I'd love to be able to restore this!

[edo]

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/3670279.htm

I assume it would cost an absolute fortune!

[Monkeylegend]

Lovely car but I think it would have to be a labour of love. I bet you could easily double the cost at least just getting the cosmetics right without any mechanical restoration that might be needed.

[soad]

That's nice, would feel very special once fully restored.

[davepoth]

Monkeylegend said:

Lovely car but I think it would have to be a labour of love. I bet you could easily double the cost at least just getting the cosmetics right without any mechanical restoration that might be needed.

Yup. Here's a really nice example, a bit older (which usually makes it worth more) which is only going for £15,500, so there's only £8k to make the resto worthwhile. More than half of that would be spent on painting alone, possibly more.

http://www.vintagesportscars.com/64mbz230sl.html

[edo]

davepoth said:

Monkeylegend said:

Lovely car but I think it would have to be a labour of love. I bet you could easily double the cost at least just getting the cosmetics right without any mechanical restoration that might be needed.

Yup. Here's a really nice example, a bit older (which usually makes it worth more) which is only going for £15,500, so there's only £8k to make the resto worthwhile. More than half of that would be spent on painting alone, possibly more.

http://www.vintagesportscars.com/64mbz230sl.html

That's lovely.

[chazola]

depends how much you could do yourself- if the car is complete and panels are good with no rust it makes things a lot easier as the original quality is usually very good and can be brought back to life with plenty of elbow grease. Missing trim/body parts like bumpers can be eye-wateringly expensive but can be had for peanuts on ebay Germany if you're lucky. That model is bottom of the range with the 230 engine, but looks pretty complete and original. Decent RHD SL's go for around 25k +, for this one I reckon you'd need to spend 3-5k on a good respray, and a grand or 2 getting the interior sorted depending on how much you did yourself. Then a while with a specialist getting the mechanicals sorted, brakes are straight-forward on these, the Bosch fuel injection is quite picky about how it's set up but reliable once sorted. Gearboxes and engines are usually solid.
I partly restored a '67 S-class, mechanically similar to the SL, it'd had a good respray and was 99% complete, I did the mechanicals and interior and it's wasn't too expensive to get looking really good. Fuel costs on the other hand...

[twazzock]

Somehow from the thread title I could tell this would be an old Merc. The SLs are gorgeous, aren't they? I'd love to see the mechanicals and trim restored then nonchalantly driven with the current patina

[Fort Jefferson]

edo said:

I assume it would cost an absolute fortune!

Even if the car came free of change, by the time you'd shipped here and restored it, it would cost you twice as much as it would be worth when you'd finished.

[12gauge]

I quite like it how it is! Do any mechanical stuff and keep the beat up bodywork, its got character!