Devin D restoration project for sale - now on ebay

I have been writing about this Devin D restoration project before. It's a very rare find! It has been with the same owner since 1973 and comes with a clear title identifying the car as the number 20 of totally 49 Devin Ds every built. It will make a splendid vintage racer, but could also be finished as a street car. Of course, there's some work to do, but the components are available.
The odometer apparently reads only 1139 miles. The car had been raced in original red with black interior and also with Porsche silver with burgundy accents. The car had been prepared to re-paint when the current owner bought it. The instruments, wipers, windshield and other components where remove to sand and refinish. The car has remained in this condition to this day. There is an additional windshield glass from 1956 Porsche Speedster, full top, bows and side-curtains. There are other additional parts, such as exhaust and muffler and other sundry parts.
So, if you are in the market for a rare vintage racer (I know of only two D Devins in Europe) then here's an opportunity to acquire a fantastic platform to start with.
As said, it's on ebay now. Have a look.

TVR Grantura Restoration - Stage Four - more difficulties!

Since the last post on this very topic almost 10 months have passed. Initially my dear TVR Grantura should have been restored and back on the road by now, but as always, things didn't develop as planned.
At least, in the meantime we have been able to separate the chassis from the body. Before we were able to do so the body had to be stabilized and partially fixed. What we found when we were able to look at the chassis the first time without fiberglass around it, was quite shocking! Longitudinal tubes were missing or totally rusted away! Others were not where they should be and some were repaired in a fairly bad way. So there's quite a bit of work that has to go into the chassis, we even have to consider a replacement item, if we can find one. But, the good news is, there can't be many more bad messages coming from now on. So, next stage will be all about fixing the chassis and in parallel, fixing the body as well. Only then we can start to reassembling the car. And hopefully it will go back on the road in 2011 still!

Picture of the Week - Porsche 904 Signature

What you can see here are two things:
a) the "signature" on a Porsche 904 GTS with true patina
b) classic car design at its best
They don't do signatures and brand model like this anymore. And it looked so good. The car (or better part of it) pictured is probably one of the few unrestored Porsche 904 in existence. And it's good that something like this still lives!

Do car restorations make economical sense?

In my life I have financed the restoration of multiple cars and in none of the cases this resulted into an economical gain for myself. The truth is that there are very few cars where the enormous cost of a full restoration really can be justified with increase of the value of the car. You probably couldn't even restore a Lancia Stratos (nuts and bolts) for example for the total value the car fetches today. Of course it all depends on with what you start with. But I have seen people spending many hundred thousands of dollars to get a car right. And in my cases the restoration usually equaled the value of the car plus/minus, but I also had to buy the restoration basis on top. Why did I still do it?
1) it's fun to see how a car rises to its old glory
2) you know what you have as you have observed the process yourself
3) your connection to the car is much tighter as you know so much more about the car
4) the process as such is interesting and you get to know many people you need to ask for help or part or so
5) you preserve an important piece of history
6) you actually create local value add for specialists, something to feel good about in the times of financial recession
7) you can influence the end product, be it by the choice of color or by selecting materials or refinements (if you have to, but that's another story)

So, I will do it again, if I can afford it and I usually don't regret it.

Devin-D project for sale in the US

Hi, I friend of mine just told me about this Devin D that is for sale as a project in the US. Devin Ds are pretty rare! This one comes with Porsche 1600 SC engine, tubular frame and is said to be mostly complete, so a good restoration basis. This nice car could become either a street or a race car. From a body perspective the car is similar to the Devin TR also highlighted in this blog, but it had its own chassis and of course the engine sits in the back of the car. To my knowledge there are two or three Devin Ds in Europe, one of them is a nicely restored car in Austria. The car here is not cheap but fairly priced. It has a competition history from the 60ies apparently and could become competitive again with its low weight and powerful engine. If anybody wants to know more then contact me through this blog or any other mean.

If you drive something special you might get stopped more often

Here's something to consider: If you drive a very special car, Police might stop you more often than if you drive a Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit. The picture shows Casey's freshly restored Batmobile, definitely not your average daily driver. He tells me that it's fully road legal (in the US) even including the machine guns. I wouldn't want to try to get things thing road registered in Switzerland, good Lord, no! But maybe that's a good thing, as it's not that great to get stopped all the time ;-)

Picture of the Week - starting base of a TVR 3000 M restoration

This must look familiar to many who have started a TVR restoration project. A car that at least partially looks complete and like not too much work. This particular car, an early TVR 3000 M (or potentially a 2500 M) was shown at the probably largest TVR exhibition in Germany last winter. But doesn't the car even in half disassembled state look good?

TVR Grantura Restauration - stage three - one step forward two steps backwards

Here's another update from the TVR Grantura Restauration. In November it looked like we made progress quickly. Now things have become more difficult. To set the context it needs to be understood that this is a fiberglass car where body and chassis are bonded together. Over fifty years many things have happened and it's not that clear whether you can just cut off the body from the chassis without totally braking it. So, to give the body more strength we added a number of support tubes. While doing this, it became more and more clear that a few things are terribly wrong here. The right side of the car suffers from serious stress.
Sometimes during its "career" the body must have "fallen down" a bit and since then it's not symmetrical any more. Many stress cracks clearly indicate that this has been a problem for quite some time. Also we found out that some fairly important pieces were missing, for example the rear end of the chassis and part of the rear end of the body as well, not to forget quite a few of the chassis tubes.
Other things were just not placed correctly or not really mounted. Looking back I have been really lucky to not having driven the car before taking it apart.
With all of these things missing and that many things being wrong there was an additional need to find information on how it should have been.
Luckily enough we were given access to a sister car, neither in pristine order nor "concours", but highly original. So, using this other car, we are able to "reconstruct" the missing pieces and making sure that at the end our car will look right. So quite some time was spent analyzing the sister car with a yard stick and a digital camera.
With all this experience we have now much better chances to rebuild our car correctly. So the next step now is to partially "reconstruct" the rear end of the body. After this finally we should be able to cut off the body from the frame. But this is another story and will most probably be told in January I hope.

Is there a difference between renovating your bathroom and restoring your car?

Being in the process of experiencing both, the restoration of a car and the renovation of a bathroom, I wondered whether there is really a difference between these two things. Well, to start with, there are clearly many similarities!

(1) In both cases you will find a lot of rusty tubes and major mistakes and shortcomings that were caused by people doing working long before you.

(2) In both cases you remove layers and layers of history to get to the real issues.

(3) In both cases you spend a lot (some people would say an insane amount) of money to establish a new base that should hold for the next 20+ years.

(4) In both cases a lot of the work done will be covered in later phases by paint or other cover materials.

There are some differences also, though.

Your family will love you more for what you do with the bath than for cherishing an old race car.

Talking to the car mechanic is so much more fun than discussing with the house renovation specialists. And finally, many more people will be able to see the result of the car restoration work than your renovation effort with the bathroom, for obvious reasons.
If you still need some good advise, then here's one: Don't try to do the two things in parallel and don't start the adventure if you aren't prepared for what may come up when you remove all these layers of history ....

Picture of week - unrestored Porsche 904 GTS

There is an ongoing debate in the scene about what is better, a beautifully restored car or an unrestored car with patina. Now, with race cars, people tend to really liked the cars with true traces that the car competed in many races. The picture on the left shows details from a Porsche 904 GTS that run at the Gaisberg race this year. It's unrestored and basically 100% correct to period specification and build quality. It's awesome! Gaisberg was also special in the sense that you could compare 4 or 5 of these cars, some completely restored, and one totally unrestored. Of course glossy cars in as new state look good, but this shabby 904 GTS with race stickers from the 60ies, corroded wheels and all these marks from races and storage, it's just marvelous.
The issue is that if you really want to race old cars then you have a safety requirement that may force you to take such a car apart and fix it from the inner to the outer. That means that cars like this Porsche 904 GTS in many cases are more museum cars and show cars than ideal candidates for fast laps and hard track use. Also one must know that these cars were built to last one, maybe two or three seasons, not 50 years. With this in mind, an unrestored Porsche 904 GTS is even more of a joy to look at!

TVR Grantura Restauration - stage two - some progress

A few weeks have passed since I wrote last time about the TVR Grantura. In the meantime the car was taken apart, the engine has left the engine bay, the transmission was taken apart. The interior has been removed also. So there's not too much left, but the body is still bonded to the chassis. This will be the next step, to actually "divorce" chassis and body. That's going to be a painful process with lots of dust and dirt.
The engine already has been checked and partially repainted to make a good impression.
As always there are many strange things to be discovered, many mechanical issues to overcome. People in the past have removed parts that seemed not to be needed, but actually they are important. The most funny thing though was the "material" the initial assembler of the kit used to protect the body from the exhaust heat. To build the heat shield he obviously stole a parking sign! According to some English blokes it's really an original English parking sign. Well it did the job for almost 50 years and I hope people still were able to park their cars.

Kicking off the TVR Grantura Mk2 restoration project

I have talked about the old TVR Grantura Mk2 before. And about the plan to restore it. Well, soon the work will start. As this is not something that you do very often in your life combined with the fact that the experiences will be interesting for quite a number of people, we decided to properly document the restoration. So we started with a professional photo session of the car before the restoration. The picture shows the setup. We will document each stage of the restoration process and submit the resulting article to one of the classic car magazines if they are interested. If everything goes well, the work will be completed by next summer. Let's keep the fingers crossed. I will post updates on the progress on this blog from time to time.

Picture of the week - Bentley Blower SC with Patina

The picture of this weeks shows a detail of a Bentley Blower SC with true patina. Taken at this year's Arosa Classic, where this Bentley was entered in the racing class, this car represents what is en vogue these days, a car that looks like an old car and not an over-restored piece of art. I love it and the patina suits this hard-used Bentley well. It will not win a price at Pebble Beach most probably, but it's good for a fast blast up the Arosa hills.

Classic cars and their value over time

In my experience there are three basic scenarios for cars on how they will depreciate, respectively gain in value. By the way, of course cars of this category can increase in value beyond the initial sales price. We have recently seen low mileage Mercedes 300 SL (R107) offered for more than 50'000 Euros, which is clearly more than the 60-70'000 DMs (30-35'000 Euros) that were asked for a new car in the 80ies.

Scenario C (red)
The car is an instant classic and collector's item. There's much more demand than market from begin on. The car never really drops in value and typically gains a bit in a continuous way. Few cars really fall in this category. Some seem to belong in there in the beginning when people are paying premium prices to get an early one, but most of them then still depreciate. Exceptions probably are the Ferrari Enzo (?), Ferrari F40, McLaren F1. But as said very few cars make it into this category.

Scenario B (green)
Cars that fall into this category are usually neither volume cars nor everyday cars. They typically are pretty rare from the beginning and bring some sensation with them. Many if not most of them are either convertibles or sportscars. While they do depreciate over the first 10-20 years they still lose less value than the mass production cars. They are always sought after during their whole career. After some years they start to continuously gain in value and can actually even outperform their initial sales price. Cars that fall into this category are the Mercedes SLs (R113, R107), the Porsche 911 and derivates, TVR 3000 S, Morgan +8, BMW M3 (E30), BMW Z1, BMW M1, most Ferraris, some Lamborghinis, some Maseratis, etc.). You get the picture.

Scenario A (blue)
This is the most common scenario. Most cars actually fall into this category. From begin on they depreciate (rather fast) and reach over the years (let's say 7 to 15) the bottom, a fraction of their initial sales price. Some then become collector's items and raise in value quickly, some others slower. If you take a Volkswagen Golf Mk1 for example, this car has been produced in millions, but after 20 or 30 years only a handful remain in a market and they become somewhat exclusive. So their value increases and can actually become higher than the initial sales price. In the exhibit this is illustrated with graph A1.
A very special category are race cars. Quite expensive when new they have almost no value after few years and can be purchased for very little money sometimes. This was especially true in the late sixties and the seventies, when Ferrari GTOs or Porsche 904/906 were on the market for a few thousand USD or DMs. Thanks to the developments are historic racing some of these became later very expensive. The Porsche 906 was sold for roughly 30'000 DMs when new, changed hands for maybe 6'000 DMs in the late sixties and is today valued at around 600'000 Euros (multiply with 2 for DMs). This is indicated by graph A2.
Cars in this category are everything from the Volkswagen Beetle, to Fiat 850 Sport Spider or Ford Mustangs. But it includes also cars like the mentioned Porsche 904/906, the Lotus Eleven or the prewar race cars. Actually cars that can't make it into B or C end up in A. Or they disappear totally.

Now there is one comment to be made: To really gain substantial value over time the car must remain in driving condition and often needs to be restored multiple times. The cost for maintaining or restoring the car can be easily higher than the value gain driven by it. And even if the car is barely used it will still ask for quite a bit of maintenance and a dry garage and insurance and .... So, if you are only interested in cars for making money, you may be better in buying something else. But if you like cars and love to drive them, making money with them is just a bonus on top and of course makes the hobby even more attractive. See also my previous post on a comparison of cars and their value when new and now.

Restoring a TVR Grantura MK2

When I bought my little green TVR Grantura MK2 (1960) I didn't think of restoring it. I bought it as race-ready and thought I would do some little bits here and there and otherwise enjoy it. However when we started to look deeper into the internals of the car we found more rust than what we had expected. At the end of the analysis we had to say that the car could not be considered safe and race worthy. So, something more drastic has to happen, meaning cutting the fiberglass body from the chassis and restoring the whole chassis, replacing rotten tubes and rust protecting it again. Now, while financially this isn't probably the most viable thing to do, I very much believe in "doing the things right". The TVR Grantura is a fabulous car and it's certainly worth to preserve it.
And, at the end, it can't be so much work neither, right. Given people bought these cars in pieces and were able to assemble them in 30-45 hours.
This second picture comes from an old article showing all what you received when you purchased a Grantura in the early 60ies. This is pretty much comparable to what I will have after the car has been disassmebled with the exception that, as said before, I also need to separate the fiberglass body and the chassis. Now, this is pretty dirty work and hopefully it only needs to be done once for quite a long time. And I am very glad that I will have CCC (classic car connection) helping me with this.
If any of my dear readers have experience with doing this kind of work and can come up with some good advise I am more than happy to take it. And if anybody out there has some evidence on the history of 7/C/224 during the years 1960-1990 (before it was in Sweden) then this also would help a lot to complete the history of this nice green little car.