Vídeo: Raimundo Branco: A Excelência do Restauro

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

Cheers! I’m at Raimundo Branco, a classic car workshop with 40 years of history, just outside Lisbon, to present a project in the classics field, quite innovative, which has the support of Glasurit, a German brand of paint products. Although the restoration work continues to use quite ancient techniques, many of them, identical to those used, at the time, to design and create these magnificent bodyworks, the truth is that technology also has a role to play and, contrary to what one might think, it doesn’t distort the procedures and the final result, but rather, ends up consolidating all that concern for originality. The Glasurit Classic Car Colors program arises from a need, because there are many restorations to be done. in the market and, obviously, material for restoring cars from 40, 60, 80 years ago is very complicated because this material nowadays is prohibited. We cannot use material from the past century to repair cars nowadays. So, the idea that came from Basf Glasurit was to reformulate the old colors with material, with paint lines that exist today. First to comply with a law and second to simplify. Nowadays, painters work with water-based paints and that’s what BASF aims for. To use water-based paints to achieve a correct, environmentally friendly repair, and of high quality. And that’s what we achieve with Glasurit’s S90 water-based paint. This project has another aspect, which is that we increasingly realize that restoration needs to be formalized. In the past, we would do a restoration in a home garage and after months, years of work, a car was ready to go on the road but, nowadays, that’s not enough because a car, like the one we’re seeing behind us, are cars of very high value and without an official document, which justifies or explains how the restoration was done, it already raises doubts and we no longer know if the car’s value can really correspond to what the owner intends. With this project, 200.000 different color shades were reformulated, with which practically everything is possible. Now, it’s also important to know that for this type of vehicles it’s essential to find the formulas, the colors that were, at that moment, available. In other words, we paint the original color. When I have a car from 1973, I can’t paint it with colors from 1990. I want to have the original color and in this car, for example, we found the four original colors of the car. The owner can choose which of these colors he wants to apply to have the car with an original paint, on the market. Obviously, when we are going to restore an old car we need quality and, finally, we need a good product. At that point half of the way is complete. But, the other part missing here is the labor. The worker, who does the job, is usually a specialized worker, trained to work with Glasurit’s water-based paint, as it also happens in the facilities where he works. It’s important that the guns, the booth, the working conditions, the lighting, there are a number of variables that affect the final quality of the work. Within Raimundo Branco’s facilities, a large investment has been made to ensure the quality of a restoration that a classic car enthusiast desires. And that, here, has been fulfilled, for years, in one way or another but, lately, with a lot of investments as we like to see. Additionally, Raimundo Branco thinks about the future and in collaboration with BASF and the University of Lisbon, a program was developed to monitor the entire process of restoration, in such a way, that the workshop can open the cameras, provide live images to the owner so that, from their computer or mobile phone, they can follow the vehicle’s repair. This is another way to ensure the final quality. Because we can only do that if we know what we’re doing. This is defined in technical sheets, in processes, and Raimundo Branco complies with what the Glasurit brand intends. The program, developed with the University of Lisbon, is a novelty because we are not aware of other workshops where the car owner can follow the repair, all the repair stages, until the end. This is something unique and it can only be in workshops like this. The restoration of historical vehicles doesn’t have many decades, this movement has about 40, 50, 60 years old. And, as such, each owner, each specialist would restore the cars in the way that seemed most logical to them. FIVA, at one point, concerned with the historical accuracy of vehicles, developed a document called the Turin Charter, which basically gathers the best practices of what the restoration of a historic vehicle is. This made life easier for those who restore because it has a script and by following that script the final result is within what is a historical vehicle with accuracy, with quality, with authenticity. The collection of these evidences, the existence of this tool greatly helps the process of certifying historical vehicles as one understands what is behind the appearance of the vehicle. We can have two vehicles, apparently, similar, with the same degree of "shining appearance", with an equally appealing paint but in one of them we understand all the steps of the process that led to that final state and this has to do with the type of materials that were applied, the restoration of the original components… All of this, at the end of the line, is of great importance, both from a historical point of view and from the point of view of the commercial value of the car because, today, we have cars with such high values that often exceed, 1 million euros, it is very tempting for someone less honest to try to make the final result to look like the authentic car, without being it. The authenticity here is a very, very important and highly valued aspect. In any restoration, whether partial or total, it’s always important to understand what was done and how it was done. We often focus, maybe, on the products. On the products that are used, if they are homologated, if they are the right products but we don’t focus on the processes itself, that is, how they are applied, if they are used in the right quantities, in the right ways, at the right times, etc… And often, that is impossible for a customer to follow, because they cannot be next to the team that restores a car, which can take months or years. This digital transformation process, of a restoration process, in this case being developed with the support of Glasurit, is revolutionizing this process. Not only because it provides transparency, to the customer, that can follow even from a distance and even and in the future can have everything highly documented, phase by phase, part by part, piece by piece, of everything that was done on their car. that, obviously, is very important in case, for example, of certification or a sale. On the other hand, this also raises the level of demand with all the suppliers, with all the car restoration agents who know that, because the process is highly documented, they are required to comply with all the good practices and all the processes that are already, developed and defined in each phase of the restoration. The certification process of a Vehicle of Historical Interest is always a bit ungrateful and thankless because we have to assess a car, look at it, without knowing what has been done. We obviously have the testimonies of its owners but we don’t have neither the tools, nor the capacity, to understand everything that is underneath the sheet of metal or the paint that is not visible to the naked eye so we always have to rely a bit on our experience but, above all, also on what is given to us in terms of information. Information that may or may not be reliable or, often, it’s not a matter of not being reliable but of not being confirmed. So, a person can have a car they bought like this and they, themselves, don’t know how the car was restored. This digital transformation process will mean that this information, being digitized and verified can be passed on to us and we can, with much more fairness and knowledge, certify a car according to what would be its true condition and is, basically, even a basis to give a result much fairer in certification than one where we don’t have access to that information. One of the most important components in a restoration process is, precisely, the treatment of the bodywork. However, by its nature, it ends up often hiding the whole process that is underneath the paint which can be quite shiny, but it can also hide various imperfections of the process. Now, this program and this project, precisely allows to gather evidence that demonstrates that the correct process, according to the Turin Charter, the way FIVA established that restorations should be carried out, with this collection of evidence everything is revealed and it is perfectly possible to prove that the various steps of the restoration were respected. Showing everything to the client, of what is being done. We don’t hide anything from the repair, the welds, everything is shown to the client in photos and videos. Nothing is hidden, that’s the only secret. We have the door open, so many people come in to see, we have always done that. I never make it a fuss about it. The only secret is that. I have always worked with RM materials, which also belonged to the group. Now, since we switched to Glasurit, I think that the materials are better, it gives the car a different finish. They are good materials. With the materials that exist, with fibers, they put fibers over rusty sheets and things like that then with everything very well disguised people don’t notice, right? But sooner or later bubbles and those problems appear. It seems straight but there are many rounded pieces. It has to be done on the English wheel, the measurements have to be taken well and done perfectly. The welds, where they are going to be done, we always try to do them in the places where they were originally made. These flanges are different from the usual ones and so you have to be especially careful to maintain the originality always and above all. If any car has good preparation, the paint will also be good. If it doesn’t, it’s not the paint that will hide that. From the university’s point of view, the project is an excellent case study. It combines a real practical need with challenges that, technologically, are not trivial to tackle and tries to encompass cutting-edge knowledge that only research institutions have at this moment in time. It goes a bit further than just adding some useful functionalities, from the client’s perspective, from the management perspective, from the workshops. This goes a bit further because it will require a change in the paradigm of how we see classics, maintaining the historical record of the classic itself and in a way, with this, it could also revolutionize the way we do business with this technology. The fact that we have an identity of a classic, associated with a portfolio that records modifications, according to the Turin Charter, will allow there to be confidence for those who buy and want to see if the vehicle has been operated properly during its lifetime, not only does the client have confidence but also entities that want to get involved in the sale of these vehicles can also have a way to demonstrate the value of the vehicle. All workshops adhering to this system will have a seal of trust, which can also be another way to adding value for the work done by the workshop. So, there is a whole ecosystem that is going to change radically, with this platform thriving. The quality of the restoration is one of the most important factors for the valuation of a historic vehicle and the documentation component to know how the restoration was carried out ends up having a considerable weight in this assessment. For example, the consulting firm Deloitte has now established, in a study, that just this documentation component of the restoration ends up adding about 20% to the value of a historic vehicle. Raimundo Branco is a brand that thrives thanks to the talent and experience accumulated by the entire team but also thanks to the humility of allowing the client to closely follow the work.