Well, the hangers are pretty much paint and go, but as for the housings, would polishing the lens back to clear really make that much of a difference? I'm asking seriously because I don't know anything about show car judging... at least nothing that serious to require new parts.
Well, to win you need the best parts possible. My originals are excellent, and probably good enough. But I want the "gee whiz - look at that" appearance. These lamps are for an EXTREMELY nice original, unrestored car. To 99.9% of the people, it looks brand new. I'm looking to impress the last 0.1% - show judges. To get that done, the car, and by that I mean every single part, needs to appear as though it just came off the end of the Loraine, OH assembly line on a sunny afternoon in May of '89. When I scrutinize "nice" cars, I look at the individual parts, and pretend that each part is on display as a stand-alone item. When that is done, you often find the warts and blemishes pretty quickly. That's why I'm obsessive about NOS parts.
This probably sounds a little premature to everyone to be this fanatical about a newer, "common" car like this. But, new cars get old, and parts reserves dry up with time. I am DONE driving this car. In ten years, it will look exactly as it does today - hopefully better. In ten years, it'll start getting attention at shows, and values will be going up. As you can tell, this isn't a passing hobby for me. I tend to stay in things for the long term - I'm very patient. I still have the '67 Dodge R/T that I bought in '82 from the original owner (back when it wasn't anything special, either). It's original paint, 40K miles, unrestored, etc - kind of like my '89 SC. I appreciate driven, and modified cars too. But I want to have a new example to show and enjoy in the future when these cars are mostly gone.
So, long story short - I'm just an ultra-picky, anal, fanatic about my cars. Oh, and I'm also "normal", and drive an '89 SC automatic as a daily driver. It's nice too, but I use it, and allow it to get dirty, etc, etc....
JD