean a car, so it's not really an issue - but it's emblematic of some of the lackluster and questionable quality and care demonstrated in the service we experienced.
This is a summary of my experience from one purchase. I probably wouldn't go back for anything mechanical but the aesthetics seem solid. Might be a totally different experience if you buy a car from the floor, instead of buying one while work is still being done. We're happy with our car despite the unfortunate surprises - after all, shame on us for trusting too much and not questioning enough. read more
