Dino restorations

[isuk]

My first real encounter with the 246 was back in the summer of 2005 when I was looking to buy a 360. I went along to Nick Cartwright's to look at a 360 he had but my better half had tried to persuade me to buy a newly restored 246 GT he had had instead. Nick kindly let us look around the Dino which was available for around £50k and was immaculate versus the £65-70k being asked for good 4 to 5 year old Modenas at that point. Foolishly I passed on the Dino and bought a 360 from Graypaul. Oh how I wish I had bought that 246 now!

Anyway it took me 5 years to acknowledge the mistake and start looking for a good 246 before prices spiralled out of control. I found the right car at Forza 288 and decided to have it overhauled mechanically and repainted. At that point I was something of a novice regarding the 246 series so made some choices on the restoration that I wouldn't do again - swapping wheels for the optional Campagnolos, wasting a fortune on poor quality reproduction glass side windows that I ended up removing and putting the originals back in etc. Never the less it proved a very useful learning curve as I made good contacts and started to learn a lot about these cars. My first car was finished in Rosso Chiaro when I bought it. It was originally delivered in Bianco Polo Park but I'd never seen one in white so decided red was the safe option if I decided to sell it on in the event I didn't enjoy driving it. I had it repainted as the previous paint was looking tired and starting to crack and craze in places. Once the "restoration" was completed and I got the car back I initially wondered what on earth I'd done when I collected it. The first twenty miles or so went by in state of incomprehension at the heavy slow speed steering, the clatter of the the timing chain behind my ears, the whiff of petrol in the cabin that I thought I'd left behind in the late 80's, the narrowness of the cabin etc. But then a wonderful thing happened and as the miles started to roll by the car became more settled and responsive. It had been laid up for quite some time so everything was needing a good shakedown and that first drive really started to become magical. I found myself turning off my planned route and seeking out unknown B roads to see what the car could do. I ended up having a blast and was smitten.

From that point on I started to do a lot more research into the cars and was always looking how I could improve my own example. It had been retrimmed around 10 years before I bought it and I was never really satisfied with the finish but was unsure what the interior would have looked like when new. I had changed the carpet from black to red as the original set was looking a bit tired and had also had the dash reupholstered using material I was advised was the correct OEM spec but turned out not to be. The car looked "nice" and most people thought it looked great but I always saw the flaws but just didn't know who or where to use to fix them. Anyhow fast forward around 18 months and I was pointed in the direction of a body restoration specialist by a few friends in the high end of the motor trade who used them on their own personal cars. That was good enough recommendation for me so I went along to meet the owner and struck up a good relationship with him. He's restored countless Dinos since the early 90's and knows the bodywork on them inside out. When I found a second 246 (through a very tortuous route) that required a full restoration I knew who to take it to. By this point I'd established good contacts for both remanufactured and NOS spare parts and had found links to the trim shop in Modena that Ferrari Classiche use plus suppliers of the correct original materials for the interior trim. Armed with all of this I embarked upon a proper restoration of my second car involving a full engine stripdown and rebuild, suspension strip down and rebuild, fully bare metal body restoration and chassis repaint, fuel tanks repainted, interior seat dash and door retrim to original spec but retaining the original rear wall, centre console, sill covers, carpets and headliner to retain the patina of a 40 year old car. It turned out beautifully so I took the plunge and had my original example go back and be re-done both inside and out to the original specification it left the factory in of Bianco Polo Park white with the correct artificial leather interior in black and the genuine original dash covering. I have lots of photographs of all of the work that was done to each car but will let the finished results speak for themselves.

Here is my second car.

 

[isuk]

And here is the first one which completed it's second restoration a couple of weeks ago.

 

[AJ3XX]

:sweethear:sweethear:sweethear:sweethear

Beautiful

and an interesting read - thanks

off to break open the piggy bank :cry3::cry3:

 

[spice]

Wonderful Ian , I love these cars , very nearly bought Colin Foskers own GTS ten years ago for £36k , went 355 instead , that car today must be £200k ?, yours looks georgeous , hindsight a great thing , I remember when Colin regretted selling his 288GTO , look where they are now .

 

[amo]

Great read, beautiful cars

 

[Sparky]

Hi Iain,

Looks excellent. Nice colour choice too :thumbsup:

Hope you're keeping well.

Mark

 

[Murph7355]

The white car's incredibly pretty. Lovely.

Are you keeping hold of both?

 

[markst]

oh what beauties........dear oh dear I wish i had bought one too.......

well , all i can say is if there is ever a dip in the market I will buy one - but I'm not hopeful

wonderful looking cars, :thumbsup::thumbsup:.....would love to see some of the work in progress pics

 

[sweeni]

:sweethear:sweethear:sweethear:sweethear

Beautiful

and an interesting read - thanks

off to break open the piggy bank :cry3::cry3:

+1. Thanks for posting, enjoyed reading that. :thumbsup:

 

[isuk]

oh what beauties........dear oh dear I wish i had bought one too.......

well , all i can say is if there is ever a dip in the market I will buy one - but I'm not hopeful

wonderful looking cars, :thumbsup::thumbsup:.....would love to see some of the work in progress pics

I don't think you will ever see them drop now. They've passed the magical 40 year barrier so are genuine classics. The latest issue of Octane also seems to agree values are set to continue rising. One thing's for sure.... they aren't making any more and it meets the criteria of what manufacturers are trying to get back to now - small, light and agile - so it provides a great driving experience. I'm just glad I got in when I did. Everyone keeps thinking back to the classic car crash of the early 90's but the world is a very different place now. There is a huge age spectrum of investors who have experienced the way the world has changed since 2008 and won't forget it in their lifetime so anyone with money to invest is going to look to have a much more balanced portfolio across a wide range of assets including classic cars, art, property, wine etc. These things will now have greater value as result for at least a generation IMHO.

The white car's incredibly pretty. Lovely.

Are you keeping hold of both?

I am indeed along with the third one.

 

[irarref]

Lovely motors - do you get to drive them much? If I had 3 one would have to be my daily! LOL

 

[Murph7355]

... Everyone keeps thinking back to the classic car crash of the early 90's but the world is a very different place now. ...

This is oft said, but is it really that different?

At some point a whole host of items/"investments" will have to "correct". Personally I don't think we've gone through anything just yet, despite the last 5yrs of doom and gloom. Governmental fiddling around the edges has masked/deferred what I suspect will still be a very, very bad situation when the merry go round finally stops and the pip squeezing starts happening for real.

We'll find out in good time. Meanwhile you have a few beautiful cars....make sure you enjoy them all.

 

[JoyZipper]

Very nice indeed. You can really see the family line and some styling clues with the 246 and the 458 sitting beside one another.

 

[mal]

very nearly bought Colin Foskers own GTS ten years ago for £36k , went 355 instead , that car today must be £200k ?, yours looks georgeous , hindsight a great thing , I remember when Colin regretted selling his 288GTO , look where they are now .

Tell me about it! I did buy Colin's GTS for a bit more than £36K and sold it 3 years ago for £75K just before the prices sky rocketed!

 

[neil-f]

Thank you so much for sharing the story and the photos great little cars:dude:

 

[spice]

Tell me about it! I did buy Colin's GTS for a bit more than £36K and sold it 3 years ago for £75K just before the prices sky rocketed!

PKE that was a great car , I used to call it the pikey , I nearly bought it from Rardley when you were selling it but went F430 :cry3: and I turned down a Foskers restoration GTS for £150k , they sold it when it was finished for £185K , I do struggle to see these cars at £250k ? , DK have a lovely restored car for £235k :shocked: will the bubble burst ? There seems to be more being restored every year

 

[isuk]

.......I do struggle to see these cars at £250k ? , DK have a lovely restored car for £235k :shocked: will the bubble burst ? There seems to be more being restored every year

Gary,

With a new 458 spider costing £230k ++ if properly spec'ed (plus all the other manufacturers hiking their prices skywards - new 991 turbo at £150k estimated etc) how can you fail to see a 40 year old classic being worth the same or more? The 458 will fall in value just like every model before it. It is only time and relative rarity that adds value to a car and the Dino was not sold in anything like the numbers in the UK that people seem to think. The same situation exists in the 911 market where a lot of forum users wonder why the early series cars are rising quickly in value. They are making the same mistake in thinking those models were sold in similar volumes to the current 991. Quite a few 246's have left the UK in the last year or two. Chris Evans car now resides in New Zealand for example. The drop in value of the pound may see a few more go the same way.

The DK car has an amazing amount of incorrect details on it by the way. It may not affect the price now but if prices continue to rise then buyers are rightly going to start looking at things far more closely. I think I got to around a page long bullet list of items and that was just by looking at photo's on their website. Another guy on Pistonheads who paid fairly strong money for a car a few months back was also sold a car with a lot of incorrect items that would involve considerable expense to resolve which I am sure he is blithely unaware of. The biggest issue was his car was fitted with the wrong front nose clip for it's year - a bit like fitting a 355 front end to a 348. The correct nose clip are NLA so to sort it out would involve a skilled bodyshop fabricating the correct lower section which would be costly.

 

[Murph7355]

The price of 40yr old cars is not materially influenced by the price of new models from the same marque.

Dinos, and more so 911s (*especially* 993s) are not "rare". Yes, they are more scarce than cars made in the "unless we sell 10,000 a year we'll go bust" era, but they're not properly rare.

Supply and demand is all that drives this stuff. If/when the overall economic bubble bursts, demand will dry up. And we'll see if any sellers are "distressed" by the level of supply and what happens to prices. Exactly as happened 20yrs ago.

I can't imagine the number of people prepared to hold 250k in a 40yr old V6 Sportscar is massively high. Certainly not as high as the number left in existence. So we'll see.

As mentioned, I'm very happy to be proved wrong. But this has all the hallmarks of a bubble to me.

Remember, it's not just Dinos going up. If you want a 993 C4S now you're looking at 35-40k. With 355 prices what they are (etc) , that's even more nuts than a 993TT at 60k...which is saying something! There simply is not the demand for every nice car to be worth vast amounts.

None of which detracts from these being very lovely cars

 

[Jules]

Some interesting comments. I think back to the late eighties when we last saw mega rises with these vehicles. Very different then, new 328's were going for £200K+ against a list of £50K - imagine the new price of a 458!! Different dynamics

I do think that Dinos should be worth £150K+, although I'm not so sure about north of £200K. Still they are beautiful cars, but production did exceed a few thousand.

 

[isuk]

I wasn't referring to 993s which are plentiful and in no way comparable to a Dino from a pricing or rarity perspective. They are plentiful although many are in a poor state of repair now due to people buying them and then being unable to afford to maintain them properly. I was talking about the original initial pre 73 911 which is on the climb. The spectacular rise in value of the very rare 2.7 RS has dragged up the values of the T,E and S models as people add those to collections instead. The next Porsche 911 that will climb in value will be the early impact bumper models as they were imported in fairly low numbers and as values fell over the years and proper maintenance became uneconomic for many of the 6/7/8th owners etc many examples have succumbed to rust or been mucked about with and turned into 2.7 RS replicas etc. Very few sound, original and unmolested early 3.0 cars survive.

We'll just have to disagree on the whole bubble thing and I'll also have to disagree with you on age as IMHO it does have a major influence upon value as design becomes much more important. Collectors prize age over many other factors when it comes to production cars. The value of modern counterparts very much comes into play for another group of prospective buyers as people are much more sensitive to depreciation now and will try to avoid it. The good old days of buying the latest car, running it for a year and selling for either list or a profit have gone thanks to a combination of too many manufacturers entering a market which they have over estimated the size of, the loss of easy credit allowing used buyers to look at financing a six month stint in a used example with only interest payments to worry about as their entry fee to the club and a huge gulf to the next level of used buyers with physical cash and the prices they are prepared to pay to play. Many people grow tired of the latest and greatest treadmill after the sudden realisation that it is never ending and that although each successive new car becomes ever faster it does not necessarily equate to greater enjoyment. That is when owning a classic can suddenly become appealing and if a buyer can find a well sorted example that is presented in fully restored condition it can prove very tempting.

These old cars are not being bought for their performance as modern hot hatches would beat them on road or track. They are being added to collections for their styling and becoming appreciated as 3 D art. They are not being bought by speculators and many will disappear into collections now for a number of years. £250k - £300k is loose change for many of the wealthy buyers at this level of the classic market and you have to consider a different mindset is at play compared to when they were trading at below £100k and being bought by enthusiasts who didn't have the requisite £50k -£100k required to properly restore them. For many people cars like the 250 SWB are now long out of sight in terms of being affordable and the 275 is fast approaching that point as well if not already past. That leaves the special series cars 288/F40/F50/Enzo which are also all on the move and getting out of reach for many. After that you have to start looking at the remaining models and the 206/246 is ground zero for Ferrari's mid engined model range and widely regarded as one of Pininfarinas top designs. It's therefore not increasing in value because of pure conjecture. There are still plenty of cars out there that need costly restorations so there will always be debate on forums about prices being a bubble as some cars will be offered at much lower prices due to requiring a lot of work so people unfamiliar with the model will see the lower end as being the true value which it most certainly is not.

It will be interesting to revisit this in 5 years and see who was right.