I spent 5 years restoring my TR2. It's mine to do what I choose...drive it, trailer it, crash it, burn it, or park it in my living room to look at until I die. If you put the time into a perfect restoration, you would get it to. I can tell you that my TR2 was restored as closely to the condition it rolled off the boat as is humanly possible...and I would neither let any judge pick at it nor care what anyone else thinks about it or the way I keep it.
If you want to drive your car, then enter the "survivor" class. See... a class for everyone and every car.
I have no interest in car shows or trophies. But some are, and that is fine. My reason is I had a close friend who purchased a 1976 bicentennial Vette. It showed up with 3.2 miles on the odometer, and he rolled it off the truck in reverse onto his trailer and into a shed ( so the odometer would never add mileage. 25 years later he backed back on the trailer to back to a car show in the survivor class. He lost to a 1990 car that was driven regularly, but looked perfect. The DA judge could not be convinced the car had not been in an accident! By definition, no car newer than 1976 could possibly beat his car, but one did. That's how bad original Vettes were, but we are conditioned to see them restored better than new. Judges are human...and car shows are biased subjective. I got no use for them.