911hillclimber wrote:Why does a restoration take 3 years?
I know, bonkers. Breakneck speed. Mine's already taken longer than that, and I'm miles off finishing.
Serious answer: the good places have waiting lists. Sometimes long waiting lists. In the case of this car it was Sportwagen - I doubt you can phone them on a Friday and drop the car off on Monday for them to make a start.
And as your comment implies, with a few exceptions (eg Barry) most places work on multiple projects in parallel. So even if you go one-stop-shop you have to chase to make sure your project gets the attention you'd like. Is that getting screwed? It's annoying but I wouldn't say that. It's not exactly an unexpected problem in the old Porsche world.
Then if you use different suppliers for different stages (not one-stop-shop) the perfect project plan can quickly go wrong when one step is delayed and you lose your slot for the next step. That's not getting screwed either. Why should a business with more work than it can handle sit idle, waiting for you to turn up with your shell? Need to negotiate to keep the delay to minimum, but accept that they will have cracked on with something else in the meantime.
A project might also involve deliberate delays to let the wallet cool down a bit....
Rome wasn't built in a day!