Thinking Of Buying A Kit Car? Read This First
Apr 23rd, 2008 by admin
Buying a kit car is a fun business. When first purchasing a kit car with my dad for some summer fun a few years back. We had loads of fun visiting the different kit cars shows, getting involved and asking questions and talking to different kit car manufacturers and owners club, but before we even got to that stage we had a few things to sort out.
To buy new or built? That is the question
I’m sure everyone who is thinking about buying a kit car thinks the same thing as me and my dad. The original plan was to buy the car in kit form and build it in a farther, son project. Although this would have been brilliant building a car together and learning vast knowledge about how cars are put together (for me anyway) this just wasn’t practical and as it turns out not very cost effective.
The problem of buying a new kit car in kit form
I don’t know about you, but if you’re anything like me and most people on the planet you will have limited spare time, and lack of time is a kit car killer. How many stories/people have you talked to that have a part built kit car in the garage? A LOT! Talking to people who have built kit cars in the past it took them hundreds of hours and years to complete, and adding finishing touches and improvements is an on going project. Besides the time factor, how much have you budgeted for buying and developing a kit car? Buying a new kit car is very expensive, although it may not seem like it when you’re buying the kit car in stages all the finishing touches and hours put in equal a lot of money!
Oh yea, and there’s the small matter of the SVA test!
Why you should buy a pre built kit car
Now i’m not saying don’t buy a new kit car, many kit car builders take great plesure from building a kit car from scratch. But this is why me and my dad bought a pre built kit car.
Time – As mentioned before it takes a long time to build a kit car. Time that we just didn’t have, especially with me being at university at the time it just wasn’t an option.
Cost – it was far more cost effective to buy a prebuilt car and make adjustments later on as we wanted, this way there was no SVA to pass and we could start driving the car straight away!
Do your research first i guess is the point of this post and be practicle about how much time and budget you can put into your car. if you buy a kit and part build it then sell it, you will lose out on a lot of money and not even have the driving pleasure of a kit car.
Show us your kit car
Have a kit car? We want to hear from you, even if it’s part built! send pictures of your car to martin@whatkitcar.com
hi
been thinking about buying a westfield se.i have been on a few websites and asked for brochures and not yet recived any.do they know if they make a replica of the se and do you know were you can buy part built kits.had no luck on ebay.if you could let me know any info that could help me that would be most appreciated.thanks
Hi Stefan,
Have you been on the westfield website and given them a call? There are usually pretty good. If youare unsure which kit car to get or want to ask Westfield more questions about the SE or SEI your best bet is to contact them direct or go to one of the many kit car shows where all the kit car manufactures go and ask a member of the team all your questions.
Martin