RHD 914, what's value of a rhd 914 Options

[9146-racer]

Hi, I haven't been on here for ages, sorry to have missed you all.
I have just been reading an article on the RHD Crayford cars and really would appreciate a value for one.
My car is a 1969 Crayford, in fact I understand it to be the first one ever.

I've owned it for about 30 years and now am considering parting with it, but what's it worth?

[wonkipop]

understanding the second wave of rhd 914s that by and large happen in aus,
and aside from individual owners picking one up and converting them due to interest from when they were younger, there was a cottage industry sending classic "foreign" cars into J. it started i'm told with rhd mgs still down here, being restored and shipped to rhd J in the early to mid 80s. australia is so dry a lot of them were "rust free" - hence the attraction for J.

when the local supply of mgs started to dry up the trade turned to california as a source for "rust free" cars and they just developed high quality conversions that were commercially sustainable given the prices that the cars would fetch in J. other british makes of sports cars were also part of the mix. the J had some thing for british cars at that time and they could not get enough of them.

a few others tried the commercialisation of imported rust free US cars and conversion into the aus market directly, but the numbers never added up. it was really the J market at that time that drove things.

i got some guys who were well into the MG conversion market to do the main structural and engineering work on converting my 914. they were interested to do one to see if they could expand their inventory and test 914s in J.
they were good guys who were open minded about how to approach it and also had a very good reputation. i agreed to let them proceed at their own pace in return for pretty much a cost + deal. i dealt with a lot of the cosmetic issues that would have wasted their time, but they did all the serious work.

key was we had access to a crayfords car. its one thing to look at photos, its another thing to look very closely at a car itself and in detail. that took all the guess work out and made us think twice about any compromises. there were all sorts of clues in the crayfords car which made you think a bit harder, check measurements, think again etc.

was how i learned just what crayfords did and now know too much useless information.

we did steering wheel lift mod exactly as per crayfords. though we didn't slice the upper firewall for the shaft. we beat it up a little more gracefully to get the clearance. some 914s down here converted ended up with steering wheels so low they were in your lap. we picked up on what they had done with their pedals by looking very closely at one. the owner of that car had also owned 911s so he raised it early on - not a factory rhd 911 pedal cluster. i can't remember where the dashboard mould came from anymore, but it came via a contact of the owner of the crayfords car and the story there was it was a crayfords mould that had ended up in WA back in the 70s and found its way to a guy in melbourne with a lot of interest in 914s. i think that guy is still alive so i should go ask him.

as a result i got an appreciation of just how right crayfords got it back then.

at the end of it all, the mg converters concluded it just was not commercially viable to do 914s. too many hours.

there is another 914 down here in melbourne from around the same time as mine, the owner of that car similarly knew the owner of the crayfords car and accessed it too.
the conversion done on that car was extremely good, done by a different workshop.
that car went up to qld for many years but is now back here and is owned by a guy i know, so i see it again frequently. its good to drive. everything is in the right place.