My reactions and opinions re. 700k Box Type

Over the weekend, I saw an interesting post in a car club discussion. Something about an '86 model Box type Lancer being sold for 700,000 Pesos (US$16,300).

This is the car pictured in the online ad site;

And the description read as follows (copied from the actual ad) 

" MITSUBISHI LANCER BOXTYPE SL 1986 MODEL

101% FULLY RESTORED!!!
101% ALL ORIG PARTS AND ACCESSORIES
VERY VERY FRESH IN & OUT
VERY VERY COOL AIRCONDITION
BRAND NEW 13" ENKEI MAG WHEELS (JAPAN)
CHROME ENGINE AND UNDER CHASIS
VERY SELDOM USED
 *** INCLUDES BRAND NEW ORIGINAL SPARE PARTS - TAIL LIGHT ; CLEARANCE LIGHT ; MMC GRILLS ; ETC. ***
RESTORED BY ALEX CAR RESTORATION

FOR SERIOUS INQUIRY AND COLLECTORS ONLY ORFOR YOUR EYES ONLY...


ASKING PRICE : p700,000(NEG)" 

[p.s. people who write ads like that, in that color, high light and font, rank as an special kind of annoying in my opinion]

Now, there were all sorts of violent reactions in both the ad and in the discussion I read about the price and comparisons were made as to what else you could buy for 700k. Personally won't buy it, I'd instead get something else, or spend the money on my own project cars or maybe even splurge on 5384 Cheeseburger meals at Mc Donalds. 

I personally don't like the setup, There's no such thing as 101% restored because you really can't go 1% over the whole damn car, I don't care for the chromed bits, stock engines give me allergic reactions and the choice of wheels is about as garden variety as you can get. The ad does say the car has been sold and I would think for less than the asking price. But since this has caught my interested, focusing our discussion on the car for a moment, is 700k for this really that unreasonable? It's hard to tell from the just the ad and the quality from the pics, but let's pick it apart... 

Restoration; The minimum a show quality, full body restoration will cost at a professional shop is around 300k, if the car being restored is fairly fresh to begin with. The more work the car your starting with needs, the higher the cost of the restoration becomes. Big name shops like Alex Car Restoration, have built a good name for themselves over the years and tend to charge even more. 

Parts and Accessories; It's hard to quantify, since the ad. did not describe what parts and accessories needed replacing. Hypothetically it is possible to get all 'new old stock' original trim, parts and accessories for the car. The older the car, the harder it is to find parts and the more expensive they are. If budget was not an issue it'd be very easy to go over 100k just shopping for parts and accessories to make everything new. If this was to include replacing all the mechanical parts to new also, it would be very easy to add another 100k to the price. If you don't believe me, try canvassing for how much brand new original Mitsubishi parts cost. There are very few things that will go below 500 pesos, and the car has quite a number of things that would need replacing. So for the sake of this discussion, let's assume a significant number of trim, accessories, mechanical parts, service parts and other bits were replaced with brand new original Mitsubishi parts and the oils and fluids used are of the most expensive high quality type all amounting to 200k. [running total: 500k]

Aircon; Assuming, everything was replaced with brand new original parts (not mentioned in the ad. but let's assume) this is easily another 20k added to the cost. If crazy enough, you can also get a new original Sanden compressor for around 15k. [running total: 535k]

Chroming of parts; I'm not familiar with this, but I do remember that we once had a small section of bumper chromed and it cost 2.5k back in the late '90's. So if you were to go crazy chroming everything that you could possibly have plated, I would imagine that another 50 or 60k is not hard to spend. [running total: 585k] 

Wheels; As boring (in my opinion) as the wheel choice is, a set of brand new 13x8 Enkei Mesh wheels and a set of tires will easily add another 40k at least to the cost bringing our total up to 625k already. 

So, for the sake of discussion, all the work and parts on the car adds up to 625k, taken out of the 700k asking price of the seller makes the car worth 75k, which is incidentally how much I got my own Box Type Lancer for before. This does not include the cost of all the effort (pain and suffering) that you would have to go through if you were to undertake such a project. Put that way, 700k does not really seem unreasonable doesn't it? Of course, we freely made some assumptions about the quality of the car based on an ad. and picture, the car may very well not be a show quality full body restoration and the parts may not be all new and original as the ad would like us to believe, but my point is that hypothetically it's quite easy to spend that amount of money. of course in an ideal situation, if you were going to sell the car, you'd want to get your investment back, plus maybe a bit of profit. 

There are also quite a number of other things to spend on not mentioned in the add that could jack up the price even more. Vintage high performance parts like racing cams, multiple carburators can be worth their weight in gold. Rare alloy wheels could very well have their own discussion, and can easily cost 100k or more for just the wheels and some serious tires can go as high 40k for a set. I can imagine what as set of authentic Sakura Yayoi wheels wrapped in the finest Yokohama Advan rubber would cost. Vintage Steering wheels and bucket seats also cost some serious money these days. Try looking up the price for a Deep Corned Nardi Torino steering wheel. And could go on, but I think I've made my point. 

This I think is sort of a coming of age for the nostalgic Japanese car. In the same way that fully restored American Muscle Cars can now command prices in the 2 Million Peso range, something that would have been thought of as crazy 20 years ago. 

My opinion might be a bit biased of course, being that I've restored and modified my own car so I know more or less what it'd cost. Although I don't track what I've spent on my car in order to keep myself sane, but I can imagine that if all the parts of the engine setup were sold at their market value and add the cost of what it would cost to replicate my show quality full body restoration and add the value of what a fresh two door '79 Lancer would be today we could easily be over the 700k mark. In fact I maybe a bit more in the know as to the cost (but I don't really want to think about it) because I am trying to help a friend build sort of a clone of my car. 

Back to topic. Here in the Philippines, the Box Type Lancer can be thought of as the most common of all the Nostalgic Japanese car, with it being pretty much the only car on sale for the better part of 8 years. Since parts are starting to become scare and there is not really much of a reproduction parts industry supporting old Japanese cars, The current trend I see in restoration of these cars is to cannibalize (make Katay in the colloquial) so the number of fresh cars to choose from is getting smaller and smaller every year. There will come a time when there are no more corpses to cannibalize parts from so it may not be long before we start to laugh at our selves for thinking 700k for a fully restored Box Type was crazy.