some information please

[GingerWizard]

Hello Kit car Corner'

I have recently had an interesting conversation with my father about the idea of building a kit car. He is soon to build a oak framed 2.5 car width garage all tooled up with everything a man needs. He mentioned that he would like to build a car and i agreed it would be a good thing to do....

Now i have just had a quick look at the caterham website and 15k is a bit much.......

I think it would be a Seven type car we would be after but at this stage ideas are fully open. I understand that its more costly to buy a kit new/ build from ground up, but what sort of money are we talking about? Also we had discussed buying a car that could be Updated* so an older seven and tune it with newer parts.....

i am going to pop out soon and get a kit car magazine so i can start looking at parts etc.....

Can someone give me a push start, some basic info a knees up to start the ball rolling....


a reccomendation of a good mag would do....



Cheers and thanks,

Gwiz

[Paul Drawmer]

If £15K is too much, then what is your Dad's budget?

Oh, and does HE think a seven type is what's required? - They can be pretty extreme if one isn't looking for a bike on four wheels.

Just get an idea what your Dad wants the car to do, fix a budget, trawl the websites of the manufacturers, and then go to Stoneleigh in May. It is the one place where you will be able to see almost everything kit car. The garage wont be built until then anyway.

[Chris71]

Paul Drawmer said:

Oh, and does HE think a seven type is what's required? - They can be pretty extreme if one isn't looking for a bike on four wheels.

People often thing Seven as soon as you mention kit car, but there's a whole load of stuff out there, covering virtually every car genre.

As well as budget, what are you hoping to do with it? Even the Seven clones vary quite a lot in remit. Some, for example, are significantly bigger than others. As a general rule tall drivers are relatively easy to accomodate (I have a friend who must be 6'5 and drives a standard Caterham, albeit with a lowered floor and a taller roll cage) but width can be more of an issue. Likewise, some are more performance orientated and some are geared more towards track work.

If you do go for a Seven type car, you can get older Caterhams from about £7k, depending on what spec you're looking for (£10k buys you something pretty recent to a good mechanical spec needing minor cosmetic work for example). It's a lot of money for what it is, but the level of support is huge - you'll probably have a couple of fellow owners within a 30 or 40 mile radius, which isn't likely to be the case with something more unusual - and also you should get most of it back when it comes to sell. Of the other cars if you're looking for something quite track orientated (without much in the way of mod cons) I'd be very tempted by a Sylva Striker. £7k should buy you a very smart one that will obliterate 90% of cars on a track day. Providing you're on a twisty bit of course... Sevens suffer at higher speeds because of their brick-like aerodynamics.