I have a fairly crazy resto story of my own. I hired a shop to restore my 65 GTO. They started doing me work and sending me large bills. I'd go check on the car every now and again and see a little progress, but it never seemed like the progress matched up to the bills. At some point I had 25K into the car and it still wasn't in paint.
So, I had an after-hours meeting with the shop manager. I was in law school at the time and I told them that I could file suit myself if I needed to (I was bluffing). I also told them that I would be calling the state's attorney general to investigate for consumer fraud.
Well, whaddya know, a week later my car is painted. 13 years later and it still looks great. They did some mechanical work for me, got it running and delivered the "finished" resto to me on a Wednesday a month or two after that meeting.
Well here's the crazy part. The shop went bankrupt and out of business 2 days after I got my car back. So guess what happened to all the other guys that had thrown money at them for years? Well, because I went in and pounded my fist on the table, my car got put in front of theirs and they all got royally screwed. People just got parts back, lucky if they were primered. Can you imagine being in for 25 or 30k and getting parts back?
So even crazier - I stayed in touch with the shop manager after the place shut down for a few months, looking to follow up on a few issues. Just so I'd know what they did to my car, not looking for warranty work obviously. Well, the shop manager told me that the owner of the shop had been in deep to the IRS and committed suicide not long after the place went out of business.
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