Auto Restorations: Website redesign

: Spread from Classic Car enthusiasts magazine, showing ‘page dominance’ achieved by the design of Auto Restorations’ 2010 advertising campaign.

: Front cover of double gatefold.

: First gatefold spread.

This well executed redesign of the renowned Christchurch classic car restorations specialists website is a combined brand makeover and website redesign project that coincided with a change of leadership at the firm, which had taken on the founder’s personality over the more than three decades since he had boldly established the enterprise. The logo makeover and new website was a way to reflect the transition. This shift was about more than the fresh new website and brand, nonetheless these projects helped smoothly bring about more than change, it represented a revitalization of the firm with Allan Wylie at the helm.

To keep up with changes in the global and local Classic Car Restorations markets the new General Manager put into action a marketing push that included the website redesign and a series of enthusiasts’ magazine advertising campaigns but before this could get underway the legacy brand needed to be converted to a clean vector drawing format.

A retouched portrait of one of Auto Restorations’ signature works, a rare Italian beauty the Siata Balbo.

Repositioning the brand in the New Zealand market

To a degree Auto Restorations had been victims of their own success in the domestic market, for while they were renowned for their many prestigious ‘First In Class’ wins in the world’s glamour Concours d’Elegance. These were for affluent collectors of the most rare Classic European marques such as Ferrari, Bugatti, Aston Martin and DeLage, the number of owners and number of instances of these pre-war to mid-century Europeans world-wide is very few.

The design of the child brand “Auto Restorations American” was commissioned along with an advertising campaign that ran in the monthly giveaway magazine “Petrolhead”. The campaign was themed around renowned American race cars and mid-century V8s that the client had fully restored.

The New Zealand and Australian classic car enthusiasts fraternity is dominated by U.S. and Australian muscle car owners, their perception of Auto Restorations was that their high-end Concours wins meant they were too expensive or their in-house knowledge and skills were not suited to the needs of the locals.

The new manager Allan Wylie and his management team, while honouring their distinguished legacy, evolved a proactive marketing strategy to embrace the future of classic car restoration in their corner of the world.

By sticking to the big idea devised in collaboration with Allan on the website redesign of “Keeping all eyes on the product” I achieved the goal of keeping the company relevant and noticed. The design of the allied brand “Auto Restorations American” and magazine advertising campaigns that were run subsequently worked in connecting with and acquiring a share of the domestic muscle car audience while retaining their legacy global market of premium collectors.

The legacy website and brand identity had become a liability that was holding Auto Restorations back from reaching its full potential. Their new brand is an asset that will continuing to work for them years out. If you think rebranding might be a good strategy for your firm contact me here.

READ MORE ABOUT THE REBRAND PROJECT

Credits

Client: Auto Restorations
Category: Classic car restorations
Web Design firm / Project management/Content upload: MagentaDot Brands.
Web coding and CMS customisation: Zoomroom Interactive
Disciplines: Brand and identity systems design, Copy writing, photography, icon design, digital illustration, Web design, Web content management