Right car, wrong decisions?
 

I remember the Phantom at it's first appearance at Stoneleigh way back when.

Absolutely first class, took kits to another level in my opinion. Was ready to sell my cobra to get one......until the price was announced. :doh:

Now I know certain things carry a premium and the amount of time and effort that had obviously gone into the car warrants a reward but I can't help but think the price of the kit (roughly £14k) has been the cars undoing.

With the price I guess you've got exclusivety as there's not many going around (does anyone know how many?) but can't help but think there has been a lost opportunity with this car. I believe kits are now being dropped in favour of fully built cars for around £50k (is that right?)

Are the people behind this kit making all the wrong decisions after getting the car so right?

John

I believe there have been about 25 kits sold, no idea how many are on the road, but not many.

Virago are still trying to get investment to launch the car as a production model, Norman's son is one of the two main Virago guys. Until they get that money, I think kits are still available, two were recently bought...

Re the price, GTM has pushed the Libra/Spyder kits up to that sort of money now!

Rich

the big thing to bear inmind here is the quality of the phantom kit, how many kits do you know of that come out to production car quality, none of this has been cheap, there are a LOT of custom parts on the car, where as a lot of kits depend of the donor cars heavily.
Also the kit price includes a lot of stuff you would normally expect to source yourself.
I do think its worth every penny.

As for the virago, yes it will cost approx 50k, but it will also be substationally different to the phantom, only some of the body shape will remain the same, engine, chassis, running gear, interior, some exterior, is all planned to change :)

I guess nowadays £14k doesn't seem a lot of money now that the likes of the Phantom raised the bar in terms of quality. Back then it seemed like a hell of a lot having just paid about £3k for the Cobra kit.

Still you get what you pay for at the end of the day and I havn't heard of a Phantom owner complaining yet.

I do hope they can keep it in kit form - long enough at least for me to save up :eusa_pray:

John

..and of course that's ANOTHER story!!!

Like the one where second hand values go in the opposite direction :-(