How to value an Elise without engine/suspension?

How to value an Elise without engine/suspension?

Author
Discussion

JimboM3

Original Poster:

290 posts

215 months

Friday 31st August 2012
quotequote all
All,

What value would you place on an early (not sure it's year but believe its a '97 ish) basic Elise with no engine or suspension (SORN'd)? It's potentially a start point for a project car (Honda power) and is in excellent condition other than the missing oily bits! I cannot find anything comparable to get any ideas. A potentially complicated part exchange is in the offing so judging the fairness of the deal is proving somewhat complicated.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

kambites

68,179 posts

226 months

Friday 31st August 2012
quotequote all
Very difficult to value because the market will be so small. Few people buy a car explicitly looking to do an "off the shelf" engine conversion because it's usually cheaper to buy a ready-converted car so unless you're willing to wait for someone looking to do an unusual conversion, it would either need to be cheaper than, say, the cost of a Honda car minus the cost of conversion; or cheap enough to put back on the road as a K-series.

Personally, I'd be surprised if anyone will pay more than 5k for it. Might be wrong, though.

Thorburn

2,406 posts

198 months

Friday 31st August 2012
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When you say no suspension, how much is missing?

JimboM3

Original Poster:

290 posts

215 months

Friday 31st August 2012
quotequote all
TBH I have not actually seen it yet but I am lead to believe it was just an expensive set of dampers/springs that were taken off. I.e. to get it back on the road it only needs those replacing (which I would probably have done anyway).

The £5K is approximately what I was thinking (assuming everything else is OK) and just wanted to make sure I am in the right ballpark. There is some serious man math going on to justify some of my plans!

I suspect I will be posting a follow up thread shortly debating the pros and cons of various components of a Honda build. My head tells me a pre-converted car would be the sensible way to go but my inner engineer wants (with some expert help) to spec it to my liking and get my hands dirty.

Thanks for the help so far!

Jim

kambites

68,179 posts

226 months

Monday 3rd September 2012
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If it's just the spring/damper units missing that's a bit more reasonable - I assumed you meant the wishbones, hubs, etc. weren't there.