Is There a Market for a Mid-Engine Coupe Kit?

[dom9]

Lots of interesting stuff in the last few posts!

I see in one of the Kit Car mags this month that someone has the moulds for the GTM coupe and is thinking of putting that back into production, perhaps with a more modern drivetrain.

I'm not sure I'd fit but I quite like the sound of one of those with one of these modern, 3-pot, 1-litre engines. The Aygo/ C1/ 107 engine and 'box are very light, as I understand it.

[Yazza54]

dom9 said:

Lots of interesting stuff in the last few posts!

I see in one of the Kit Car mags this month that someone has the moulds for the GTM coupe and is thinking of putting that back into production, perhaps with a more modern drivetrain.

I'm not sure I'd fit but I quite like the sound of one of those with one of these modern, 3-pot, 1-litre engines. The Aygo/ C1/ 107 engine and 'box are very light, as I understand it.

Assume you mean the Coupe not the Libra/Spyder?

There is a fella building a fiesta doner GTM coupe on GTMOC which is looking good http://www.gtmdrivers.com/forum/fiesta-engined-cou...

He says if the interest is there he may look into it further.... it certainly deserves a proper revamp rather than keeping them mini based.

[Equus]

andygtt said:

...a GF body in gel coat sold with a profit would be around £5k

Then you've got £3K-£5K for a competent rolling chassis, drivetrain, glass, interior trim, wheels & tyres, heating & ventilation, fuel tank,lights, instruments, mirrors, grilles, locks & latches, IVA, etc., etc.

Before long, it's easy to end up with a price tag that would buy you a nice second-hand Maserati Granturismo, Lotus Evora or Bentley Conti GT, never mind a Porsche Cayman.

You've got to really want the iconoclasm to choose a hair-shirt plastic kitcar over that sort of competition!

dom9 said:

I quite like the sound of one of those with one of these modern, 3-pot, 1-litre engines. The Aygo/ C1/ 107 engine and 'box are very light, as I understand it.

The engine is certainly very light - 69kg fully dressed, without fluids, apparently - but is only about 80bhp.

I've got an Aygo as a shopping trolley. It's already quite a light car, by modern production car standards, at 840kg. It's quick enough to keep up with other traffic, but that's about the best you can say for it. You might knock a couple of hundred kilos off the kerb weight with a really lightweight kit coupe, but the performance is still not going to blow anyone's socks off.

You can get a 120bhp supercharged package, but there are cheaper and easier ways of getting the better power.

[jamesG20V6]

ugg10 said:

I'm with frankherd on this - if it could be done for under £10k on the road with decent styling (all in the eye of the buyer),

Those days are gone, if they did ever exist. Dax Kamala, Raffo Belva, CC Cyclone, non of them offered a realistic £10k on the road build cost 20 years ago, and so I don't see how anyone could expect to do it now. If you want a reasonable level of fit and finish and styling, the GRP costs alone for a full car will be half that budget just to supply the shell.
Look at the GD Moda, Ultima - if you want that level of finish it costs money to achieve. If you are not aiming for that level of finish on a closed cockpit car I am not sure there is much point in bothering. You can get away with it in budget Seven but stick a hard top on one and it becomes a very different experience.

Another way to look at this is go and see what local dealers are offering new for 10k... you might get a shopping kia if you are lucky.

[Equus]

jamesG20V6 said:

... you might get a shopping kia if you are lucky.

Though to be fair, that's brand new, with a 7-year warranty, 5-star NCAP safety rating, low road tax band, and - realistically - a lot more reliability, refinement and usability than any kit car can offer for daily use.

But even when you get to a realistic price for building a decent quality kit coupe (£15-£20K upwards?), we all know that the real competition comes from second-hand performance cars. Even second hand, they're still more reliable and more prestigious than any kit car, and can offer equal or better performance with a great deal more equipment, refinement and luxury.

There is no logical reason to buy a kit-built everyday car, so basically you're relying on a very narrow field of technically knowledgeable but eccentric and irrational loonies (probably with a strong look-at-me exhibitionist streak) as your target demographic. Not the best basis for a business plan?

It's perhaps telling that from PistonHeads membership of almost a million car enthusiasts, you've got a grand total of 4 people who are interested and engaged enough to have said they'd definitely be in the market?

[jamesG20V6]

Equus said:

Though to be fair, that's brand new, with a 7-year warranty, 5-star NCAP safety rating, low road tax band, and - realistically - a lot more reliability, refinement and usability than any kit car can offer for daily use.

But even when you get to a realistic price for building a decent quality kit coupe (£15-£20K upwards?), we all know that the real competition comes from second-hand performance cars. Even second hand, they're still more reliable and more prestigious than any kit car, and can offer equal or better performance with a great deal more equipment, refinement and luxury.

There is no logical reason to buy a kit-built everyday car, so basically you're relying on a very narrow field of technically knowledgeable but eccentric and irrational loonies (probably with a strong look-at-me exhibitionist streak) as your target demographic. Not the best basis for a business plan?

It's perhaps telling that from PistonHeads membership of almost a million car enthusiasts, you've got a grand total of 4 people who are interested and engaged enough to have said they'd definitely be in the market?

Hence the price point... Very low volume costs money.

There is a market there, there are still enough people who want a bespoke individual car that will out perform *most* of the second hand performance market in the price range. It is a small market, but for a few, buying a second hand boxster and being like everyone else will not do. Long live the 'loonies.'

Edited by jamesG20V6 on Thursday 26th May 10:26

[AW111]

Equus said:

andygtt said:

...a GF body in gel coat sold with a profit would be around £5k

Then you've got £3K-£5K for a competent rolling chassis, drivetrain, glass, interior trim, wheels & tyres, heating & ventilation, fuel tank,lights, instruments, mirrors, grilles, locks & latches, IVA, etc., etc.

Before long, it's easy to end up with a price tag that would buy you a nice second-hand Maserati Granturismo, Lotus Evora or Bentley Conti GT, never mind a Porsche Cayman.

You've got to really want the iconoclasm to choose a hair-shirt plastic kitcar over that sort of competition!

But a 2nd hand Maserati or Bentley (or Porsche) can suffer an engine or gearbox failure that will cost more to fix than the car is worth. Not to mention that they are a completely different class of car - I would be interested in a lightweight sporting coupe, but have no desire for 2 tonnes of gizmo-littered GT.

Traditionally one of the plusses of kit cars is cheap and easily available drivelines, well suited for home mechanics.

[Equus]

AW111 said:

I would be interested in a lightweight sporting coupe, but have no desire for 2 tonnes of gizmo-littered GT.

Yet your profile says that you drive a Toyota MR2.

Reality bites?

If you were serious, and actually had the budget to be building a decent kit coupe, you'd have the Porsche 911 and Cayman, Lotus Exige, Europa and Evora, and Ginetta G40/G60 to choose from, amongst others. If you're a bit braver, there's the TVR Cerbera, Tuscan and T350, too.

But the truth is that manufacturers need several hundred people, each of who swears blind 'I'd definitely be interested in...' to convert into one, single, cock-on-the-block, cheque-in-hand sale. And they need several sales a month for several years it to make a worthwhile return on development costs.

[AW111]

Equus said:

Yet your profile says that you drive a Toyota MR2.

Reality bites?

If you were serious, and actually had the budget to be building a decent kit coupe, you'd have the Porsche 911 and Cayman, Lotus Exige, Europa and Evora, and Ginetta G40/G60 to choose from, amongst others. If you're a bit braver, there's the TVR Cerbera, Tuscan and T350, too.

But the truth is that manufacturers need several hundred people, each of who swears blind 'I'd definitely be interested in...' to convert into one, single, cock-on-the-block, cheque-in-hand sale. And they need several sales a month for several years it to make a worthwhile return on development costs.

Oh, I agree. There is a huge difference between "I'd be interested (never said definitely )" and "I am going to buy".

I run a 30 year old MR2 for fun because I enjoy tinkering / restoring / modifying : I looked at kit cars when I bought it a few years ago,but they were all open cars, and I wanted something with a roof.

There is a lot of competition in the small coupe field - I was mainly taking issue with the claim that the rivals for a middy coupe kit car were 2nd hand Bentleys and Maseratis.

[Equus]

AW111 said:

I was mainly taking issue with the claim that the rivals for a middy coupe kit car were 2nd hand Bentleys and Maseratis.

That was a slightly tongue-in-cheek comparison, of course: the point I was trying to make is that the realistic cost of a reasonably sophisticated and tolerable-for-everyday-use kit coupe, at the margin a manufacturer needs to be working on for such low-volume cars, will put you in the market for some very special machinery... of whatever flavour happens to float your boat

...and if you have sufficient technical knowledge to build a kit, it's a fair bet that you can run even exotics on a reasonable budget by using specialists instead of main dealers.

There's a reason that the industry has narrowed its sights onto ultra-minimalist trackday-and-weekend-toy cars and a handful of classic replicas in recent years: they're the only products that make sense, any more.

[jamesG20V6]

Utlima buck that trend with road cars.
2 year plus waiting list for factory built cars.

[Equus]

jamesG20V6 said:

Utlima buck that trend with road cars.

Not really. They are still ultra-minimalist (and very expensive) trackday-and-weekend toys, albeit in coupe form.

No sane person would want to run one as their everyday car, which was the original premise of this thread.

[jamesG20V6]

Equus said:

Not really. They are still ultra-minimalist (and very expensive) trackday-and-weekend toys, albeit in coupe form.

No sane person would want to run one as their everyday car, which was the original premise of this thread.

Not sure it was actually. I Raman Elise s2 as my everyday car for ayear and actually was a pain in the arse, literally. Tried it with an s2 exige and bought a second shopping car within weeks and used the lotus for weekend fun. Next up a t350, utterly terrible as an everyday car as was the Tamora I had before it. Boxster S was only one usable as an everyday car but it was not much fun as the lotus around the twisty bits.

In reality I wouldn't want any of them as an everyday car as they all have their failings. They can't be all things to all men and neither can a kit-form coupe.

[Equus]

jamesG20V6 said:

I ran an Elise s2 as my everyday car for a year and actually was a pain in the arse, literally.

I'm surprised, but then I guess we all have different tolerance levels.

I ran an Elise S1 (so rawer than the S2) as my daily for a bit, and found it perfectly OK. It only became a pain in the arse (literally!) after about 130 miles in the saddle, but I didn't do that sort of mileage very often in a single trip. Other than that, it was fine: bit noisy, but the ride was supple and it was cheap and reliable to run, with adequate luggage space, H&V and visibility, perfectly tractable in traffic, etc. The only reason I traded it for a Griffith (BIG mistake) and an 'ordinary' car was that I was putting the mileage on it so fast that it would have rapidly become worthless (at the time, any Elise with more than 30K miles on the clock was considered unsaleable).

Having said which, I also ran Sevens as my only car, including commuting in winter, when I was young and daft... but I don't think you'll find enough people that stupid to make your business plan stack up.

The Ultima is in a different league of user unfriendliness even to the Elise family of cars, though.

The Elise is probably the most direct comparison for this thread, as it is very close in terms of both peformance and usability to probably the best and friendliest coupe product that the kit car industry has so far managed to produce, in the form of the GTM Libra. There were enough people willing to tolerate the GTM's level of practicality to make it viable until the Elise series cars started to filter onto the second-hand market in reasonable numbers; then it was game over.

jamesG20V6 said:

They can't be all things to all men and neither can a kit-form coupe.

.
The problem for coupe kit manufacturers is that the one thing that most men demand of them is that they are more practical and livable than their roadster counterparts. No point, otherwise.

So if you consider an Elise to be above the pain threshold, you're pretty much wasting your time with a coupe kit: there simply aren't enough customers out there who will put their money where their mouth is in choosing a heavier, much more expensive coupe over a spider/roadster as a weekend toy to make the business viable.

The possible exception is if you've got sufficient cash and connections to set up a race series to bolster sales, as Ginetta have done.

Personally, I do think that Elise levels of comfort and practicality are just about acceptable for daily use, but the problem then becomes one of delivering them for second-hand Elise prices.

[jamesG20V6]

Don't get me wrong, the Elise was a brilliant car and the only car of 20+ that I have had and sold and regret doing so.
My point is that 200+miles in winter was not much fun, and that is what I want from a daily driver. What I want from a sportscar is the ability to have fun for 9 months of the year on road trips and days out, not use it to chugg to work in rush hour. Living in central London for 20 years may Have skewed my view a bit.

[Equus]

jamesG20V6 said:

Living in central London for 20 years may Have skewed my view a bit.

Well, that's fair comment! If I lived in central London (or anywhere close), I wouldn't drive on a daily basis in anything, if I could avoid it!

The Elise was as useable in winter as it was in summer, with the exception of lack of aircon for demist. I was at Chorley in the West Pennines at the time, and it was actually surprisingly good on snow, thanks to the traction of being mid-engined. I had some cracking trips back to my home town of Leeds, by the long route over Saddleworth Moor.

I agree that 200 miles would need a break to get some feeling back into your backside, but that was merely a function of the S1 seats having no padding - easily addressed.

A Christmas morning drive from Leeds to the Wrynose Pass in the Lake District, just to pass the time before Christmas Dinner; probably almost exactly a 200 mile round trip, just for the fun of it:

[jamesG20V6]

Well there you go, I did over the tops from Holmfirth to Manchester and back one boxing day in the elise. So maybe I am contradicting my own point! Must be a Leeds thing, grew up there too....

I think your point about the elise being the natural competition is correct and it is the benchmark really. I can't imagine having one as my only car now though, but maybe because I cover 25,000 miles a year with work and am getting older than I once was. I ran a Westfield as an only car at 20 but I had less commitments and only really drove when I wanted to rather than now when I have to.

I think 90% of people in the market for a kit form coupe would be doing so as a second or third car and as such I think such a product has to focus on what is needed to fill that purpose and do it well rather than try and do everything and be compromised as a result. It is on that basis that our car is developing - and developing well. The prototype is rolling, engine in, lights fitted, doors hung.... Looking forward to releasing info when the time is right but for now will leave it there.

[andygtt]

Equus said:

The Ultima is in a different league of user unfriendliness even to the Elise family of cars, though.

Personally, I do think that Elise levels of comfort and practicality are just about acceptable for daily use, but the problem then becomes one of delivering them for second-hand Elise prices.

I don't agree, having had the Ultima and VX220 (more civilised of the elise family) they are very comparable in ride, ease of entry and driving... of cause performance of the Ultima is massively faster and thus thirstier!

I ran my noble as my company car covering 20k a year for the first few years of life... the porsche boxster S it replaced was slow and pants in comparison, reliability and fuel economy was better in the Noble and the noble is simply a smaller engined slightly better refined Ultima made with essentially cheap parts.

However your final sentence is the clincher, people prepared to drive this level of sportswear every day are few and far between, ones that want to actually build it are even rarer and then you have the fact that Lotus etc are available so danm cheap second hand is the killer.

Yes there is a market for a Mid-Engined coupe kit, but you won't sell enough for it to ever be financially viable IMO.

[Equus]

andygtt said:

I don't agree, having had the Ultima and VX220 (more civilised of the elise family) they are very comparable in ride, ease of entry and driving... of cause performance of the Ultima is massively faster and thus thirstier!

I was thinking more of size/ground clearance, rear 3/4 visibility, demist (the ones I've known all leak like sieves in heavy rain from the poor sealing of the beetle-wing doors).

Plus, realistically, how comfortable would you feel leaving it parked up in a city centre while you go for a meal on Friday night, that sort of thing?

I stick by my assertion that you'd need to be a lunatic to try to use one as your everyday car.

[andygtt]

My Ultima was a canam, the cloth roof was effective, it demisted as good as my noble and i drove it through the ford thats 200m from my house most times i took it out and went that way.... i drove it to work, out for dinner, road trips, in the rain, monsoons, snow etc etc

What WAS a nightmare in everyday use was the fact i smelled of petrol every time i go out of it due to the SMC engine, not good when your an accountant in a suit... also like the elise getting in and out had a knack and was an issue for some of my work colleagues when we went to dinner etc.

However most are not built to be used every day, so they spend no time making the cockpit user friendly (proper seat position, sound deadening, half decent interior, stereo, heater setups that will actually work etc) and don't spend time getting door shuts to seal etc etc... I do understand that most consider them just toys and nothing more... but doesn't mean you can't build them more usable without spending any extra significant cash, amazing how small changes can make car more or less usable everyday.

As I say I do agree with you that there isn't a market, just for different reasons