best car to flip / repair for profit

[350Matt]

So then peeps

I'm looking to make a bit of extra cash and thinking of turning a couple of cars around as I'm pretty handy with the spanners and can weld, rebuild engines do electrics etc etc so looking for project cars that can be repaired by me and then sold on
what I'm looking for is a reccommendation of what kind of car if I had a budget of about 5K to buy and looking to maximise profit for about 6 weeks work?

I was thinking something along the lines of small hatchbacks as these are used by everyone
thoughts?

[Trackdayer]

Clio 182 would be my tip. There's a huge variance on price. Often you can simply buy them, wash them, take better photos and add £1k to the price.

I favour this approach over doing actual work. It's easier and a better £ per hour net result.

[wiliferus]

No idea on which models to go for, but all I would say is be prepared to take a hit.
For every few cars that you flip and make a few hundred pounds profit, one will have your pants down and you’ll take a bath on it.

I had a mate that did this sort of thing. Bought low value cars from auction, spruced them up with a valet and a bit of t-cut and made a tidy profit from what was effectively a hobby. He had one that threw its cam belt on the way home. It effectively wiped out a few months profit for him.

[clockworks]

Buy something that you like. Fix it, run it for a few months, and be prepared to sit on it for a while until you get the right customer who's prepared to pay a decent price.

If you buy with the sole intention of selling quickly, it's easy to come unstuck if you only get lowball offers.
Run it yourself, with no pressure to sell quickly, and you get a "free" car to run around in, and probably a better price. It also avoids the "driveway trader" problems.

[ZX10R NIN]

Buy something that has very light damage because parts get expensive fast & sensors can be the bane of a rebuild, as someone said above buy cars that have bad photo's/descriptions that only need light work & you should be okay but there will be one car that may eat all your hard earned profit.

[Ryyy]

Car throttle have just done this (if you're not familiar then its a YouTube channel) with a vw up! They were looking for a enthusiast car at first which makes sense but after failing to find they went on to typical hatchbacks. They both make sense to me but I think you're average run of the mill hatchbacks would make life easier, cheap and easy to get hold of parts and should be easy to sell on compared to enthusiast cars because how often is someone looking for one?

[The Road Crew]

Friend of mine does this, he puts his focus on stuff like the i10/Picanto/Fiesta/Fiat 500.

Smaller less complex cars, easier to fix, plenty of cheap parts out there.

[Belle427]

The chap on you tube serious about salvage has a pretty good channel and does everything himself.
Quite often does a breakdown of costs/profit too.

[350Matt]

I like the idea of an enthuausist car as thats pretty much what I've owned all my life and would be fun to own albeit briefly

however they can be difficult to sell as they tend not to have wide market appeal
small hatchbacks I think would be an easy sell

[ecsrobin]

The Road Crew said:

Friend of mine does this, he puts his focus on stuff like the i10/Picanto/Fiesta/Fiat 500.

Smaller less complex cars, easier to fix, plenty of cheap parts out there.

A friend used to buy Fiat 500’s clean them up and do a service and then sell them on the Isle of Wight as he found he got more money for them there. This being around 10 years ago so no doubt a lot has changed.

[fflump]

Work out your projected profit then work out the parts and labour needed to achieve it. Add in a risk of unexpected costs. Given the used car market is pretty efficient these days making a worthwhile return is tricky I’d imagine.

[OverSteery]

I suspect it's hard to make a profit from this.

Do you plan to tax and insure the car? Even if you have a trailer to collect, you will struggle to sell a car with no legal test drive.

You will either need to declare yourself as a trader and stand up to the legal duties resulting, or just ignore the law and pretend to be a private seller and so be a bit of a ****.

If you know how to weld, then Mk 1 and 2 mx5s?

[23.7]

The trick of selling is in the buying.

Concentrate on desperate or ill-informed sellers.

[samoht]

You mention welding and engines, but not bodywork, so probably not Copart (crashed cars).

Could look for MoT failures, there's probably a clear grand in value added between 'MoT failure' and '12 months MoT' on most cars, so there's a window to work in depending on the car.

Equally cars with a dead engine / gearbox and swap in a replacement, if you can find reliable source of good ones.


The problem with doing up enthusiast cars is the buyers are likely to ask more questions, be more bothered by a chequered past. Also many such cars tend to have a lot that can go wrong, the simpler the car the less chance you get caught out by unsolveable problems that cost you several good cars' worth of profit. And parts can be expensive and hard to find on rarer models.

So I'd suggest probably mainstream cars, at least to get started with - Fiesta, Focus, Juke, Qashqai, that sort of thing.


As others have said, the easiest way to make a big profit is with unscrupulous trading, but I'd hesitate to recommend such practices.

[350Matt]

OverSteery said:

I suspect it's hard to make a profit from this.

Do you plan to tax and insure the car? Even if you have a trailer to collect, you will struggle to sell a car with no legal test drive.

You will either need to declare yourself as a trader and stand up to the legal duties resulting, or just ignore the law and pretend to be a private seller and so be a bit of a ****.

If you know how to weld, then Mk 1 and 2 mx5s?

I was planning on doing this 1 car at a time so its no different to buying a car for my own use, so yes insure and tax it same as normal ( if its being driven that is) otherwise if its a project thats need a few months off the road then its gets SORN

[InitialDave]

Better to buy stuff with a good parts market and break for parts, avoids the "being a car dealer" hassle too.

I've given up on a couple of projects in the past, and the cars I bought as engine donors ended their life parted out, unintentionally made a decent chunk on them.

[biggbn]

clockworks said:

Buy something that you like. Fix it, run it for a few months, and be prepared to sit on it for a while until you get the right customer who's prepared to pay a decent price.

If you buy with the sole intention of selling quickly, it's easy to come unstuck if you only get lowball offers.
Run it yourself, with no pressure to sell quickly, and you get a "free" car to run around in, and probably a better price. It also avoids the "driveway trader" problems.

That's exactly what I did for years in cars as simple as Cinquecento sporting to semi exotica like Porsche 928. Buy what you like and someone else will like it, more specialized cars might mean you sit on it longer but much smaller market, I always did much better with semi rare older metal. There will be hundreds of Clios for sale and maybe half a dozen rare cars. And, do it because you love it and realise you won't make money every time.

[fflump]

Pre covid I did the same but with high end watches.
Easier game IMO but the principle that you make your money when you buy not when you sell holds true