George Karellas is a steely-eyed mad man. Not only did he decide to teach himself how to restore a Range Rover Vogue and a Lotus Espirit S2, but he recorded the entirety of the projects using Stop Motion.
If you are unfamiliar with stop motion, just remember the Christmas specials of your youth. Rudolph was stop motion animation and so was Gumby. So every time a bolt was removed on the subject vehicles, George didn’t just undo the bolt. He was taking a photograph every half turn to make it look like the bolt removes itself. It looks amazing as a final product but is a ridiculous amount of work. While George was already completing a ridiculous amount of work on Range Rover & Lotus
How he did it
The truck was purchased by his uncle in 1991 and lived by the sea, traveled on ferries, and made regular trips to the Alps. His uncle tried to look after it the best he could and turned over a bulging box of maintenance history to George when he took possession of the Range Rover. The whole restoration process has taken nearly four years but probably could have been cut in half if he hadn’t filmed the entire project.
George relied on the support of patrons. Because he did the fabrication work himself, he was able to keep the overall costs low. It is so much work that it makes me tired thinking about trying to do any of the bodywork. But George’s point is that anyone can do this. It just takes time and effort. And practice, lots of practice, and some money.
Feature Length
Hopefully, he will make a video for the entirety of the Espirit project as well. For now, enjoy one hour and twenty-eight minutes of stop motion restoration. It’s glorious.
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