There are some interesting points of view here. To put all this in to perspective you have to consider how these aeroplanes were manufactured in the first place and compare with how they are re-manufactured/restored today. In WWII it was done an a colosal scale and each factory had hundreds of suppliers providing anything from complete structures to an individual instrument. Today it is a tiny industry in comparison and even the largest restoration shops have only a limited chain of collaborators/suppliers. There are some parts that are to a limited degree available ‘off the shelf’ – mainly fixings and sheet metal. Anthing else has to be sourced and it is highly depenedent on the size of the restoration shop as to how many parts they are able/willing to purchase in advance of a project to have sitting and waiting around. The specialist Mustang/Spitfire restorers will of course try to obtain parts as they become avaiable to them as there is a greater liklihood of them finding a use sooner rather than later, but its a cripplingly expensive business to aquire parts and have them sit around waiting to be used.
So why does it take so long – well I would argue that the man hours to put together any WWII period aircraft are probably not hugely dissimilar now compared to when they were first built – its simply the scale of industry and available resources in WWII that were able to compress a 25,000 to 30,000 hour manufacturing process in to a day or two that now takes three or four years.
Of course there are other factors affecting time too – the financing of the project being the most significant and which can vary enormously from project to project.
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