250SWB at Beaulieu autojumble
 

saw this at Beaulieu the other week - is it a Tribute? the seller wasn't sure.

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/c...pstvrg1uev.jpg

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/c...psymkkidcw.jpg

Yes it is a Tribute. It's our old prototype/demo car. We sold it to a German guy at Stoneleigh this year for £7,500 in the unfinished condition shown but sat on 19" alloys.

I had a phone call a couple of weeks ago from the guy who bought it when it showed up at the September Autojumble. The only things to have changed are the wheels, they are now BMW 15" 5 series, and the sale price...... are you all sitting down? It sold for £18,000.

£18k sounds fair to me for an unfinished project.

I personally think that a lot of these cars get undersold when they are sold at kit kar shows or go on ebay/Gumtree/etc. - Sammio Spyders for £4.5k, top quality MX 250's for about five. I just think they're being pitched at the wrong type of buyer through those outlets.

Finish them properly with period detailing, stick an ad in 'Octane' and park it in the classics for sale area at Goodwood Revival with an '£offers' sign in the window and you might find that people with much deeper pockets start to notice...

If I ever sell I am going to Beaulieu not Stoneleigh then!

18k unfinished? That's telling you your business model is wrong...

However, break from cover and you're not only in deep pocket arena but also much more visible to a certain, quite litigious, Italian firm!

Catch 22

It does make you wonder what a well finished car would go for with all the period features etc . Agreed , kit car events are the wrong place for this car type , much better at high end classic events . I'm a regular at Prescott Hill climb and Shelsley Walsh , they are attended by some very wealthy people but who could never dream of owning a real one . A finished car at £25-30k would be small change to some!

If the vendor stated he didn't know if it was a Tribute, I wonder what was said to the purchaser? I also wonder if this is a one-off "sale of the Century" for the seller, and "Oops I should have thought about that more" event for the purchaser. It is usual that kits only realise about the value of the parts.
Reminds me of a Frogeye Sprite replica that was for sale at Newark a few years ago (one of the nice reps from Isle of Wight), and the seller was adamant that his (GRP bodied) car was the real thing! Several of us voiced our concerns, but who knows if he eventually found someone who bought a car thinking it was something else?

not if all the guy did was fit different alloys on it and earn 10k more than when chris sold it ...ouch!,

If the new owner spends another £3 - £4k to finish it then I would say the total spend of £22k would be close to the true value or a bit more .
If you take the view that its an old Z3 with a body kit then it won't have that value in your opinion.
But that applies to everything we buy , your house is just a pile of bricks , some wood , a few bags of plaster and a few lengths of copper tube , some B&Q chip board kitchen units. Once assembled into a house by your friendly builder it is worth £250k+ , you then pay for it over 25 years !!

I have been thinking along the same lines of late.....

Do I need to get my order in quick before you ramp up your kit prices ??

Safer several stages back in the transaction just in case "someone" starts to take notice - you don't want a cease and desist on your doorstep

The difference between kit....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tribute-Au...item2ca200388e

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TRIBUTE-AU...item3d03e12651


..... And one-off

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ferrari-25...item25ad22f713

I don't usually buy the piece of road under a car or live in it though:badgrin:

£18k for an auction type sale,? or was it someone pitched up and paid an asking price there and then?, just curious, not that I'm going to sell mine.........yet!

I understand what you are saying, but , if you built a house on land you already own would you sell it at the market price or discount the sale to the tune of £75k +/- because you didn't have to buy the plot of land in the first place ??

A car is worth what you are prepared to pay or can afford. You add value by bringing all the parts together as a whole , hence the Tribute SWB.

You can buy a real one or not , you can buy a house in the South East or one up North !

What is something worth?
The simple truth is its only worth what someone is willing to pay.
If you have limited funds but you have patience and determination and you learn some skills on the way you can make your own car.

If you have considerable funds and you just get what you want then its how much you are wiling to pay.

If someone built the tribute swb as a ferrari replica and had all the interior done as a replica ie dash etc, then im sure fetching £20k would be no problem at all. But no one has built or is building a replica. When selling these cars that you have built 'how you wanted it' you have to find a buyer that wanted what you did and its difficult, hense the low prices. Im sure if you replicated the ferrari swb as much as the z3 allows then you will get top money.

Hmmmm, i might order myself a kit!

I suspect what happened here was the seller pitched it as a one off with many hours work moulded and adapted from the real thing £offers.

The buyer, having never seen a decent 250 rep elsewhere (and not clouded by the Z3 base) fell over himself as you just can't buy this anywhere else.

He was basing the price on other high end reps and banking on exclusivity. As said, £18k would be reasonable in this case.

He must be kicking himself for not doing his research....imagine his face when you told him you sold it a few months earlier for less than half...(or that he could have ordered up a kit?).

However I think Tribute did miss a trick in this classic (and classic rep) crazy climate. You could have kept the development of this car on the quiet, and finished a mint car (even replacing the interior with replacement dash) and then showed up in the car park of some high end classic events with £offers in the window. In fact you should do that now......?

This is going to be unpopular here:

The Tribute 250SWB is something else. Its very well executed. No insult intended to others but its miles better than any of your other products (I happen to think your other products are very very good so this is exalted higher IMO) and miles better than anything in this fibreglass body conversion sector (the Widow is nice, but its not classic).

I do think pitching this into a higher segment would work. A "premium" kit or even just building low volume bespoke cars (no kits) on low mileage donors and to the best possible standard would net you a waiting list.

Unfortunately you would have to stop supplying kits as you are as this would devalue the product.

This suggestion would put it out of my range, in fact my cheque book has been itching since I first clapped eyes on it......

Something like the Automirage then?

http://www.automirage.co.uk/GT_Project.html