Heinz, I don't really know what the car cost. I know I paid $20,000AUD being $10,000 deposit towards parts for starting the project and $10,000 for the car. So I will use the receipt for $10,000 for the transfer and pay taxes based on that. Based on what I looked at $10,000 is very cheap for the condition and I don't recognisable this car as being advertised on any of the usual places. So either the restoration company has a lot of contacts who know people wanting to get rid of cars, is very good at negotiating or probably both. I expect he did pay over $10,000 but hopes to make it up by having a nice straight body with no rust to fix will save him some money.

Not an actual contract signed in the old fashioned way but he sent me specs and I agreed via e-mail - which I guess is signing in these days. I do like your idea of driving it as is for a while and enjoying the experience, if it breaks down and is unreliable then go ahead earlier but if is it nice and reliable drive it for longer. That was my initial thoughts however he is trying to do the car now as a win win situation for me, his other two current customers and himself. He has run out of engines for 2.5L conversions which is what two cars he is currently working on but has a 2.0Litre engine in stock which I am happy with, the next two customers on his waiting list also want the 2.5L engines. Due to the Coronavirus OMEX like a lot of places in the UK (including Morgan) are not shipping or manufacturing stuff so the 2.5L engines that were supposed to arrive two months ago have not been shipped yet. Rather than finishing off those cars and charging the progress payments as planned then letting them sit waiting for the engines he would work on them slower while doing my car.

So basically
A win for those two current customers as they have not paid say 60% or 80% to have the cars sit in his workshop waiting for engines to arrive before being finished.
A win for him as his 6 staff can keep working full time on my car and a bit on those two other cars.
A win for me as I jump what would have been a 9 month wait.

The other win for me is to keep "She who Must Be Obeyed" happy is after he did up the price list he said he would throw in both air-conditioning and heated seats for her as he has the parts from a car that didn't go ahead and he could tell she really wanted both. I think that is a pretty good deal sweetener as the air-conditioning was $7,000 and seeing where I live goes from very cold winters to very hot summers those two things that will allow the car to be used a lot more often.