If you are talking about BBT´s Heb, there was really very very very little original metal left of it, and would have been a close to impossible restoration.
I have no idea whose car it was, I just remember seeing the thread. It's a different situation when there's little original metal left, I think. The Papler bugged me just because it was a complete car turned into something very ordinary.
I'm not a total purist by any stretch, but some cars, IMO, are just cooler in their original or more historical form. To me, a slammed, RV-style narrowed front end and broken-axle slammed resto-custom are a dime a dozen, whereas a fire car with old paint and historical significance are not. That's just me, though. I saw the Papler at Competition Engineering in '94 when I was 17 and was floored by it. Now it's just a resto-custom that was, by all appearances, built just to piss people off. And, judging by the Samba thread from a few years ago, the owner succeeded.
My opinions are only opinions, and by no means a jab or insult to any owners, as I've never met the owner of the drag Heb nor the current owner of the Papler.