EXTREMELY nice, heavily documented 1969 rally green Z on ebay

[BULLITT65]

I inspected this car in person, its real but it's not worth 60K IMO.

Where did you feel the car came up short?

[Danzo]

Quality of work in general. Look at the photos closely, they tell the story.

[BULLITT65]

Hmm, interesting that is at odds with the title of this topic, but maybe they are relying more on the original docs.
 I see the obvious items, hood, X33 scallop trim, wheel well moulding, rear bumper guards, posi sticker, spark plug brackets and smog tubes painted black, the mentioned incorrect master. Was the paint work substandard?

[Bryan302]

Austin, please consider the fact that most of us don't have those original papers, window sticker and dealer invoice, and are just wishing that just one of those documents would fall out of the sky.  This car was also matching engine, trans, and axle, and correct.  The midnight green deluxe makes this combo pretty scarce at minimum also.  Yes, the hood, and trim would be a pain in the ass to correct but doable, but the rest of those parts are not that bad to correct.  The detail underneath also sucked, but doable.  I'm not taking up for anybody, but please consider how hard these papers and numbers are to find, and on a pretty nice Z to boot.  If this car had been more correct, what would the price have been?  Weigh out the options and factors!

Bryan 

[BULLITT65]

I am with you on the docs, they are scarce, even with cars that have been kept in good condition. But the items you mentioned to go back and do it right? 10k worth of items to fix? Which is mostly paint work I am thinking. So if you bought it for 60 and had another 10 that would be 70k...I am not sure what the top money is for a car like this with docs in this color, just for the fact I haven't seen one to compare it to.

[Stingr69]

Its a nice car with easy fixes if you want to putter around when you have time.  All the papers and little scrounging for stuff needed.  Perfect project for someone.  I like it!

If you can imagine that car built with the LIGHT GREEN deluxe comfortweave seats....UGH!  That was how mine was built.

[X33RS]

Here you go, a decently restored 69Z with matching numbers for $60k.  Seems I've said that before somewhere      Makes me wonder why someone would pay $35K for a basket case that needs at least that much for restoration when you can have this for less.

Yeah Austin, you are right, correcting the hood and other things taken for granted like the trim could get expensive.  However it's nothing I haven't seen on these cars as most people do an amateur restoration and add this stuff.  If you had to pay someone to do it for you it could very well reach the price you have in mind and more if you want to get into undercarriage details.  But I'd have to guess that this level of restoration would likely satisfy most buyers looking for a good quality driver with matching numbers to boot.

Mechanical stuff is easy to correct although can get expensive.  Things that need corrected on the body with paint work can open a can of worms.  Not knowing the brand of paint used (different systems have different mixing formulas) could make paint matching a little more difficult.  Depending on the paint quality of the car (have to see in person)  Painting other areas may not be hidden that well if there is a difference in quality.   At a minimum, painting a new hood you would likely also be painting the tops of the fenders and cowl to "blend" it in.   Removing the quarter trim will leave holes that need to be welded.  You'll get into painting that entire quarter with no real good place to "break" it up near the rear sail (no vinyl top or other trim)   So careful blending will need to be done.

Tough to do properly and may still be detectable to a good eye.  Doing both quarters and hood, tops of fenders etc...  You are damn near painting the whole car at this point, lol.  In this case, if the quality of the paint job is "driver" quality anyway, I'd most likely suggest just reshooting the whole car to make it right.   

Yeah, adds up in a hurry.  So it might be one to just leave alone unless someone is ready to spend some coin.  In which case I wouldn't have paid that much money for the car.  I'd bet whom ever bought it doesn't care about the hood or the trim and like it just the way it is, in which case they did pretty good on that buy.

[L78 steve]

Some buyers will pay big for numbers and paper. But Perfect cars without don't bring squat unless it's a resto-mod. All depends on what does it for you.

[BULLITT65]

So what would a docs car like this car bring if the holes were filled and the paint was re-shot correctly?

[X33RS]

Hard to say, but for the buyers sake, if in fact he plans to correct things, I'd hope he could get about $70-75k when (or if) the time comes so he could at least break even after the repairs and corrections.

If the market won't bare that much then he's better off leaving the car alone or he'll get in over his head pretty quick at the purchase price he paid for it.

With that said, a car like this wasn't a bad buy as is,  as I believe a restoration like this one would satisfy about 80% of potential buyers out there.  Only a few really care if it had a flat hood or no external trim so it's really not worth all the trouble to correct those things when you look at the grand scheme of things.  Just drive it and enjoy it.

[1968RSZ28]

Sold 8-25-15 for $60,100.00

Paul

[jdv69z]

Hard to say, but for the buyers sake, if in fact he plans to correct things, I'd hope he could get about $70-75k when (or if) the time comes so he could at least break even after the repairs and corrections.

If the market won't bare that much then he's better off leaving the car alone or he'll get in over his head pretty quick at the purchase price he paid for it.

With that said, a car like this wasn't a bad buy as is,  as I believe a restoration like this one would satisfy about 80% of potential buyers out there.  Only a few really care if it had a flat hood or no external trim so it's really not worth all the trouble to correct those things when you look at the grand scheme of things.  Just drive it and enjoy it.

It all about why you why want the car to begin with. If it's about making money, or you are obsessed with whether you are going to re-coup your investment, you're in the wrong hobby. Suppose you invest another 25K in the car to make it "near perfect", and then enjoy it for 5 or 10 years and sell it for say 70K. Yes, you spent more on the car than what you get back in return. What about the enjoyment of driving and showing it over that period? Is there another hobby that your net cost is going to be $0? It's like buying a house and making every decision about investing in it based on ROI. If you install a new kitchen, you're probably not going to re-coup the investment. What about the fact that you live there every day? Isn't that worth something as well?

[69Z28-RS]

X2

[X33RS]

There's a difference in being smart about something and just blowing money, there's a fine line there.
  But I think you missed my point, that wasn't what I was trying to convey.  Only looking at both sides of the fence with an open mind and laying out just some of the cost involved in doing so and why it may or may not be a good idea.  Making money wasn't the goal here, but everyone wants to recoup investments.

Personally I'd just leave the car as is and enjoy.  It's just not worth the expense to correct things that most people don't even care about anyway.  If you're a concours by the book type of collector then you likely wouldn't have bought this car in the first place.

[BULLITT65]

I think the reason Bryan posted about this Z was besides looking good, it had some good docs to go along with it, and the original drive train. Now a days hard to find a Z that is numbers matching, let alone one with docs.
I agree with Larry though, it is the best case scenario if you are at least breaking even with these cars in this "hobby".

So on the spectrum of car deals this one looked like more of sure thing as far as return on investment if it was run as is, because of the drive train and docs, based on the purchase price of 60k. I think the buyer did alright.

My thoughts were just trying to speculate if this car had been correctly restored, how much more could/would it have gone up to?
Also Danzo was very polite saying there were things that could have been better about the car, so I was trying to figure what those were beyond what we could see and again try to figure out how fixable they are and how much more money somebody would have into it trying to correct them.

We all have a first gen and weather you are Bentley and in the resto phase, or Jimmy V and Darrell with a show worthy cars , we all like following the market and seeing how much these cars bring based on originality and other factors. So that is the angle I was coming from.