There's a small part of Florida that's like a magic kingdom to early-Porsche enthusiasts, and we're not talking about the one inspired by a certain Mr Disney.

In fact, hidden in the woods of the sunshine state's northern panhandle is a restoration company that, given sufficient financial muscle on the part of a car's owner, can turn virtually any ugly-duckling rusting hulk into the most beautiful swan you can possibly imagine. Indeed, so astonishing are the results that it's arguably the closest thing you'll ever see to time travel.

First impressions of this wonderland can be deceptive. Emerging from dense woodland into a clearing, your eyes will fall upon rows and rows of rusting, neglected cars. Its the sort of sight you'll still see all over the United States, where bureaucrats have yet to outlaw this most ecological of recycling processes.

Most are dismantled, windowless hulks, their paintwork fading to dull pastel shades under the unrelenting sun. Incredibly, though, most are not the Chevys, Fords and Pontiacs you might expect, but Porsches - and early Porsches at that. There are 356 coupes and convertibles from every generation, and 911s and 914s almost beyond number.

Far from being a worthless pile of scrap, though (or even a very valuable pile of scrap), these cars are what their owner, Gary Kempton, calls his historic archives.

Kempton's company, Made By Hand, Inc, is one of the very top Porsche restoration businesses in the world. His own knowledge of the early cars is legendary. He's the kind of guy who can look at a small piece of a 356 and tell you exactly where it goes and when it was made (and, for all this writer knows, who made it...). He'll then tell you which company made the nuts and bolts that hold it all together.

The 200-odd rusting cars serve not only as a source of parts long since unobtainable through normal channels, but also as a sort of three-dimensional workshop manual to help his team of 11 specialists build cars which have captured awards at some of the world's best concours d'elegance events.

Gary got the car bug from his father - a mechanical engineer who worked at the Cape Canaveral space center. There were always things being taken apart or reassembled around the Kempton household, and by his early teenage years Gary became expert at fixing up old VW Beetles. Since this was Florida he moved on through dune buggies, and one day in 1971 found himself captivated by a 1962 356 Super 90 that he’d seen for sale.

The car was rebuilt in the family garage just in time for Gary to drive it throughout his college years. A degree in anthropology — the study of man and his origins — followed. But the automobile proved to be more of a fascination than fossils, and six months after graduation Gary opened for business in Tallahassee, repairing first VWs and, soon after, Porsches. He moved to his present spread deep in the Florida countryside, near Crawfordville, in 1980.

Behind the ‘archives’ is a group of single story buildings where the transformations take place. We have about 15 cars in progress at any one time,’ Gary says of the business today. So we have to be very methodical about how we handle the pads for each car. When a car comes in for restoration, we first of all complete­ly strip it. Each vehicle has around 5000 individual parts. The strip usually takes about 80 hours, and every part is tagged and placed either in a red box — for replacement — or a blue box, for restoration. The shells are carefully media-blasted back to bare metal and given a coat of clear lacquer to prevent rusting in the humid Florida atmosphere. Inevitably some parts are no longer usable and cannot be replaced from the rather unconventional stores. Gary has built up the capability to do most of the major restoration activity on site, even minor decorative plating. But he has a network of cottage-industry contacts right across the US, who can usually supply him with particularly hard-to-get items.

One of the buildings is full of factory chassis jigs and bare body shells. We put every 356 on an original 1960 Porsche chassis micrometer,’ says Gary. ‘We check everything for alignment, and do any repairs that are necessary.

In the case of old 356s that often means quite extensive reconstruction. If the chassis is twisted or deflected up to 25mm if will be rejigged. If the misalignment is greater than that then the whole section will have to be replaced. Each panel on the early cars was a custom-fit, and Gary has another recognized expert, Trevor Marshall up in Ohio, to supply the delicately formed sheet metal.

In the next bay we meet Gary’s body expert, Chris McMahon, who’s carefully preparing a 1958 Carrera for painting. This stage will absorb many, many hours as the body is readied for priming. Chris doesn’t use lead filler because the US’s health-and-safety regulations no longer permit this. But modern plastic fillers have proven to be better in any case because they’re more flexible.

‘Most customers just want to drive their cars, and will spend far more on them than their market value,’ Gary adds. They don’t want to enter them in concours, they want to use them as toys and have fun.’ But, he adds, there’s also a second distinct group whose only aim is to win the major concours.

These customers are prepared to spend huge amounts of money. This could amount to a 2000-hour restoration at $50 an hour, with another $40,000 on parts. It costs at least half as much again to prepare a car to be in contention for one of the big events, such as Pebble Beach in California, Amelia Island in Florida, or Meadowbrook Hall in Detroit, Michigan. It’s very big business and puts the best restorers in the world head-to-head at a microscopic level of detail.

‘To justify that kind of expenditure it has to be either an open-top car, or a Carrera,’ Gary says matter-of-factly. ‘In many cases, when the car is prepared in this way the cost of restoration is irrelevant to the owner as is what the car is ultimately worth.

‘Owners who spend this kind of money may have had the car for years, or it might signify the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Either way, car and owner have usually developed a close emotional bond that goes well beyond the usual concern about how much it costs to get the vehicle to top condition.’

Nowhere is that detail of fine preparation more obvious than in the paint finish. Paint expert Keith Powell has worked with Gary for 20 years. and there’s little he doesn’t know about the application of the preferred paint of all Porsche restorers. Glasurit.

Again, the demands of the top concours owners are quite different from those wanting an original finish. ‘Some customers demand a top-quality finish for concours,' says Keith. Such a finish is a super-high gloss and is quite beyond the clear lacquer/base coat finishes achieved on the original cars. But if indicates the level to which concours — and American concours in particular — has moved.

The basecoat/clear-coat finish is the original look, but there’s no depth or radiance to it. If necessary we can use modern paints with techniques such as tinting, an almost transparent layer over the base coat, that makes the paint come alive.’ Such finishes may make dedicated early-Porsche fans gasp, but if the owners desire it there is little doubt that these modern methods can bring a new lease of life to the elegant curves of the 356.

The final assembly is completed in another building. In one corner, there is a full so-called clean room with air filtration to enable the most clinical of working conditions. Everywhere else there are cars in various states of reconstruction.

Among these were a 356 Cabriolet and a Notchback Karmann 356B, both partially assembled, plus the bare but completely painted body shells of two Coupés. The original craftsmanship that went into these cars when new is absorbing as is the care and sensitivity Gary’s expert team use in their restoration.

Two completed cars really held our attention and underlined the almost magical transformation that Gary’s guys can produce. The first was a pre-’A’ Carrera 1500RS, the first Carrera imported into the United States (chassis 54175, on 26th September 1955). Gary says it’s believed to be the Frankfurt show car of that year. It was painted in a Jade Green metallic that to my eyes seemed to be as deep as the Atlantic Ocean on a warm summer evening. On this deep, deep green the polished gold-plate (yes, gold plate!) Carrera badges were exquisite — I just looked at them for a full minute, they were so pleasing on the eye.

The other car was a simply perfect 550A. This type was Porsche’s front-line racer during the mid-1950s and many a well-known driver had some very big days in these little machines.The car screamed to be driven. It was easy to imagine the owner getting it out on a sunny Sunday morning and the bark of the Fuhrmann four-cam causing every bird in the neighbourhood to take flight.

Passion is one word that comes to mind easily when talking about Gary Kempton and his team of experts at Made By Hand. Gary’s customers may drive his cars hard once they are finished, or they may only ever admire them as static works of art. Enthusiasm does take many different forms. But for Gary and his team, their motivation is perfection whatever the final objective — and turning Porsches into carriages fit for a wonderland ball.