"Luxury
Cars."
By David Grainger
So you are excited. You have just seen an advertisement
for a 1971 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow and you can’t believe
your luck. All your life you have wanted one and now you have
found an owner who just wants twelve thousand dollars for your
dream. You can afford it and you are getting it. Well, there is
luck involved here, but it is not necessarily good luck. Every
year I get dozens of luxury and exotic cars brought to me by people
who are delighted that they got their dream car for peanuts.
Two things have always maintained the exclusivity
of the highest end luxury cars. The first is the initial ticket
price. In many cases this can be the cost of a fairly nice new
home so the pool of qualified buyers is somewhat restricted to
people who have real wealth. The second means of maintaining exclusivity
and assuring a healthy profit margin is in repair and maintenance
costs. To give you an idea of just how scary these expenses can
be we will stick with the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. If you can
buy a Shadow for twelve thousand dollars you can be pretty sure
that it needs a brake job. So, big deal, if it is twenty percent
higher than the brakes on your Taurus, well heck, your prepared
to pay that, after all it is a Rolls. Well, a premium of twenty
percent is not even close. An average cost for the brake job on
a Silver Shadow is around eight thousand dollars. The braking
system on a Shadow has about as much in common with a standard
brake system as the flight control system for a 747 does. It requires
many specialized parts including pressurized nitrogen canisters,
specialized hydraulic and electric switches and high-pressure
pumps, things certainly not found any other common braking systems.
You also need a good and reputable mechanic who knows and understands
the eccentricities of Rolls Royce design, another premium item.
If the car is burning oil you can count a finished repair cost
approaching thirty thousand dollars and if, while working on the
engine, they discover that the front end needs work then several
thousand dollars more will certainly be required from your pocket.
If you want to buy a 1971 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow you will find
it much cheaper to buy a perfect one for between thirty to forty
thousand dollars. If you cannot afford that then you certainly
will not be able to afford the twelve thousand dollar car that
can easily cost you in excess of eighty thousand dollars by the
time you restore it. Add to the mechanical repairs rust repairs
(yes they do rust and quite badly at that.) a repaint, possibly
interior work, electrical system repair or more usually replacement,
and finally reconditioning the cooling system.
There are Ferraris out there that can also be
had fairly cheaply although not for twelve thousand dollars. Early
seventies 2 plus 2 Ferraris such as the eight cylinder Dino and
twelve cylinder GTC 4can sometimes be had for in and around twenty
five to thirty thousand dollars. The parts for a Ferrari however
can be even more disastrously expensive than for a Rolls. A twelve-cylinder
car whose engine I was rebuilding remains vividly in my memory.
When I phoned Ferrari for a set of pistons, rings, rods and bearings
they quoted me thirty thousand dollars. I had the same parts made
for half that sum and have never had a problem. While fifteen
thousand is still a lot of money it is inarguably better than
thirty thousand. Mind you, your average shop is probably not going
to be bothered looking to save you any money so you could expect
to pay full price. Bear in mind that was just a quote on some
of the engine components. The rest of the engine cost thousands
and thousands more just for the parts and then there was five
days of assembling and testing. The car itself had been purchased
for much less than its repair costs. The client is fortunately
in a financial position to still think he got a good deal because
the initial purchase was agreeable.
High repair costs can take the fun out of any
life long dream car. Just about all high-end European Sport and
Luxury cars have prohibitive maintenance costs, as do some American
luxury cars. The American cars that do pose the greatest financial
danger these days are the rare Muscle Cars, especially Hemi Powered
Chrysler products, big block Corvettes and specials such as the
Shelby Mustangs. Any of these rare American cars have special
mechanical and trim options that if needing replacement can send
you to the poor house kicking and screaming. Make sure that you
look into the costs that you can incur after you buy that affordable
deal. A little research may persuade you that sometimes dreams
are best left unrealized.
|
