No, I wouldn't have restored it to it's original status as that would have taken it back to square one or my starting point. I needed something that would provide me with greater motivation given the amount of work to rebuild it.
I was fortunate that most of the fire damage occurred to the middle section of the car essentially the passenger compartment. The damage was extensive though, enough to melt the solder from the rear roof seam. Neither the engine compartment nor the boot with it's custom built fuel tank positioned in the boot well suffered any damage. Had the fuel tank been in the standard position there may have been an almighty explosion.

The car has a lot of personal history with me dating back to the early 70s. It's also had considerable work on it in the past with repairs to the inner sills, new outer sills fitted and the lower rear guards fabricated (using a wheeling machine) as a single skin to negate future corrosion. So although the body work was fire damaged, the structure is very sound.
As of the time of writing this response (1/04/15) it's been 5 1/2 years to date since the fire damage and the rebuild commenced.

Vince (aka. enigmas)