On Wed, 26 Apr 1995 DANIELS@LMSBV2.TAMU.EDU wrote:
> In the end he wanted to sell it, tried to get somewhere close to the >$6000
> he had in it, and couldn't even get anyone to wink at it. I tried to help
> him out by having some of Triumph-loving friends to take a look, but noone
> was interested in giving more than $1000 for it.
This reminds me of the poor fellow that was trying to sell his Spitfire
here a while back. It had a Mazda rotary transplant and he spent $$,$$$
doing the conversion. He took quite a bit of abuse over his asking price
which was somewhere near $15,000. In his mind, since he had spent that
much on the car, it was worth that much. The truth is, it is only worth
that much to you. When you try to sell a car that has an "improvement"
like this, be it engine swap, 5 speed transmission, or whatever, it will
most likely _lower_ the car's value (sometimes substantially).
I have heard people argue both sides of the "should I do an engine swap"
debate. The argument that holds the most sway with me is that there are a
finite and decreasing number of these cars around. When Shelby was
making Cobras out of Aces, AC was still making Aces. When you slip that
V-8 into that TR3 (or Model T), for all practical purposes, it's one less
TR3 or (Model T) in this world. As you might guess, I am _not_ a fan of
hot-rods or of engine/tranny swaps in LBCs.
I now relinquish the soap box,
Mike
mburdick@unmc.edu
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