Car company for sale... on eBay!
Not your average auction temptation. Rejuvenated British automotive icon up for £125,000
That's what we found yesterday: that's right; the trademarks, designs and components of a registered automotive firm were, until last night, up for purchase on eBay. The same ad on another site is still live here.
How Jaguar started: the Swallow sidecar
We spoke to director Peter Schomer, who told us his plan was to build a three-wheeler in the vein of the latest Morgan but using a Harley V-twin engine and styled with a nod to the original aerodynamic looking sidecars.
Seven years later and it hasn't worked out. Now he's asking £125,000 for the blueprints, components to build a car and all the trademarks. He'll consider a swap for a "vintage sports or racecar".
He claims to be in talks with Harley about selling the car in its motorbike showrooms, but the eBay sale hasn't been a success. Too many timewasters and tyre-kickers, he said.
Less kit car, more kit company
Swallow itself is an illustrious name. Swallow Coachbuilding Company Ltd was formed in 1935 to continue building sidecars, Lyons' original business venture, while S.S. Cars (to become Jaguar after WWII) fronted his four-wheeled offerings.
Who knows? What with Morgan kick starting the trend for retro three-wheelers, maybe now's the time to offer up some competition?
doesnt even appear to have secured the domain name for his company from what i can see - or at least have a website presence ???
These words are always used by sellers who are asking more than the market will pay - blame idiot buyers rather than themselves for asking too much. Good luck to him though - it was obviously a dream of his to make this happen.
I reckon a company like Ariel should jump on this!
They have the money, the facilities and the technical ability to make this a reality, while also taking some business from Morgan in the meantime.
Can you imagine a modern chassis built by Ariel, running a modern Harley TwinCam V-twin, and all wrapped in a 30's style sidecar body. I reckon it'd be a hit!
Dumb Yanks would snap them up faster than the last packs of Twinkies in Wallmart.
If you get the components for a car and all the designs, where are they?
All I can see is styling sketches. Which are unlikely to have been drawn by the person who designed it.
Which in turn makes it highly likely that the pictures aren't representative of a feasible design.
They might have a chance of that sort of money if they built a prototype and got some interest going - although TBH even then, without orders / deposits and a demonstrable business it'd be a push to get 50k.
But if the buyer needed to invest in tooling and jigs they're looking at the same again to build car number 2 that they can sell to a punter.
Anyone mental enough to put themselves up against Morgan at the top of the 3-wheeler market (and Lomax at the bottom end) would do well to save themselves 125k, build something similar to these styling images, and think up another name from the 30s. There's plenty to choose from.
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