Very Cheap Chimaera for sale on Retrorides
Discussion
Well this might be the roughest chim I've ever seen, for sale on Retrorides:
https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/215402/tvr-ch...
I didn't think I'd find a cheaper one than mine but here it is! Very odd MOT history and appears to have been left sitting outside for years. I'd love to have a go at fixing it but one knackered TVR is enough for me, seller reckons the chassis is ok and supposedly only around 40k miles.
https://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/215402/tvr-ch...
I didn't think I'd find a cheaper one than mine but here it is! Very odd MOT history and appears to have been left sitting outside for years. I'd love to have a go at fixing it but one knackered TVR is enough for me, seller reckons the chassis is ok and supposedly only around 40k miles.
mbwoy84 said:
I posted up on there saying I'd have it 4 minutes after the advert was posted, but haven't heard from the seller yet!
Good luck on getting it! What's your plans for it? 2 sMoKiN bArReLs said:
M reg, but with key slot in door release button. (Makes it very early M reg). Rear lights are much later.
Seller says it's cat D so perhaps the original rear lights were damaged? Shed TVR said:
mbwoy84 said:
I posted up on there saying I'd have it 4 minutes after the advert was posted, but haven't heard from the seller yet!
Good luck on getting it! What's your plans for it? BUT
The seller ignored my post and the asking price has mysteriously gone up by £1000.
Now I don’t think that asking £6000 for that car is in any way unreasonable, but not very good etiquette to post a car for sale at £5000 on a community-based forum, effective sell the car almost instantly and then think “oh, that was too easy, let’s ignore that and put the price up!”
mbwoy84 said:
Well it would have been body off, proper chassis protection (following any repairs if required) and a respray in something suitably lairy (Arancio Borealis probably the favourite), then finished off nicely with new carpets, retrimmed roof etc and some better tyres.
BUT
The seller ignored my post and the asking price has mysteriously gone up by £1000.
Now I don’t think that asking £6000 for that car is in any way unreasonable, but not very good etiquette to post a car for sale at £5000 on a community-based forum, effective sell the car almost instantly and then think “oh, that was too easy, let’s ignore that and put the price up!”
Agreed, maybe leave it and see if the price comes down again? I think even at 6k, not many would be brave enough BUT
The seller ignored my post and the asking price has mysteriously gone up by £1000.
Now I don’t think that asking £6000 for that car is in any way unreasonable, but not very good etiquette to post a car for sale at £5000 on a community-based forum, effective sell the car almost instantly and then think “oh, that was too easy, let’s ignore that and put the price up!”
Plans for it sound great, if you do manage to get it please put a thread up I'd be very interested!
phazed said:
Just do the sums. All that work and a Cat D. Mileage could be anything!
It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
If you have the time and the skills and there’s nothing horrendous hidden (a chance you take with almost any car from the worst to the best examples on sale) then I wouldn’t expect to spend any more than £2K-£2.5k on it.It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
£10k is also the figure I’d put on it as a cat D with no history to speak of, but done fully documented to an immaculate standard (chassis, body, mechanicals, electrics, roof and interior) and finished in an interesting and attractive colour, then you might possibly be able to squeeze that up to £12k to the right person.
Belle427 said:
If your business is restoring then your probably right but to someone else a paint job alone or pro interior job would Probably be close to that.
Very true. In 99% of cases, you won’t “profit” out of paying someone else to do significant restoration work on a vehicle. On that car though, all the interior appears to be virtually mint apart from a lack of carpets. The roof would be the Most expensive part.
Not sure I could see the point as the numbers in nett terms will end up being negative as it will cost more to buy and retore than the final value for sure.
Unless you are very very handy with a spanner and value your time at zero I can't see it makes sense.
There are plenty better options that would still give you a project with better entry and exit numbers.
I've bought a fully restored Chimaera 500 a year ago that has everything fully removed and rebuilt short of a respray including full interior retrim that cost comfortably under £20k that will never depreciation IMHO. For me it respesented really good value.
We are all different of course and want different things but this doesn't seem a great option IMHO.
Unless you are very very handy with a spanner and value your time at zero I can't see it makes sense.
There are plenty better options that would still give you a project with better entry and exit numbers.
I've bought a fully restored Chimaera 500 a year ago that has everything fully removed and rebuilt short of a respray including full interior retrim that cost comfortably under £20k that will never depreciation IMHO. For me it respesented really good value.
We are all different of course and want different things but this doesn't seem a great option IMHO.
Preparing and painting one of these cars with a new colour is a time consuming business alone. Sadly I have to agree with most that think this would be a waste of time if aiming on selling it forth with!
As a project car for yourself that opens all sorts up but being a Cat D I find it hard to see who wants to Invest heavily in it at this point. £6000 sounds a bit steep let alone cat D
I think the seller should have sold it at 5k as that seems high to me. It’s just a complete risk on every part of the car, huge job and it would still only be a standard car at that point. I agree a proper sorted car for 20k is cheaper than doing it this way unless your in the trade and it’s a fill in jobby so you can offset what would otherwise be a huge labour bill. You have to make this car special somehow, new ecu etc but it’s still a cat D
As a project car for yourself that opens all sorts up but being a Cat D I find it hard to see who wants to Invest heavily in it at this point. £6000 sounds a bit steep let alone cat D
I think the seller should have sold it at 5k as that seems high to me. It’s just a complete risk on every part of the car, huge job and it would still only be a standard car at that point. I agree a proper sorted car for 20k is cheaper than doing it this way unless your in the trade and it’s a fill in jobby so you can offset what would otherwise be a huge labour bill. You have to make this car special somehow, new ecu etc but it’s still a cat D
mbwoy84 said:
phazed said:
Just do the sums. All that work and a Cat D. Mileage could be anything!
It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
If you have the time and the skills and there’s nothing horrendous hidden (a chance you take with almost any car from the worst to the best examples on sale) then I wouldn’t expect to spend any more than £2K-£2.5k on it.It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
that kind of budget wont have it looking in much better condition than those pictures The one thing you can’t avoid if you want a top line TVR is spending a considerable amount of money or we’d all have one 
I think 10 years ago folk were still buying them on their original bone hard rubber tyres 
it was normal, but as tech moves on most of us have moved on with it so a good car should really be a very well engineered car by now including better tyres and basic tech.
I’m pretty sure if I bought another Tvr I’d be changing the engine management ASAP as that’s a game changer in its own right. Everything you do from that point on is just a bonus, that single big change if done by the best around or you do a pro job yourself allows your focus to move into perfecting or at least maintaining other areas without the nagging issues hot electrics constantly cause these cars. They are just old really. It depends on how much you put reliability at the top of your list and that’s got to be down to how much you want to use and enjoy the car.
Each to their own but I’ve so turned away from the distributor idea and all it’s associated fault points.
I can’t understand why anyone would go to the trouble of restring one of these cars without replacing what I feel is it’s only real stumbling block, it’s engine control system and associated electrics. If you have a savvi engineer they replace battery cables and tidy up all that terrible loom wiring. It’s all gone and replaced with a modern loom that’s actually designed specifically for the job. Big cams, better tech, instant fuel / ignition control gets the best out of it all and in my cars case made it feel very modern and reliable as a clock even in extreme weather. Running a 4K rebuilt engine I hated it’s over fuelling at times, just thought I’m washing bores here so yes indeed it’s much better on fuel and runs crisp as a two stroke really. 15000 miles on the ecu with not a thing changed as I’m using Iridium plugs so another 5000 in those yet. They look new by the way. Well on the CUX I’d have serviced the ignition components 3 times by now if I hoped for reliability which is a lot of agro and money Just buying bloody decent dizzy caps for a start.
It makes perfect sense if you wanna put the miles in or aim to have a good TVR for a decade or so with hopefully few engine electrical faults. If you are a proper tourer type which I suppose few of us are then this is the way to go as overall the cost is minimal for what it should achieve. I think more of us would use these cars for longer journeys if we felt more confident, it’s why most are bit part cars which is sad as they are about the best Brit sportscars around for the money in a practical sense but only really when you can dial in some modern reliability.
I think 10 years ago folk were still buying them on their original bone hard rubber tyres it was normal, but as tech moves on most of us have moved on with it so a good car should really be a very well engineered car by now including better tyres and basic tech. I’m pretty sure if I bought another Tvr I’d be changing the engine management ASAP as that’s a game changer in its own right. Everything you do from that point on is just a bonus, that single big change if done by the best around or you do a pro job yourself allows your focus to move into perfecting or at least maintaining other areas without the nagging issues hot electrics constantly cause these cars. They are just old really. It depends on how much you put reliability at the top of your list and that’s got to be down to how much you want to use and enjoy the car.
Each to their own but I’ve so turned away from the distributor idea and all it’s associated fault points.
I can’t understand why anyone would go to the trouble of restring one of these cars without replacing what I feel is it’s only real stumbling block, it’s engine control system and associated electrics. If you have a savvi engineer they replace battery cables and tidy up all that terrible loom wiring. It’s all gone and replaced with a modern loom that’s actually designed specifically for the job. Big cams, better tech, instant fuel / ignition control gets the best out of it all and in my cars case made it feel very modern and reliable as a clock even in extreme weather. Running a 4K rebuilt engine I hated it’s over fuelling at times, just thought I’m washing bores here so yes indeed it’s much better on fuel and runs crisp as a two stroke really. 15000 miles on the ecu with not a thing changed as I’m using Iridium plugs so another 5000 in those yet. They look new by the way. Well on the CUX I’d have serviced the ignition components 3 times by now if I hoped for reliability which is a lot of agro and money Just buying bloody decent dizzy caps for a start.
It makes perfect sense if you wanna put the miles in or aim to have a good TVR for a decade or so with hopefully few engine electrical faults. If you are a proper tourer type which I suppose few of us are then this is the way to go as overall the cost is minimal for what it should achieve. I think more of us would use these cars for longer journeys if we felt more confident, it’s why most are bit part cars which is sad as they are about the best Brit sportscars around for the money in a practical sense but only really when you can dial in some modern reliability.
Edited by Classic Chim on Sunday 23 August 11:39
Edited by Classic Chim on Sunday 23 August 11:40
phazed said:
Just do the sums. All that work and a Cat D. Mileage could be anything!
It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
exactly would i thought too.....no mmatter if it costs 5k or 6k.....you need to throw-in quite a lot of money......at the end of the day you may buy one for less than that which you can immediately enjoy.It will end up costing £15K to do the right job and be worth £10K.
Why bother unless you really want to strip and rebuild one.
Just my tuppence worth........
ok...unless your aim is to restore a car and not to drive it.....
to be honest, from the description the car sounds like a bargain at 1st look, but it should only costs 3-4k to verify the restoration costs.
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