Parts Car Value, I need some opinions Options

[LvSteveH]

Don't you love it when you go to look at a car that's for sale and you have all of these wonderful images of how great it might be. So here's the deal. The car is a 73 1.7L, original owner 60k mile car. Unfortunately it's rusted to the hilt. It's from Missouri, and the spare actually has a studded tire for snow, that's a first for me. Anyway, the good news is that the interior and many of the seals and such are in great condition. The car has sat for the last 10 to 15 years, it just "stopped running" one day. Out here in vegas most original seats and rubber are turned into dust, so I still have some interest in the car. All lenses are in very good used shape, the interior is virtually perfect, deck lids are great, engine unknow, but has stock fuel injection, tranny is a side shifter, wheels are crappy stock steel w/ rust, and the car has A/C. It's the longer under dash unit setup for use without the center console, was said to all be working when the car was parked. Most rubber is in excellent shape, and the windows operate very well, both mirrors are good, as are door handles. All glass is also good.

So here's the $64k question, the body is junk, of course we'd all love to find great parts cars for a few hundrad bucks, but this guy won't come off of $1250. It's pretty easy to get to that value by adding up parts values, but is it really worth it on a parts car? I have a habit of stock piling parts, so I can't really trust my judgement sometimes. I get too excited about having transmission number six, another set of door handles, and so on. So what's the max value? I do have projects lined up to use the parts, but it could be quite a while before I actually need them.


Thanks for the help (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif),
Steve

[LvSteveH]

Well, the perfect mirrors and door handles would bring $200 pretty quick, complete mint interior, at least $400, front and rear lids original paint and no dings $200 easy, nice lenses all the way around $100, 60k mile transmission and side shift linkage $300, 60k mile 1.7L engine with injection in any condition $200, A/C system $200.

So that's $1600 in parts that could be sold at "Buy it Now" prices on Ebay. That's $1250 for the car and $200 for my day of labor to take parts off, and I still have $150 left and a ton of great parts. If the parts cars elsewhere in the US are all that great then the owners must not have internet access, because at $200 for a car like this, you could make a very nice living buying them on a regular basis and parting them out. In truth it was a few hundred more than I'd like to pay, but considering I bought it from the original owner, with the original title, owners manual, window sticker, original maintenance records in neat maroon vinyl case from porsche, I'm now very happy to have paid the few bucks extra. It was always garaged, unfortunately they did drive it in the winter, which has killed the longitudinals on both sides. Everything else is actually ok. I'd never consider restoring it, but plenty of east coast folks would dive right in welder in hand.

It still sucks that it takes far more money to even think of restoring a 914 than it could possibly be worth in the foreseeable future. A friend of mine makes a good living restoring 356's part time, and makes around $30,000 profit per car, does two a year for a total of $60,000 after all expenses. If you restored 914's and paid yourself $1 per hour, you still couldn't regularly turn a car at a true profit. Maybe that's what makes the 914's great, because we certainly aren't in them for the money.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

Steve