Flexing American muscle

Mike Mancini still remembers the first time he fell in love – with American muscle cars.

In 1991, a then 10-year-old Mr. Mancini went with his father, Lee, to see a family friend’s 1967 Pontiac GTO. Above and below the hood, the original car exemplified cool, with grille inserts that looked like someone took a cookie-cutter to a chain-link fence and a roaring 389 engine.

The GTO Mr. Mancini gawked at that day, though, needed a lot of work to return it to its former glory. And two years later, Lee Mancini bought the car as a father-son restoration project, one that would stretch on for more than 20 years.

“I didn’t end up finishing it until last fall,” said Mike Mancini, 37.

Though a little miffed that it took him so long to get the GTO running again, Mr. Mancini had a good reason for the delay: The lifelong Oxford resident has been busy restoring other people’s cars for a living.

Ten years ago, Mr. Mancini opened Mike Mancini’s American Muscle Restorations Inc., a 15,000-square-foot shop in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, that specializes in breathing new life into dormant super cars. Since then, Mr. Mancini estimates that he has done more than $15 million in restoration work. And he has personally restored some 150 cars.

The niche shop, Mr. Mancini said, has attracted new business by performing well at national muscle car competitions, where judges scrutinize every inch of the cars to make sure they hew to the original design. The recognition has made him one of the most sought-after restorers in the industry.

The cars Mr. Mancini restores are typically for the richest of collectors. After restoration, some cars end up being worth as much as $500,000; a 1970 Plymouth Superbird Mr. Mancini restored was even valued as high as $1 million.

Mr. Mancini also owns Instrument Specialties Inc., which restores specific auto instruments, including entire dashboards, for cars built anywhere between the early 1900s and the early 1980s. The company’s work appears frequently on the Velocity Channel show “Graveyard Carz.”

How his hobby turned into his livelihood will forever baffle Mr. Mancini, but he does know the secret to keeping his shop in business.

“I love my job: That’s what leads to its success,” he said.

Once a hobby, now a career

Lee Mancini’s home garage seemed to have a revolving door for unfinished cars. And he and his brother, Jack, spent countless hours together working on them.

So, Mike Mancini said, it didn’t take long for his fascination in the hobby to develop.

“I’ve been interested in cars ever since I was a little kid,” Mr. Mancini said. “I got the bug from my dad and my uncle; they always had some project going on – working on a car, building a car.”

Yet Mr. Mancini didn’t entertain the idea of getting into car restoration as a career until after college, in a what he calls a “last minute” decision. He had enrolled at Worcester State University with dreams of becoming an orthodontist, graduated with a degree in chemistry, and prepared himself for a grueling pre-dentistry program.

Then, Mr. Mancini veered off course.

In 2004, he took a job at a restoration shop in Uxbridge and fell in love with his childhood hobby again. “I already knew a lot about the restoration process and cars in general, so I fit right in,” Mr. Mancini said of joining the shop. He left the business four years later to start planning for his own shop.

Mr. Mancini first looked around Central Massachusetts for land to build the shop, but he found the prices too high. Rhode Island made sense as a second option, given that the land was cheaper and his Uncle Jack worked as a contractor there.

Mr. Mancini’s father and uncle helped him secure a construction loan for the shop, and he paid for everything else using a mix of his own savings and a U.S. Small Business Association loan.

In designing the layout of the shop, Mr. Mancini used the restoration process as a guide, and he wanted to have every step along the way covered in-house.

On the left side of the shop is where Mancini’s restoration technicians disassemble the cars, raising them up on hydraulic lifts. The body shell of the car moves to a nearby room, where techs deal with rust and other repairs. After the body work, the car glides to the paint shop to receive a fresh coat; from there, it’s brought to yet another room for reassembly.

When the shop opened in 2010, Mr. Mancini had a small team of six restoration techs working on about 10 cars. Now, he has a crew of 16 that can handle about 20 muscle cars at a time, though the shop has space for up 25 cars.

While Mr. Mancini has the skill and knowledge to work on a variety of cars, he prefers muscle cars.

“I always liked muscle cars the most. I like the era. I like the look. I like the design,” he said. “Having been in business for a little while now, we kind of get sucked into non-muscle car related projects, too. We always have a neat assortment of vehicles on hand, but we’re still primarily working on muscle cars.”

And the list of muscle cars that Mr. Mancini has restored would make any fanatic drool: 1970 Plymouth Superbird; 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona; 1969 Yenko Camaro. Then there are the many Pontiac GTOs, Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sports and Plymouth Barracudas that have rolled through the shop.

Restorations vary in length from project to project, Mr. Mancini said, adding, though, that if he and his crew can work full time on a car, they usually complete it in a year.

The most challenging restorations have been of factory cars like the Dodge Charger Daytona and Plymouth Superbird, Mr. Mancini said, because they have so many different modifications.

“One started as a Dodge Charger and the other as the Plymouth Road Runner,” he explained. But they were sent to an external company to make these modifications. It adds so much more work, because you have to restore it as the first car, and then do all of the modifications.”

No detail is too small in car restoration, and Mr. Mancini spends most of his time on a project finding specific parts.

“The major reason why we’re so successful is attention to detail and an unwillingness to sacrifice,” said Thomas Domack, who manages Mr. Mancini’s other business, Instrument Specialties. “I’ve known Michael for a long time, and he’s always been detail orientated. But this setting allows him to take everything apart and research and analyze it – each nut, bolt and switch.”

Scott Forster, an Ohio entrepreneur, appreciates Mr. Mancini’s focus on the minutiae. Mr. Forster, who has owned more than 50 classic cars throughout his life, heard about Mr. Mancini’s shop from an industry expert. He would eventually send his 1970 Plymouth Superbird to the shop for restoration.

The Superbird ended up being a costly restoration that took more than a year. But Mr. Forster’s anxiety over the project was eased by constant updates from Mr. Mancini.

“The biggest factor is trust. I’m in Ohio, and he’s in Rhode Island,” Mr. Forster said. “He shares pictures and updates and details. And it gives you a level of comfort, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Best in show

Mr. Forster’s restored 1970 Plymouth Superbird was a gem, as Mr. Mancini painstakingly tracked down all the original parts. Rather than hide it away in a dark garage, they decided to enter it into car competitions, which have become critical to Mr. Mancini’s success.

Every year, restorers bring their cars to competitions held across the country, one of the biggest being the Carlisle Chrysler Nationals in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“It is extremely strenuous,” Mr. Mancini said of the Chrysler Nationals. “The judges take your car and put it on a lift and inspect every single piece and part, every nut and bolt. Every part has to have right part number. And they only accept four or five cars a year.”

Judges at these competitions look for originality, and cars can lose points for everything from having reproduced parts to looking too nice.

Mr. Mancini’s cars have performed well, capturing top honors at several competitions. His winning cars end up on the cover of glossy magazines, and word about Mr. Mancini’s shop spreads around the industry.

“The key to my whole success with this company so far has been doing an above and beyond job at these strict judging venues: That spreads like wildfire in this industry,” Mr. Mancini said, adding, “We’ve had some of the highest scoring cars in the world; potential customers see a shop that can win a show, and they want to win a show too.”

In many ways, Mr. Mancini’s shop is like an NFL franchise – failure means losing fans and revenue, but championships can increase the value of the team. If Mr. Mancini was not performing well at car shows, he said, the shop would not see as many customers.

“We get bigger and better jobs as time goes on,” he said. “It’s very rewarding and very challenging.”

Through it all, Mr. Mancini has remained humble, never forgetting that every day he lives out his childhood dream. He gets to work on and drive the cars he idolized as a kid, especially that 1967 Pontiac GTO.

“That’s my favorite car, because it’s what made me fall in love with the hobby,” he said.