86 replies to this topic

[Big Sam]

Shame a company has come in and going to make an obscene profit on a seemingly average car. 

[Spider]

The issue I feel this raises is where are they sourcing the parts?

 

Interesting.

 

You'd like to think they'll have better rubbers, ball joints and all the other poor quality stuff we are being fed.

 

This may well be a great venture for the rest of the Mini Community is DBA are going to source / have manufactured better quality parts which we may all benefit from.

[r3k1355]

Shame a company has come in and going to make an obscene profit on a seemingly average car. 

 

At £99K they won't be selling many, after paying workers and covering bills how much profit is there really there to be made?

[Steve220]

Shame a company has come in and going to make an obscene profit on a seemingly average car.

 
At £99K they won't be selling many, after paying workers and covering bills how much profit is there really there to be made?

They've got deposits for 200 at the moment and they're still coming in.

[miniQ]

Horrible...

 

Not worth the money either.

[johnR]

Whatever you think of them they can't help but be good for the value of our cars by reminding people how great the Mini is. It's just another chapter in the rich history of what must surely be the worlds most famous car? And the point about better quality parts is well made - hopefully they will feed down into our suppliers soon!

[panky]

Hopefully they will be as good as they say and have a roll on effect -  but they will rust as well as any mini in a couple of years

I can see a few copy cat cars appearing soon.

[tiger99]

Sadly this is liable to fail completely, and people will probably lose their deposits. As already noted, deseaming REQUIRES IVA as the monocoque has been butchered. IVA will require countless other mods and the ends result will hardly be a Mini.

The other route to legality is full type approval to modern standards, and there is no hope of anything resembling a Mini passing that. It would need a modern engine for a start, to meet emissions regs. Now that in itself would be a good thing, but how would they meet the other requirements such as impact protection?

More worrying is that the authorities are bound to notice the blatant attempt at bypassing type approval or IVA, and the resulting clamp-down is sure to catch out many existing Mini conversions, Z cars in particular, and flip fronts. There is a serious risk of many Minis being crushed.

Not only that, but mugs paying stupid prices for Minis will severely distort the market to the extreme disadvantage of most people here.

It is always important to be aware of the potential side effects of apparently attractive developments like this. Best advice, as always, is to get yiur genuine classic Mini while you can, restore it and keep it in good order, with no butchery like flip fronts or coilovers. That way you will have a tangible asset that can maintain its value. If it is a relatively rare special edition, even just a 998 with fancy upholstery, even more so. Coopers are of course very highly desirable. New build will never be the same, and may well lose its value quickly. Stick with the classics that we all know and love.

Edited by tiger99, 19 June 2017 - 08:48 AM.

[Steve220]

Sadly this is liable to fail completely, and people will probably lose their deposits. As already noted, deseaming REQUIRES IVA as the monocoque has been butchered. IVA will require countless other mods and the ends result will hardly be a Mini.

The other route to legality is full type approval to modern standards, and there is no hope of anything resembling a Mini passing that. It would need a modern engine for a start, to meet emissions regs. Now that in itself would be a good thing, but how would they meet the other requirements such as impact protection?

More worrying is that the authorities are bound to notice the blatant attempt at bypassing type approval or IVA, and the resulting clamp-down is sure to catch out many existing Mini conversions, Z cars in particular, and flip fronts. There is a serious risk of many Minis being crushed.

Not only that, but mugs paying stupid prices for Minis will severely distort the market to the extreme disadvantage of most people here.

It is always important to be aware of the potential side effects of apparently attractive developments like this. Best advice, as always, is to get yiur genuine classic Mini while you can, restore it and keep it in good order, with no butchery like flip fronts or coilovers. That way you will have a tangible asset that can maintain its value. If it is a relatively rare special edition, even just a 998 with fancy upholstery, even more so. Coopers are of course very highly desirable. New build will never be the same, and may well lose its value quickly. Stick with the classics that we all know and love.

Has anyone spoke to DBA and asked them if the cars are IVAd??

[Mervyn]

I won't, as frankly it's none of my business.

[mk1coopers]

Filp fronts  / deseamed / chopped / kit cars can be legal, and they are an interesting part of Mini history, it all depends on when the work was done, if you can prove it was before all the changes to the rules and it is correctly registered with the DVLA then there shouldn't be an issue, obviously with these cars we know when the changes were done, it's up to the people selling them to have done their due diligence as to the legal aspects of what they have changed.

[tiger99]

Correct, sometimes, but we are talking here only about new build.

But many of those modifications would fail Construction & Use Regs in court, as often happened when Plod were doing their job more diligently, instead of relying on incompetent offspring of the Department for Transport, aka DAFT, such as DVLA, now I think DVSA (Disgraceful Very Stupid Authority?) and VOSA. (I will tell a long-running tale of gross institutional incompetence at DVLA another time.) In the 1960s and 1970s it was quite routine for the flip fronters to be prosecuted successfully.

[CityEPete]

I like the way all the "reshelled in the late 70's" cars on ebay tend to have an SPI shell from the 90's, now that is clever!

[mk1coopers]

Sounds interesting, what were people with flip front cars taken to court for?

[tiger99]

Basically it would have been unsafe structure.