Classic Car Transport in California

An older car is not delicate so much as different, and most transport damage comes from treating it like a modern one. There are no factory recovery points to hook into. The bumpers are chrome over thin steel and were never structural. The paint, if it is original, cannot be matched no matter what anybody tells you.

It rides on its tires, not on its body. The right method is straps over the tires themselves, so the load path runs wheel to deck and nothing pulls against the chassis. No chains over axles, no hooks into a bumper or a suspension arm. Done that way the car's own suspension absorbs the road exactly as it was designed to.

Loading is where the paint gets damaged. Long front overhangs and almost no ground clearance mean the ramp angle has to be flattened with approach boards before the car moves an inch. This is the step worth waiting the extra few minutes for.

Tell us honestly what it does and does not do. A lot of these cars do not start, and plenty that start do not stop. Unassisted drum brakes and manual steering behave nothing like a modern car at walking pace, and a vehicle with no working brakes has to be winched aboard and chocked rather than driven on. None of that is a problem when we know beforehand.

Two practical things for a longer move. Old fuel lines, carburetors and tank seals weep when a car is sitting at an angle on a deck, so a mostly empty tank travels better than a full one. And disconnecting the battery avoids arriving to a flat one.

Photograph it before it loads. Every panel, the wheels, the interior, with the date on the images. That protects you and it protects us, and any transporter who is uncomfortable with you doing it is telling you something.

If the car is show-finished or freshly painted and you want it enclosed rather than on an open deck, say so when you call so we can talk through the options.