BMW recently showed off its latest classic car project at the Pebble Beach Concourse d’Elegance, Elvis Presley’s own BMW 507. Elvis’ 507 was in absolutely horrid shape before its final restoration, with rust, rot and a demolished interior. It was a mess. But when you see the final project, it’s stunningly beautiful and hard to imagine what it used to look like.
Seeing the final product after seeing just how bad it was before hand makes it that much easier to appreciate the restoration process. It looked like a such a difficult project to tackle at first, but BMW’s craftsmen were up to the task. In this video, we take a look at the full body and interior restoration. It’s a bit long of a video, running about 53 minutes. However, if you have the time, it’s worth the watch because the work these men and women do is simply incredible.
There are a few superfluous “stylish” camera shots that you can skip through a bit, but other than that, it’s an awesome video. First, we see the car getting unloaded at the BMW Welt, where it was put on display for fans to see. It’s in ugly shape there, but it’s still Elvis Presley’s 507, so it’s flipping cool and attracts a big audience.
It then gets taken into a body shop, where metal workers get to work taking all of the body panels off the car. Body panels, headlights, seats, everything is removed. Once the body is just down to its frame, they give it a chemical bath, which simply melts all the paint away. A power washing removes whatever was leftover and it’s just bare metal at that point.
After that, metal workers fabricate new panels to replace the ones that were simply too damaged to restore and restore the panel that were decent. The meticulous hand work done to these metal panels is simply fascinating. If you’re a nerd like me, this is cool stuff, watching craftsmen work.
Once it’s all put back together and painted, we see some interior work being done. Perfectly clean, new leather is upholstered to the seats, dash and everything else. Just like with the metal work, the craftsmanship for this leather work is superb.
