i think that people over estimate their skill, and under estimate how much time,money and equipment it takes to restore a car well let alone modify it massively, Ive been working on my car and modifying pretty much all of it for the last few years, I'm a qualified mechanic and have welders jacks, stands, a sandblasting cabinet, compressor and pretty much all of the tools I might need and I'm struggling to get my head around how much I have to do to get my car to the road and it would be as much again if i where to put a bike engine in it- still amazes me how many people think its just " throw it in the boot with a chain drive and that's it with little or no engineering knowledge.
Sometimes being naive can be in your favour but these types of endings to these "failed projects" illustrate time after time how it normally ends- I can recall a guy on retro rides a few years back with a perfectly serviceable fiat 124 that he wanted to make into a pick up- after people told him not to do it and him saying how he was competent to do the job it ended up going to the scrap yard with a hole cut in the back of it- perhaps we should club together and buy one of these unfinished projects and when another misinformed soul pops up on the forum with a tidy 126 he wants to cut up we can just offer to swap and save another perfectly good 126 from the Sh*t heap...