cars that would make great kit cars.

[horton]

i know next to nothing about kitcars, ive never owned or built one.
however after reading about the westfield/mazda, i started to wonder what cars have the potential to make a good kitcar.

im sure there are already some cars based on what im going to list, but im just not aware of them.

mr2 turbo: toyota reliability, already mid-engined, lots of potential to be tuned. this could be a low priced exige eater.

bmw e30: rwd, lots are available, a nicer sounding engine than most low budget 4cyl cars.

impreza wrx/sti / lancer evo. more power and potential than you would ever need in a sub 1000kg kitcar. althoug I have no idea how much of the drivetrain you could use, just to use the engine/gearbox would be such a waste, if you could manage it a 4wd, 300bhp, 800kg kitcar would be as good as performer as just about anything I could think of.

I realise these are just mindless comments, with no technical backup, im just interested if these cars have ever been used, or if its possible.

oh yes, and i know some american was building/planning something on the mr2.

[grahambell]

Hi horton,

BMW has been used by Marlin for their traditional style roadster as well as for the Python Cobra replica. There's also a Belgian company making a Cobra replica using BMW parts.

Don't know of any using Mitsubishi Evo, but the new Adrenaline Motorsports Murtaya uses Impreza parts, including the four wheel drive. Think there are some companies in Australia/New Zealand using it too.

As for the MR2, there's a kit car in the UK that uses it, but it's so new I haven't got the details - yet.

[AdamW]

grahambell said:

As for the MR2, there's a kit car in the UK that uses it, but it's so new I haven't got the details - yet.

I presume we're talking Mk2 if it's a turbo? In which case don't forget the Veranti and various Ferrari 355 replicas. There was also the SARD Le Mans car replica that appeared at a couple of shows in 2006, but has gone quiet of late...

[grahambell]

AdamW said:

I presume we're talking Mk2 if it's a turbo? In which case don't forget the Veranti and various Ferrari 355 replicas. There was also the SARD Le Mans car replica that appeared at a couple of shows in 2006, but has gone quiet of late...

Fair point, though these are all panel kits rather than true kit cars which is why I didn't mention them.

The car I referred to is the Veleno, which was debuted at Stoneleigh this year but has subsequently been subject to major reworking. Haven't seen it since which is why I hadn't got details. However, having spoken to the manufacturer today I can confirm it will have a bespoke chassis made to take full MR2 running gear including suspension.

[annodomini2]

Nissan 200SX

Front Transverse to Mid, most front wheel drive cars with a transverse mounted engine.

Front Inline to Mid, probably suited to bigger applications such as Ultima. VW/Audi 1.8/2.0T, V6's and V8's complete with transaxle. Volvo T5's

[Chris71]

Seen a Morris Minor bodied 200 SX, that should be fun at the lights!!

Not sure about the complexities of the rally nut mobiles in kit form, although a lot of antipodean kits seem to use scooby bits!

Erm, was trying to think of any other RWD cars - MX5 maybe, as pioneered by westfield. But let's not forget the traditional routine of sticking a transverse FWD subframe into the back of a car. I'd go for stuff with nice engines and light weight. Ford Puma 1.7, Clio 182 maybe....

Gonna get my E30 back on the road at the weekend. Was speaking to the people who do the new Marlin at Exeter t'other day. That was a vague possibility. If anyone wants an E30 6 cylinder let me know, mines at www.pistonheads.com/sales/110089.htm

[kingb]

id like to see something based on the s2000 just for the engine and all those revs

[D-Angle]

Vauxhall Omega? It's RWD, can take a V8, and they're ridiculously cheap these days. It could also accomodate larger designs than some of the other RWD donors mentioned.

[annodomini2]

D-Angle said:

Vauxhall Omega? It's RWD, can take a V8, and they're ridiculously cheap these days. It could also accomodate larger designs than some of the other RWD donors mentioned.

Other way around, taking the engine from a car and building a kit car around it, although using the Drivetrain from an Omega may be a possibility.

[striker 20v]

well, lots really

for sevens:
toyota AE86 corolla
mazda mx5
BMW Z3 and everyone (hasnt; been done much but would be nice)
nissan 200sx

for middies
any CRX or Civic for easy install
anything frontengined FWD thing that is fast and fisicly fits the chassis you're using.

just keep weight as low as possible and you'll be fast anyway.

grtz Thomas

[cymtriks]

The ideal donor car is-
1)Plentiful
Far too many kits have been based on obscure cars that require a prospective builder to search for a rare car before they even start. If you don't see a possible donor car every day on your daily commute then it is probably too rare to make a business case from.

2)recent
Basing a car on the original Beetle mat have made a lot of sense back in the seventies but even then the car was out of production. Now there are being restored as they approach classic status. The same goes for Jag 3 series or MGBs, they made sense once but not any more. Also there are emissions to consider and spare parts. If I was designing a car now I'd look for a donor that had only just entered production thus ensuring a long life for the project. Using a car that is just out of production and available now as scrap is just daft, in a few years your kit will be dead, there will be no donors left.

3)cheap
Anything which depreciates quickly and is unlikely to aquire classic or cult status is ideal. You'll be able to pick up a car with plenty of life left in all of the major parts fairly easily.

I would suggest, with the best choices first-
Ford Fiesta/Focus (mid engined small car)
Audi A4, A6, A8 (mid engined longitudinal kit)
Honda Civic type R (I'm bending some of the above rules for THAT engine)
BMW 3/5/7 series (common now and a nice range of engines)
Lexus IS200/400/430 (Not common but cheap and the V8 is very tunable)

[Dave Dax Builder]

Careful with point 2.
I don't know of many people who would be prepared to spend £15K on a donor vehicle. It would then be cheaper to go for bespoke running gear.

BMW 3 series (E36/46) outsold the Ford Mondeo. They may just be the future for RWD based kits.

[Davi]

Dave Dax Builder said:

Careful with point 2.
I don't know of many people who would be prepared to spend £15K on a donor vehicle. It would then be cheaper to go for bespoke running gear.

BMW 3 series (E36/46) outsold the Ford Mondeo. They may just be the future for RWD based kits.

exactly my thought - going for something that recent would be a real mistake. You want something plentiful, absolutely, but you also want to avoid something that is going to cost more for the donor than the kit! That means it's got to either be a car that intrinsically cheap within weeks of coming off the production line, or it's got to be an older car, or it's got to be bespoke.

I think the best option is to go for a donor that has many different models available, so you can get those who want cheap/cheerful/easy going for the readily available donors, with those prepared to spend the extra going for something maybe a little harder to find.

[cymtriks]

Davi said:

Dave Dax Builder said:

Careful with point 2.
I don't know of many people who would be prepared to spend £15K on a donor vehicle. It would then be cheaper to go for bespoke running gear.

BMW 3 series (E36/46) outsold the Ford Mondeo. They may just be the future for RWD based kits.

exactly my thought - going for something that recent would be a real mistake. You want something plentiful, absolutely, but you also want to avoid something that is going to cost more for the donor than the kit! That means it's got to either be a car that intrinsically cheap within weeks of coming off the production line, or it's got to be an older car, or it's got to be bespoke.

I think the best option is to go for a donor that has many different models available, so you can get those who want cheap/cheerful/easy going for the readily available donors, with those prepared to spend the extra going for something maybe a little harder to find.

Point two is vaild.

A new kit will take a year at least, I assume, to bring to market by which time the new donor car will have been around for 1-2 years. Assuming that the choice is something popular, like a Focus, there will be a few wrecks around by then and in another few years you'll be spoilt for choice with older examples being worth peanuts and the scrapyards having plenty.

Your arbitrary figure of 15K is nonsense, no one will pay that for a donor, they'll look in a scrap yard first or use new parts.

The aim of chosing a new donor for a new design is to ensure that your kit has enough life in it not to require radical re engineering within a short timescale. Remember that, unless your project is a one off, that a business case needs to exist for the choice. A car common now in the scrap yards may be gone in five years time if it isn't a popular car.

On these pages I've seen estimates of over 250K to get the Libra into production, do you think they'd ever break even if their donor cars dried up in a few years?

To take some extreme examples of Donor cars disappearing consider the Banham 550 and Chesil Speedsters. Skoda Estelle and Beetle based respectively. Now the last time I saw a Rapid/Estelle was a couple of years ago, the time before that a couple of years earlier and the time before that IN A MUSEUM! You need to go back to the mid/late nineties to find a plentiful scrap yard supply but even then scrap yard dealers told me that parts would dry up in a few years. As for the Beetle there's a couple near me. Both are currently being restored as the Beetle is now a classic car! I can only think of one person who owned a Beetle in my circle of friends back in the 80s (twenty years ago!) and even then they hid the rust with tacky bodykits.

If I was designing a new kit I'd start with a newish donor in mind for these reasons.

[Davi]

cymtriks said:

Point two is vaild.

A new kit will take a year at least, I assume, to bring to market by which time the new donor car will have been around for 1-2 years. Assuming that the choice is something popular, like a Focus, there will be a few wrecks around by then and in another few years you'll be spoilt for choice with older examples being worth peanuts and the scrapyards having plenty.

Your arbitrary figure of 15K is nonsense, no one will pay that for a donor, they'll look in a scrap yard first or use new parts.

The aim of chosing a new donor for a new design is to ensure that your kit has enough life in it not to require radical re engineering within a short timescale. Remember that, unless your project is a one off, that a business case needs to exist for the choice. A car common now in the scrap yards may be gone in five years time if it isn't a popular car.

On these pages I've seen estimates of over 250K to get the Libra into production, do you think they'd ever break even if their donor cars dried up in a few years?

To take some extreme examples of Donor cars disappearing consider the Banham 550 and Chesil Speedsters. Skoda Estelle and Beetle based respectively. Now the last time I saw a Rapid/Estelle was a couple of years ago, the time before that a couple of years earlier and the time before that IN A MUSEUM! You need to go back to the mid/late nineties to find a plentiful scrap yard supply but even then scrap yard dealers told me that parts would dry up in a few years. As for the Beetle there's a couple near me. Both are currently being restored as the Beetle is now a classic car! I can only think of one person who owned a Beetle in my circle of friends back in the 80s (twenty years ago!) and even then they hid the rust with tacky bodykits.

If I was designing a new kit I'd start with a newish donor in mind for these reasons.

It's valid in as much as it's stupid to build a kit based on donor that is becoming unsourceable, but even using your own reasoning it would be wrong to base it on a new production model - what happens if it's massively unpopular and doesn't sell? You need middle ground - a car that is proven to be popular, with many already on the road, but that has also been around long enough that they are appearing cheap in need of repairs/scrap/etc.

Beetle based still makes very good sense as the aftermarket support available is enormous. You can still find Beetles a plenty being sold as little more than scrap, and even if they dry up there is all the necessary (like, every component) still available to purchase new. (having restored, customised and owned numerous beetles, I can tell you there are few cars as easy to get hold of parts for!!). They always have been "restored" as classics, they probably always will.

[cymtriks]

Davi said:

cymtriks said:

Point two is vaild.

A new kit will take a year at least, I assume, to bring to market by which time the new donor car will have been around for 1-2 years. Assuming that the choice is something popular, like a Focus, there will be a few wrecks around by then and in another few years you'll be spoilt for choice with older examples being worth peanuts and the scrapyards having plenty.

Your arbitrary figure of 15K is nonsense, no one will pay that for a donor, they'll look in a scrap yard first or use new parts.

The aim of chosing a new donor for a new design is to ensure that your kit has enough life in it not to require radical re engineering within a short timescale. Remember that, unless your project is a one off, that a business case needs to exist for the choice. A car common now in the scrap yards may be gone in five years time if it isn't a popular car.

On these pages I've seen estimates of over 250K to get the Libra into production, do you think they'd ever break even if their donor cars dried up in a few years?

To take some extreme examples of Donor cars disappearing consider the Banham 550 and Chesil Speedsters. Skoda Estelle and Beetle based respectively. Now the last time I saw a Rapid/Estelle was a couple of years ago, the time before that a couple of years earlier and the time before that IN A MUSEUM! You need to go back to the mid/late nineties to find a plentiful scrap yard supply but even then scrap yard dealers told me that parts would dry up in a few years. As for the Beetle there's a couple near me. Both are currently being restored as the Beetle is now a classic car! I can only think of one person who owned a Beetle in my circle of friends back in the 80s (twenty years ago!) and even then they hid the rust with tacky bodykits.

If I was designing a new kit I'd start with a newish donor in mind for these reasons.

It's valid in as much as it's stupid to build a kit based on donor that is becoming unsourceable, but even using your own reasoning it would be wrong to base it on a new production model - what happens if it's massively unpopular and doesn't sell? You need middle ground - a car that is proven to be popular, with many already on the road, but that has also been around long enough that they are appearing cheap in need of repairs/scrap/etc.

Beetle based still makes very good sense as the aftermarket support available is enormous. You can still find Beetles a plenty being sold as little more than scrap, and even if they dry up there is all the necessary (like, every component) still available to purchase new. (having restored, customised and owned numerous beetles, I can tell you there are few cars as easy to get hold of parts for!!). They always have been "restored" as classics, they probably always will.

Many new models will obviously sell in huge numbers. A new Focus/Golf/Fiesta/Polo/Astra for example. By the time you have identified a newish model, started your design, striped a crashed car to determine how you'll make your car around it and actually made your first kit I'd imagine that your project will be circa a year old at least, probably more like two years, with the donor being around for something like a year longer.

By that time the scrap yards will be filling up and there are obviously going to be new parts for sale at any time. In the long term you now have perhaps ten years of availability to draw on, possibly longer, which makes it that much easier to cover your costs. Your kit will be establishing itself in the market place, perhaps a couple of years after launch or four to five years after the donor was launched, at the very time that the maximum number of donors are on the roads and the highest milage older ones are heading towards donor prices.

I accept that the Beetle might not have been the best case to argue from but it's an unlikely donor these days unless you are making a buggy or an early porsche replica. Emissions will kill the older donor car off one day anyway.

There seems to be a general concensus here that the future of kits revolves around striping down ancient wrecks. This attitude will kill the industry and won't do anything for the dodgy image of kits in the meantime. The number of people who do this level of work on their own car is falling rapidly as new cars break down less and paying someone else to do the work becomes even more common. What is really needed to clean up the market is a move towards specific parts lists (no more vague assurances that any part will fit) of newer parts (no more kits based on ancient wrecks).

[Davi]

cymtriks said:

There seems to be a general concensus here that the future of kits revolves around striping down ancient wrecks. This attitude will kill the industry and won't do anything for the dodgy image of kits in the meantime. The number of people who do this level of work on their own car is falling rapidly as new cars break down less and paying someone else to do the work becomes even more common. What is really needed to clean up the market is a move towards specific parts lists (no more vague assurances that any part will fit) of newer parts (no more kits based on ancient wrecks).

absolutely nothing like that suggestion coming from me. "Ancient wrecks" are not the way forward in any shape or form. A vehicle which is 5 or 6 years old is NOT an ancient wreck. Don't know how much time you spend in scrap yards, but in any of the 4 or 5 I regularly visit you simply do not see new cars being split for spares, they are all in a seperate compound for sale as going concerns to be repaired - which writes them straight off the list for viable donors in most cases due to the price tag they invite.

Specific parts lists were common on kits 10 years ago, not sure how they are now as I haven't been as heavily into them recently as I have in the past, but from what I have seen not a lot has changed. Yes you'll get the kit that is "vague" but from recent shows I can't see things have changed much, they still have parts lists.

I know only too well that many people totally ignore the lists and modified the vehicle as they see fit, but then I think that's the point of a kit car, you make of it what you will. If you want a true kit - i.e. you buy essentially a large airfix kit that contains every item you need to get it on the road, I expect if you speak to someone at a factory nicely they'll provide that for you at a price!

Edited by Davi on Monday 27th November 14:27

[Roman]

I think the 2.0 & 2.5 litre streight six BMW E30 3 series would be excellent for 50's & '60's 'sports racer' type replicas (Tojero, Lister etc). Single donor & little trim would make it cheap & light too.

The track and wheelbase are almost narrow and short enough for a nice Ace or Healey replica, cheap, plentiful and a nice straight six soundtrack with good steering, brakes & gearbox + plentiful spares back up.

It would be a nice alternative to a seven. Even the steel slotted wheels look reasonably 'period'.

Edited by Roman on Tuesday 28th November 18:16

[niva441]

Any BMW

There would be less of them on the road then.