The restoration vs preservation argument comes up every time a patina car hits the auction block. Here's my position after years of thinking about it.

Original, unrestored, documented cars are irreplaceable. Once you strip a car and restore it, even if you do it perfectly, it's no longer original. The record is altered. For historically significant cars — documented factory options, famous provenance, rare configurations — preservation is the only defensible choice.

For everything else, the owner should restore or preserve based on what they want from the car. A car that makes its owner happy is a car well-used. The hobby has room for both orientations and is poorer when purists on either side try to exclude the other.