Let’s go to a Camaro-only national car show in Orlando, Florida.
It’s time for the awards. And the winner of the best paint job award is…..a 1967 Camaro that was beautifully restored by a craftsman halfway across the continent in rural Kansas.
Todd and Jackie Sump are the owners of Sump Restoration which did the paint work that earned this award. The business is based at their home near Randolph. Todd grew up on a nearby farm. He met and married Jackie, who is from Marysville.
“I always worked on cars,” Todd Sump said. He built his own go-cart at age 10. At 11, he helped his dad work on a 1952 Chevy truck.
“Dad always had a shop and I learned a lot from him,” he said.
In the summer of his senior year, Sump worked on his cousin’s 1965 Chevelle (when was the last time you saw one of those?) and found he enjoyed the work. He worked for body shops before joining a construction company.
In 1994, the couple moved to a farmhouse near Randolph. After buying the place, they wanted to convert an existing implement shed into a shop. They had to do the work themselves.
“It was long summer days, but with some help from friends we got it done,” Jackie Sump said. They have since expanded the building.
“He was always doing cars in the evenings and weekends,” Jackie said, adding that Todd’s problem-solving skills and attention to detail served him well when working on cars.
In 2010, Todd left the construction business and founded Sump Restoration, which specializes in restoring automobiles. Todd leads the shop crew and Jackie keeps the books.
The company does original restorations plus what is called a resto-mod, where the classic look is restored but the internal operating systems are modernized. This might mean installing improved transmission or steering, modern sound systems, or maybe putting air conditioning in a car that didn’t have it before.
“Cars come in different conditions and owners want different things,” Jackie said.
“Some want the (finished) car to look like it came right off the showroom floor, and others just want it to run,” Todd said.
Sometimes the job means taking over an unfinished, do-it-yourself project or helping with some portions of the restoration while the customer is working on others. Customers often take their restored cars to car shows and sometimes to competitions, such as the one that won in Orlando.
It’s impressive to find such a business near the rural community of Randolph, population 159 people. Now, that’s rural.
Some of the memorable vehicles that Sump and his crew have restored include a 1956 Chrysler Windsor station wagon, a 1952 International grain truck, a `49 Cadillac, a 1974 Roadrunner, and a 1965 Impala convertible. Several Camaros and Corvettes have been restored. A 1952 MG sportscar was a unique challenge. It had sheet metal over a wood frame. Sump restored a 1966 Ford Fairlane that went to upstate New York.
The before-and-after photos are phenomenal. Often Sump Restoration crew members are patching holes, rewiring devices, fixing rust, and repainting. If parts are not available, they might have to build replacement components themselves. Six to nine cars might be in progress at a time.
Getting parts and diagrams is always a challenge. “We couldn’t do it without the Internet, and we couldn’t do it without Jackie or Josh Huckett and Sam Williams, both full time employees at the shop,” Sump said.
Occasionally, Sump Restoration will take on specialty projects such as bicycles, safes, pedal cars and even barber poles. Sump Restoration also applied the clear-coating to the dala horses that are displayed in nearby Olsburg.
This business has grown entirely through word-of-mouth. Also on display in the shop is the original go-cart that Todd built when he was 10 years old.
It’s time to leave the car show in Orlando, where an award was claimed by a car restored back in Kansas. We salute Todd and Jackie Sump and the crew of Sump Restoration for making a difference with auto craftsmanship.
I think this business is a winner.
