Thomas,
The car was starting to deteriorate rapidly so any hope of preserving it's originality was a pipe dream in reality. There was simply no way to blend in the paint after the various repairs were done and it was also important to take it back to bare metal to ensure no other hidden problems lay in wait for the future. The photo's fail to convey just how badly faded the original paint was and the mottled effect it had created over the car. This combined with the general lack of care in looking after the interior - it was way beyond a simply valet to tidy it up - made a thorough restoration inevitable.
To give you an idea of how it looked .... when it first drove off the covered delivery truck and into my dealer's workshop the staff who had gathered around to look at it thought I was mad and had bought a real dog of a car. All they could see was the poor paint, holes through the lower doors and rear wings, rust bubbling under the front wings, a big scrape on the passenger door, very tired interior with badly split and cracked leather on the seats, a dashboard that was badly water stained, a broken driver's door handle, badly corroded chassis, an oil leak and very untidy engine bay etc etc. I'm sure a few of them thought I'd really lost the plot and had taken up smoking crack What they failed to spot was an incredibly "honest" car that hadn't been repaired at any point and was still fitted with all of it's original parts. I could see the potential for what could be one of the best examples of a 246 on the road. All they could see was a money pit The head mechanic who is doing the work on the car could immediately see why I'd bought it and so could the body repairer
I'm all for keeping originality but the baseline condition has to be very good for that to be possible. These are 40 year old cars that had no rust protection when new and were built down to a price by Ferrari as an entry level model so it's unsurprising that most examples require fairly major attention unless they have been constantly garaged, sparingly used and/or lived in warm climates.
I think the first owner enjoyed looking after this car and kept it in pristine condition whilst the second owner enjoyed driving it but was less concerned about cleaning or maintaining it. I'm hopefully returning it to as close as possible to it's original condition when it was delivered new so that it can be cared for, driven and enjoyed for many years to come.