The Flexible Flyer!!!!
I'm curious to know what problem areas drove you to move forward with such an investment. Was the car unsafe?
In September 2013, Andrew thought the car was worth 21k "all day long". I payed 16k for it. In retrospect it was probably worth more like 10k.
When Mario first looked at the car, he anticipted 6-8k or so for rust remediation. No known safety concerns at the time.
Then they started taking it apart...
Mario: "We have removed the interior floor under coating, the outer rocker panel covers and exposed all the rust. The rust is much more extreme than anticipated...
Estimate:
220 Hours labor @ $67.00 hour $14700.00
plus sheet metal parts
2 rocker panels
4 floor pieces
2 side lower fender
1 left side lower A-Pillar
2 lower rear quarter panel repair panels
All the above parts are from W & N
+paint and materials as we'll need to do paint work on the outside
+/- 850.00"
I figured I would put in $15k for rust remediation, $5k to redo interior, and $5k for mechanical upgrades and have a nice coupe for $40,000, which is roughly what a nice coupe was selling for in late 2013. But I would know exactly what I have. So ai thought.
As work progressed, more rust was discovered...
Mario: "Taking into consideration the new repairs needed, Steve estimates there is another 3 weeks of labor in the car to remove all the rusted rocker components, weld in replacements, and finish all of the rust repair. This will get the car to the paint/primer ready stage, at which point paint and reassembly would be the next step.
The invoice does not reflect any of the new rocker/b-pillar support pieces that need to be ordered from Germany."
Estimate: $4576.24"
And then the kicker...
Mario: "On a side note, during repairs along the right side of the car we found that there were never any spot welds across the bottom of the A-Pillar and the bottom of the B-Pillar! Had our repairs not gone as deep as we did, in a short period of time along with improvements to suspension and other items on this car, this car would have had door alignment issues and would have driven like a Flexible Flyer!"
Final bill after partial paint was close to 24k!!!
When I picked up the car from Bow....Mario told me he road tested the car and thought it is one of the most solid coupes he has ever driven.