Project Cars--You Get to Vote on "Hold 'em or Fold 'em"

british_rover

What do you think of this Z

1971 240z

fintail

I think that Z is how you'd want to find one

Looks excellent...but I think it would have to be the best remaining for that money

Mr_Shiftright

Z Car -- it's not the rust you see, it's the rust you don't see. This car needs to be on a lift and very carefully evaluated. Given what I see, I see lots of welding and new paint in the near future. This is perhaps the ONLY collectible Japanese car that was in a regular production run, so there is room left to restore it...but maybe $13,500 is top dollar right now, and this is a '71, not a '70...the latter being worth at least 10% more.

47 Studebaker -- nice car but lunatic price. Try $15,000 and take it.

bumpy

I think the tail lights on the new Civic came off that Ventura.

Every time I see those Studes, I think they should be rear-engined cars.

Mr_Shiftright

Studebaker -- wheezy 6 cylinder flathead, no power steering or brakes, column shifter, 6 volt battery----not so much fun to drive....more fun to look at!

fintail

This is probably quite rare...too bad its shot

Were the interiors in these really this....80s?

Why would anyone bother to do this? Weird

Mr_Shiftright

so they could disguise one non-descript Japanese car and make it look like another non-descript Japanese car? Beats me....

fintail

It's big, boring, and thirsty...but for the money...

Not really a project, just a nice looking end-of-the-series car

I think I'll get a 2002 Elantra and graft a Sentra nose on it. What a waste of money.

Mr_Shiftright

'72 Plymouth: finally a realistic seller of a big old used car. Book value is $975!! Probably if it were clean on the outside he could squeeze $1,500 out of it.

lilengineerboy

Was it this board where someone was interested in these:
http://detroit.craigslist.org/car/151375820.html

fintail

Doesn't look too awful...but I think its lowered, wheels are from MY 2000 or so. Not much money for such a car anyway.

Looks nice, lots of weight for the money

Just wait for the brake job

$$$

qbrozen

ya know, maybe its just me, but I see an automatic red flag when cars like that Rolls and, even moreso, the vette are posted on craigslist, of all places. You'd think if you are really selling a nearly $100k car, you could spring for a real ad.

british_rover

Yeah I was the one looking for one of those. I don't know if I could buy a silver one. If it was in really tip top shape then yeah but I would prefer another color then silver or black.

Unfortunaely just about all of them are silver or black so like I said I could settle for one of those colors if the condition was right.

fintail

Same here. There's no reason for a 100K car on craigslist...there really shouldn't even be 10K cars on craigslist. I'd like to see a "Top Flight" judge inspect this car.

The Rolls thing I can understand more...usually a local yokel gets ahold of one of these things, sees the Flying Lady, and detaches himself from reality. They make a MB 6.3 look sensible.

And about the C36...shoulda jumped on that red one. They are very uncommon. Personally, I wanted a silver C43 as I like silver and blue cars. The red is non-metallic, so I'd end up going OCD and have to wax it monthly. Black is just too high maintenance, and I loathe white cars. I love keeping my cars detailed, but within reason.

Mr_Shiftright

54'Corvette -- price is market correct for a top notch car.

76 Rolls --- awful, awful automobile. If you won it in a contest I wouldn't even bother to pick it up. If you are lucky, it will only cost you perhaps $1.50 per mile to drive it. That's if nothing goes wrong.

fintail

I almost want to like this

british_rover

I know I wish I could have gotten that Red one but me and my wife are in the middle of trying to get a house and any purchase that large right now is just not allowed.

I shouldn't even be looking for cars now cause I know I can't buy one but what are you gonna do.

fintail

I look at cars all day...and I'm already paying rent to have one stored, the last thing I need is another. But if that pristine W112 LWB fintail is unearthed in my backyard...

I talked to my local MB specialist about C36s today when I made the appointment for the C43s 60K service (saving about $300 by going independent vs the dealer). He said there's a guy he deals with who has a C36, tracks it on the weekends, and is always breaking stuff. I guess it's really getting hard to find a good one.

I don't like modern upholstery textures in old cars

british_rover

That is too bad about the C36s. Grr I bet that red one turned out to be a really great car too. Stupid houses that I have to buy. With the average C36 going for around 9,500 guess I need to sell about a twenty Range Rovers to buy one.

martian

I saw one the other day-it was dirty and obviously uncared for. Knowing this car's history (it was an awful, slow, unreliable dog)-is there any collector's market for these things? I realize that John DeLorean is dead-but there can't be many DMCs left-will they ever be worth anything?

fintail

IIRC mint cars with no mileage and all upgrades/maintenance still bring less than original sticker.

stevedebi

"IIRC mint cars with no mileage and all upgrades/maintenance still bring less than original sticker."

27,500 for this one with 9800 miles (MSRP was 28K):

http://tinyurl.com/g8kxm

Somewhere around are the 4 24K gold plated ones, valued at around 175,000.

Mr_Shiftright

They mostly all have low mileage and the best ones in the world are worth maybe $18,000 top o' the moon price.

You can "ask" whatever you want. Active selling range for most of them? About $14,000 should buy you a beauty if you want one.

Stagnant car---a curiosity made valuable by a movie and not much else.

I don't think a SOLID gold Delorean would bring 175K.

fintail

If I had one I would do a full Back To The Future conversion on it - all the add ons and gizmos. Maybe even a Mr. Fusion.

Mr_Shiftright

I'm SURE it's been done. If you need to sell a Delorean, creative marketing is the way to go.

lemmer

and I have just caught up on the last 200 or so posts. I am not seeing any project Porsches, so I will have to get to work on that.

I did see an '89 Allante in the paper for $15,000 - sounded like a plain old used car - not for me.

andre1969

in DC about a week ago. Hey, somebody explain to me again WHY, exactly, stainless steel is not a good material to use as sheetmetal? Seems to me that with the abuse it puts up with in your sink, that out on the roads it couldn't be any worse. Heck, couldn't you just take steel wool to it to clean off the road tar and bird droppin's?

Mr_Shiftright

Unfortunately your sink doesn't live outdoors.

Also stainless is susceptible to fingerprinting for some reason, at least on deloreans, and it doesn't look very nice in large dimensions either. It looks "mottled".

Last of all, the most convincing argument. No automaker before or after Delorean ever did this.

qbrozen

eh, sorry, but that last reason doesn't impress me. They don't do it because its expensive. Same reason aluminum is used so sparingly. Its superior (aluminum) in that it doesn't rust and is lighter, so it should be used extensively ... but it costs much more. Now, on the stainless side, it is rather heavy, so that's a penalty, its not easy to work with (for many of the reasons shifty pointed out), and how many customers would you really find who want to drive a stainless car? Sure, silver is the most popular paint choice these days ... but what if there were no choice and all of the cars you make are the same color ... probably would limit your customer market quite a bit.

By the way, I have an all stainless BBQ grill (very large), and it lives outdoors, and it looks GREAT!

andre1969

this 1967 Cadillac convertible is kinda purty.

lemko

Heck, get a can of Sheila Shine! It comes in a cannister similar to that of lacquer thinner and puts a nice sheen on stainless steel. It smells nice too. Too bad I haven't seen the product since about 1987.

stevedebi

I once read that Delorean had a process that put a "rainbow" effect on their car, part of the metal, not a paint job. But it was never produced, as the company went belly up around that time.

I was also amused to find that they sank the moulds for the car into the Atlantic ocean. Must have been pre-environmentalism...

lemmer

I thought that car looked worth close to the money until I saw that it had been sitting for four years - that's a long time. I doubt it was prepared or stored properly.

fintail

Maybe a better than average survivor, but I don't know about "vintage classic"

These are becoming less common...I remember when I was a kid I wanted my dad to buy one of these...instead he bought a nailed-together S10 Blazer that turned him off GM permanently

andre1969

to the subject of stainless steel...didn't those Eldo Biarritz editions have a stainless steel roof?

My neighbors had a 4runner back in the 80's, that type that looks like it was just cobbled together from a pickup truck. It looked junky and ready to fall apart even way back then, when it was fairly new. Still, I thought it was kinda cool.

I guess it was either an act of God, or that Washington State weather that kept this one looking so nice!

Mr_Shiftright

well, "too expensive" is a reason not to do it.

Mr_Shiftright

'83 El Dorado---gotta love those tacky bar stool seats--what was GM thinking in 1983? It's not like there weren't lots of BMWs and Mercedes to look at. Another "parallel universe" creation out of Detroit in the 1980s.

andre1969

well, overwhelmingly, that's what a lot of people wanted back then. Keep in mind that, in the early 80's many people still looked at BMWs and Benzes as spartan, overpriced, and truck-like.

As for evidence to how popular those buttoned seats were, well here's an anectode. You could get seats like that on the 1979 Chrysler New Yorker, but on the Fifth Avenue, which was about $1500 more expensive, you got a different seat pattern that was sleeker, more modern looking, and less pimpy. Alas, people WANTED the pimpier seats, so eventually Chrysler just switched it. You got the sleeker seats with the regular NYer, and the pimpy seats with the 5th Avenue! When they went on the M-body platform for 1982, it was pimpy buttoned seats, all the way!

Oh, here's something you don't see too often anymore, at least not in good shape. I know these early Preludes were supposed to be sporty cars, but I always looked at them as Honda's interpretation of the Monte Carlo/Cordoba concept. Basically a luxurious car with formal, "important" styling, based on an everyday family car. Just instead of an intermediate, it was based on a subcompact.

Also, are my eyes deceiving me or does this Prelude have LEATHER seats? At a quick glance it actually doesn't look bad, but in the close shots, rust has taken its toll.

qbrozen

yes.... sort of. There was a time when they deemed seatbelts too expensive. That doesn't mean it was a good reason not to put them in.

i thought you were implying it wasn't a good idea just because only 1 manufacturer ever did it (and, actually, others have done it ... just not in volume).

qbrozen

one word on that prelude .... AUTOMATIC! ugh.

Mr_Shiftright

I never heard of another stainless steel-bodied production car, but I have heard of railroad car bodies using stainless. Maybe Johnny Z should have listened to 100 years of collective auto building wisdom.

For some reason the Delorean bodies were very susceptible to getting marked up and stained. If you didn't keep after it constantly, the finish looked like crap...even leaning against it while wearing Levis reportedly left an imprint of the pants pocket on the car (so claims one car magazine).

Any any rate, the finish of the bodies are the least of the Delorean's many problems.

lemko

Shoot, I love that Eldo! The 4100 engine, however, scares me off. Love those seats! My 1985 Chrysler Fifth Avenue had seats like those!

I remember seeing a lot of those Preludes around back in the day. They all seemed to vanish about 10 years ago.

lemko

That crappy Renault powerplant was probably the biggest problem. Why didn't Mr. Z just put Chevrolet 350 V-8s in them?

Mr_Shiftright

I think if you want a living example of the downfall of Detroit, point to a 1983 Eldorado.

lemko

...somebody planting a bomb in your car, buy a 1983 Cadillac Eldorado!

Mr_Shiftright

scares them away? :P

fintail

One of those Eldos with no vinyl top could be semi-OK. I don't mind the body design. The seats are a bit much, but I remember even Toyota put something pimpy like that in the Cressida.

qbrozen

I never heard of another stainless steel-bodied production car

well, that's what i meant when i said "in volume."

the others were limited:
http://www.deloreanmotorcar.com/dmc/otherss.htm

Now, in addition to what they list there, I thought there have been stainless Rolls Royces. Am I incorrect?

Mr_Shiftright

Dunno...I never heard of any stainless steel production cars except for a handful of prototypes and one-offs done for PR and experimentation....and I guess the conclusions of the experiments were all the same-- "don't ever do this".

I kinda doubt Rolls would have been capable of producing such a car. They were always cash-poor and technology-deficient. Geez, they were NAILING aluminum panels to wood in the 50s and maybe 60s!

fintail

Probably a generous usage of "flawless"...I could see Andre in it...