Nick Farrow
Donation Time
Hi everyone,
I don't know how much you guys can help me on this as you're mostly in the US where car values seem to be completely different to ours in the UK, but you might be able to give me some insight. I posted this post on the SAOC forum, but it seems to be all but deserted so I'm not expecting an answer any time soon, which could end up being too late! Anyway, here's the post, hope you can help.....
I've wanted an Alpine since I can remember, but have bever been in the market to buy a good one before, that is until now. I'm only really interested in the SIs-SIIIs and I've got a budget of around £7000.
Today I went to see my first one - it's a Red '63 GT with an asking price of £6995. I know this is going to be a very difficult question to answer, but I need to know if it's worth that much. I looked over the car thoroughly for about an hour checking all the places I think I should have and this is what I found:
The car had apparently had a bare-metal respray about seven years ago, and this showed! The paintwork was lovely and I simply couldn't find a blemish anywhere on the exterior. I spent a long time examining the underside of the car. The whole car had been undersealed (not great IMO as underseal invariable causes more trouble than anything else), but the underseal looked absolutely spotless and was black and still supple, unlike the brown crumbly underseal you get on some old cars! There was absolutely no corrosion. I checked all round the sills, the cross-brace, wheels arches etc. The door gaps looked OK, although they were not 100% perfect, but the gap (which was small) was even rather than being proud at the bottom or top. The owner said the car had never been used in the rain and the condition of the car backed this up. All in all the exterior was practically faultless.
The interior is a slightly different story. The things I noticed were that the dashboard had a couple of cracks in the veneer, both seats looked tatty and worn and the drivers seat had a tear. The rear 'seat' was also very tatty and the side trims in the back had broken away from their fastenings. The carpet, although it didn't look too bad, was loose and flapping about here and there. The steering column shroud also seed to have an extra hole on the left hand side for some kind of stalk which was not present and there seemed to be a large gap between the edge of the shroud and the steering wheel.
While driving I noticed that the oil pressure seemed fine and the temperature stayed below 90deg. I did notice that the speedo was way out, registering about 60mph when travelling at about 40mph. I also noticed that there was a yellow light that stayed on next to the clock in the centre - I quizzed the guy about it, but he didn't really seem to know what it was!!!
Under the bonnet things were fairly clean, but not matching the exterior - obviously the bare metal respray didn't go this far. There was no visible rust, apart from on the top of the cross member, but this was just a bit of surface rust. The engine was a non-standard 1725cc with twin Zenith Strombergs.
All in all, I was impressed with the exterior, but not so with the interior and under-bonnet. I've owned several classic cars since I was 17, but I have no experience with Alpines, so I would just like to know if this car is or isn't worth what they are asking. As far as I'm concerned, for £7K I'm expecting the inside to match the outside in quality, but I may be way off the mark!
If anyone could give me a little input on this, I'd be really grateful as it's a lot of money to spend and I don't want to get it wrong!
Cheers
Nick
I don't know how much you guys can help me on this as you're mostly in the US where car values seem to be completely different to ours in the UK, but you might be able to give me some insight. I posted this post on the SAOC forum, but it seems to be all but deserted so I'm not expecting an answer any time soon, which could end up being too late! Anyway, here's the post, hope you can help.....
I've wanted an Alpine since I can remember, but have bever been in the market to buy a good one before, that is until now. I'm only really interested in the SIs-SIIIs and I've got a budget of around £7000.
Today I went to see my first one - it's a Red '63 GT with an asking price of £6995. I know this is going to be a very difficult question to answer, but I need to know if it's worth that much. I looked over the car thoroughly for about an hour checking all the places I think I should have and this is what I found:
The car had apparently had a bare-metal respray about seven years ago, and this showed! The paintwork was lovely and I simply couldn't find a blemish anywhere on the exterior. I spent a long time examining the underside of the car. The whole car had been undersealed (not great IMO as underseal invariable causes more trouble than anything else), but the underseal looked absolutely spotless and was black and still supple, unlike the brown crumbly underseal you get on some old cars! There was absolutely no corrosion. I checked all round the sills, the cross-brace, wheels arches etc. The door gaps looked OK, although they were not 100% perfect, but the gap (which was small) was even rather than being proud at the bottom or top. The owner said the car had never been used in the rain and the condition of the car backed this up. All in all the exterior was practically faultless.
The interior is a slightly different story. The things I noticed were that the dashboard had a couple of cracks in the veneer, both seats looked tatty and worn and the drivers seat had a tear. The rear 'seat' was also very tatty and the side trims in the back had broken away from their fastenings. The carpet, although it didn't look too bad, was loose and flapping about here and there. The steering column shroud also seed to have an extra hole on the left hand side for some kind of stalk which was not present and there seemed to be a large gap between the edge of the shroud and the steering wheel.
While driving I noticed that the oil pressure seemed fine and the temperature stayed below 90deg. I did notice that the speedo was way out, registering about 60mph when travelling at about 40mph. I also noticed that there was a yellow light that stayed on next to the clock in the centre - I quizzed the guy about it, but he didn't really seem to know what it was!!!
Under the bonnet things were fairly clean, but not matching the exterior - obviously the bare metal respray didn't go this far. There was no visible rust, apart from on the top of the cross member, but this was just a bit of surface rust. The engine was a non-standard 1725cc with twin Zenith Strombergs.
All in all, I was impressed with the exterior, but not so with the interior and under-bonnet. I've owned several classic cars since I was 17, but I have no experience with Alpines, so I would just like to know if this car is or isn't worth what they are asking. As far as I'm concerned, for £7K I'm expecting the inside to match the outside in quality, but I may be way off the mark!
If anyone could give me a little input on this, I'd be really grateful as it's a lot of money to spend and I don't want to get it wrong!
Cheers
Nick