Last week I slammed the idiots who are seduced by marketing into paying exorbitant sums of money for ordinary products like vodka (Grey Goose) and guns (Heckler Und Koch).
Then yesterday I bitched about modern cars and their electronic gizmos that cost too much (in every sense of the word) and which at some point are going to be taken away from you; and added that I’d really prefer to drive an older car without all that nonsense.
I thought that it might be kinda fun to combine those two concepts into a single buying experience. Here’s how I figured it out.
First, we have a car company whose products command premium prices (i.e. you pay through the nose) for their old cars, but whose cars of that era were frankly just not very good, performance-wise.
Step forward the 1950s-era Porsche 356, and here’s a good example thereof:
Now let’s be honest, here. The old 356 may have been very reliable (compared to its competitors) for that time, but if you’ve ever driven an original, you would have been horribly disappointed (as I most certainly was). The engine is seriously underpowered, it doesn’t handle or brake that well on those skinny tires and drum brakes, although it does give tremendous driving fun because you always feel connected to the road. But it’s the engine sound which really disappoints. It sounds pretty much like a VW Beetle engine of the same vintage: a kind of whiny clatter. My take: the original 356 isn’t worth as much as they’re being charged for. Frankly, the premium prices are a function of restoration “to original” state. Once you get past the Concours Set, the prices become more “reasonable” because restorers install modern switchgear, better wiring materials and nicer exhaust systems, for instance:
My thing about the 356 is that I just like its looks. It’s quirky, a little ugly (“a lot ugly” — New Wife) but above all it has character. Nothing else is quite like it.
But if you strip away all the Porsche stuff and just go with what it looks like, you get one of these:
Looks like a 356 museum, dunnit? But all those 356s are replicas (gasp!): fiberglass bodies attached to a shortened ’71 VW Beetle chassis, powered by a 2.3-liter VW engine, which pushes out 125 hp (compared to the original 356’s 90-odd hp). Plenty power for that little body, and they come with a proper exhaust system which makes them sound more modern Porsche than old Beetle. Modern tires, too.
Price? Between $60,000 and $72,000.
Still too much? I don’t think so, because this isn’t one of those DIY garage fiberglass kit cars. If you order one from this particular manufacturer, you could wait up to two years for your order to get fulfilled. Me, I’d just get one of the existing stock ones, as in the pic.
But hey, not everyone likes the 356. However, everybody loves the Ferrari 250 Spyder, right?
Whoa.
Trouble is that these puppies sell for well over a million — or more — and now you’re in a lot more silliness than a $30 bottle of vodka.
Except that the model above sells for $105,000. How so? Well, it’s not a “pure Ferrari”. Like the Vintage Motors replica of the Porsche 356 above, this is a fiberglass bodied Ferrari lookalike with a… 6.9-liter Ford V8 under the hood. (Take that, Ferrari!)
Okay: is this going to handle anything like a Ferrari (any Ferrari)? Most definitely not. Does it matter? No.
Because you’re not going to track this car (unless you’re an idiot), you’re going to drive around in a little beauty, at 10% of the cost of the original, with an AC Cobra-like thunder coming out of the exhaust.
It’s all very well being a badge “purist”. The problem is that the owners of the badges have made their products so expensive that the cars are all being bought by essentially the same 100 people, leaving the rest of us plebs out of the picture.
The thing is that to those 100 guys, the “proper” badges are either purchased for bragging rights (i.e. dick comps) or as investments, no different from a condo in Monaco or a 25-carat diamond (don’t get me started on De Beers or we’ll be here all day).
Just in passing, I wonder how many miles Bill Gates has put on his Porsche 959? (And if that story doesn’t make you grit your teeth in frustrated fury — for so many reasons — we can’t be friends.)
But there are guys who love the cars not for their “collector value” or any of that bollocks, but for their exquisite beauty and perhaps to a lesser degree, for their performance. Guys like me.
And I have to tell you that if I won the lottery and some guy had put together a proper fiberglass Dino 246 shell on, say, a Porsche Boxster-type frame and engine…
…hold me back.
So I guess my question for y’all would be: what quality (but inexpensive) replica would float your boat if you saw one?
“what quality (but inexpensive) replica would float your boat if you saw one?”
That’s a problem because those are conflicting requirements. You can’t have both things together. You can have a quality replica, but it will cost you, or you can have some cobbled together bad kit car slapped together by some amateur for little money, but you can’t have both things together. As for an answer to your question, here is my choice.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2010-race-car-replicas-ferrari-p4-replica-project/
But that’s a race car replica not a street car. No – the P4 was built to Lemans “Prototype” rules. It qualified as a street car at the time. even carried a spare tire. This particular one, one of a maybe 10 cars built by RCR out of Detroit ( but no longer offered ) still needs to be completed with a proper 12 V 12 engine ( assuming you could source one ) You just can’t show up with the V-8, That’s the definition of a cobbled together back yard special. To finish this project properly you are probably going to spend at least $ 100 K. Saw a nice completed one at the Vail Concours 4 years ago.
I take comfort in the fact that most people wouldn’t know that the Renucci Spyder isn’t a real Ferrari. (I see that one such item recently sold at auction for $160k — way too much money for a replica, but still less than 10% for the real thing.)
As it happens, I spent the morning at Factory 5’s open house. Factory 5 is the largest builder of Cobra Replicas for the last 30 years. You can buy someone’s failed project car for about $ 35 K on Craigs list or Facebook and spend more discovering just why they were not able to complete the build.
……. or you could buy your own kit for:
Deluxe Mark 5 Roadster Complete Kit ( 427 Cobra Replica – stretched wheelbase so people over 5′ 10″ or so can actually fit in the car – the orginal AC’s were small British roadsters. — $ 24,990
Plus Shipping _~ $ 1,500
Plus — Crate Engine Built by Partner Company with EFI and all the needed Accessory pieces — $ 17K and up depending on displacement and HP selected
Plus Transmission, rear differential, wheels and Tires Budget another $10K
Now you just need to assemble all the pieces and parts — fortunately there is a build school available in Michigan you can attend for a week where you and a dozen or so other Owners can throw one together in a week. ( Start with a pile of parts and it runs and drives at the end of the week – you will likely be more careful and detailed with your build ) — budget another $5 to $7 K
So…. now you can go home with your 500 page highly detailed manual and put yours together. A skilled experienced mechanic should be able to do it in about 200 hours. The rest of us — maybe 1,000+ hours assuming you have a full set of tools and working space.
…….. oh ,,,, and to finish it off, you’re going to need body and paint work — another $ 10 K
Add it all up … let’s say $ 75,000 plus your Time. But at least you can say you built it – you didn’t just buy it ( just don’t tell them about the $ 75 K
and they just Today introduced the NEW Carbon Fiber Body version — No price mentioned
Easy answer. Jaguar E-Type. *drool.
No argument there. The guys at Eagle E-type make replicas, but from existing cars, thus guaranteeing prices of over $400k which is WAY too high for any E-type anyway.
A frame-off, nuts-and-bolts restored E-type shouldn’t cost more than $150k, and few do. (Unless you buy one in New York or Massachusetts, where people are used to being overcharged for everything anyway.)
Yes, you can probably BUY a frame-off restored E-Type for about $ 150 K but I’m also sure that COSTS a lot more than that to have it done. As the saying goes,,,,,, to make a small fortune in the car restoration business, you need to start with a large Fortune.
I know American cars aren’t really your thing, but there’s a whole industry devoted to 1960’s muscle car resto-mods. You can basically take any year model Mustang or Camaro (most common) and get a brand new body for a custom build. Modern frame, modern suspension, modern engine with fuel injection, etc. all with that 1960’s look we all love (well, except for our host). Given stupid money, I’d probably take a 68 Mustang fastback, modern coyote Ford engine, complete retro interior and exterior. Looks all original until you pop the hood or crawl underneath. Reliable enough for daily driver duty would be the main improvement over the original. Make it look and sound like the John Wick car and we’re all good.
Yeah, I saw a perfect resto-modded Plymouth ‘Cuda with a new Charger R/T engine selling for $70k somewhere. As you suggest, I wouldn’t be tempted into one for $7k let alone $70k, but I can see why someone else would.
The fine people at Frontline in the UK have already answered the question with some beautiful bespoke MGB’s and now an MGA. Drool away: https://www.frontline-cars.co.uk/mga-edition
Ooooh I love those guys. Just don’t tell New Wife, or I’ll have to sell ALL my guns.
I’d probably go for an E-type or Triumph TR-6.
I friend of mine’s dad had a TR-6 he was trying to fix and gave up. He was going to send it to the scrap yard. I said I’d take it off his hands. Nope. He wanted cash. Made no sense. I’d rather give it to the junkyard than you? He wanted money, of which I had none for a roller with its engine taken apart.
I was planning on throwing in a Buick V6 or a Toyota motor.
Can you see that car with a Toyota inline 6 from a Supra?
Yeah, replacing that unreliable Triumph engine with one that actually works…perfect.
As an aside, there are a lot of people doing that with the Land Rover Defender 90 and 110: junking the crap engines and dropping Chevy LS7 (Corvette) engines into the bay.
Hellaciously expensive, but if you want a REAL offroader…
I always liked the looks of the TR-7. However, their electrics had a nasty habit of spontaneously combusting.
I’m sure the originals performed well, but if you can find one the prices would probably be into 7 figures. I well love the Caddy and the Duesenberg from 1930 seen on this page. https://heritagemuseumsandgardens.org/exhibits/auto2025/.
I know that a decade ago they had to stop driving the Duesenberg around the grounds and disable the engine for the insurance to provide coverage. I know the value then was north of $2M. (I’m sure a bit of that was provenance; it had belonged to Gary Cooper.)
Realized it was more like 20 years ago when we last went there and got the figures on the Duesenberg. My how time flies as you get old.
I owned and ran a TR-6 as a daily driver in the Toronto area for 7 years. Did not have any major problems with the engine. In North American trim with the two Stromberg-Carlsen carbs, it was gutless. DoT dyno supposedly said 105hp, but… no.. I tried a trick new intake manifold with 3 Weber carbs, which helped, but the real deal was a new head, and fuel injection to bring it to Britlandia standard. Don’t know if it was actually 155 as ‘promised’ but it was WOW. Problems were the body and the read suspension. Had a buddy who could weld make me some bolt in brackets for standard style shocks (replacing the lever arm widgets).(Then I needed spacers to move the wheels out to provide room!) Best change was a monster rear anti-roll arm. The body was a problem from day one. It was not designed for an environment which has road salt, nor was it painted well enough to resist same. Why builders refuse to use a really good waterproof paint pisses me off. Sure AwlGrip would cost more, but cars would not fall apart from rust, and they would last longer… Oh wait!…
Winter driving in a convertible was not so good. I changed the thermostat UP every fall, and put a shield over the rad: if the thermostat opened, all the hot water went to the rad, NOT to the heater, and no heat at all in the cab. I thought seriously about putting an Eberspacher (now Espar) heater in it, like in the Volkswagen 411, but there really was no room. (The heater in the 411 would melt ski-boots: my brother lost 2 pair of boots on one trip to Lake Placid! Good advert for the product, for some meanings of ‘good’. )
I enjoyed my TR-6 but I’m handy. Welding in new rocker panels was not the end of the world, or my budget.
John Hughes’s budget for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off vouldn’t possibly afford a genuine Ferrari 250 GT (especially since it gets trashed at the end – oops spoiler!), so he comissioned three near replicas of the car. Two to drive around Chicago, the third, a non-functional one to trash. One of the surviving cars sold recently for $375,000.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a Delorean body without the problems underneath it. Maybe it’s just because I’m a movie fan.
Did Ferrari lose a lawsuit? Ever since the kit car industry started, they claimed to own copyright on all their cars, from the time Enzo left the Maserati brothers. They have been very vigilant about confiscating all the replicas, and put the manufacturer of the Ferris Bueller car out of business thirty years ago. In Miami Vice, the first few seasons had a different Ferrari that Crockett drove, but that, too, was a replica, built on a Corvette . Once Ferrari found out, they sued the production company, and as settlement Miami Vice blew it up on camera in one of the episodes. I forget what Crockett drove after that.
Yes – two Black Testarossa’s were given to the production company by Ferrari. They were then painted white because they showed up better on camera during the night driving scenes. There were 2 other stunt cars built using Testarossa body panels on a Panterra with added skid plates for the more spectacular stunts.
No doubt that Ferrari sold a stack of Testarossa’s based on that show.
It’ll never happen unless Ferrari changed their ways, but I’d love a “replica” 365 GTS/4, black with a tan interior so I can get my Don Johnson on.