I love combing through ads for selling cars. Every now and then you read some really good ones.
Here is a guy selling is 1963 Catalina.
This vehicle was a daily driver until the late 80’s. It was then parked in hopes of restoring it as a show car…The clock is accurate twice a day but the “accessory plug” aka cigarette lighter functions so you can plug your cell phone in and keep track of the other 22 hours in the day….. There is damage to the front right fender and the back left door. Both occurred in parking lots as a result of an individual unable to see the land yacht parked in front of them.
Each July the tiny town of Iola, Wis., is invaded by a sea of humanity and old iron. Many in attendance come strictly for the swap meet, which covers about 4,500 spaces.
“Don’t tell me there’s no recovery going on,” said Kurt Kelsey, an Iowa City-based vendor of new-old-stock Pontiac parts. According to Kelsey, his business this year is much better than it has been in a long time. “The phone has been ringing off the hook every day,” he said.
Kelsey’s observation about an up-tick in the market isn’t alone. Positive reports have come from other vendors, parts manufacturers and catalog retailers since late last fall. Despite an unsettled national economy and high unemployment, the old-car parts business seems to be in the midst of a boom.
During a Dynamat seminar at the Hot Rod & Restoration Show in March, company owner Scott Whitaker said one-day shipping of Dynamat automotive insulation products has been impossible to promise lately, because a large increase in orders has outpaced new hiring. “The bump in sales wasn’t expected and caught us off guard,” he said.
In early April, Bob Marx at Marx Parts in Arpin, Wis., came to visit us and he, too, was upbeat about his rising sales. Marx has been growing his inventory of vintage gaskets and rear main seals and is now rebuilding fuel pumps, but he said that new products do not explain all of the growth he is seeing. Like several other industry veterans, Marx pointed to the TV exposure of the Mecum and Barrett-Jackson auctions as a factor that’s helping the hobby grow. “New people are getting involved with old cars,” he said.
“After a winter of inactivity, old cars tend to leak or fail when they are put back on the road,” said Fred Kanter of Kanter Auto Products, who wonders if the business boom might be seasonal. “March, April, May every year, it’s the same thing — spring,” Kanter said. He pointed out that from spring through summer every year, his most popular items are fuel pumps and water pumps. “There’s a lot of factors that affect our business.”
You never know what you’ll see at big swap meets. You might come across a 1958 Edsel Pacer looking for a new home.
Al Suehring of Amherst Junction, Wis., specializes in ring gears and is another vendor who feels that the market is strong. We caught up with him at the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America dinner in Chilton, Wis., and he said that his business from the United States and abroad has been showing noticeable increases lately.
Ray Yager of Classic Industries said the level of growth of reproduction parts sales is “hard to keep up with.” His firm supplies MoPar, 1955-’57 Chevy, Camaro, Firebird, Nova, Impala and Chevy truck parts, and parts sales for these vehicles are moving in a positive direction. Yager thought the company’s 18-month-old MoPar parts catalog may account for some, but not all, of the huge increase in business he’s seeing. At least one vendor who solely deals in Chevrolets is likewise seeing increases in business.
“I’m having a really good year,” said Ron Kellogg of Chevy Tri-Power. “Rather amazing since I’m selling restored multi-carb setups in an era of $5-a-gallon gas prices. I’ve probably sold 25 Tri-Power units — normally a year’s worth — since November 2011.”
Kellogg’s increase proves that car collectors still want high-performance options on their classics.
In addition to new products, increased TV exposure of the hobby and added catalogs, parts suppliers said both the use of the Internet and increased advertising seem to be attracting more customers. Some big companies such as Mid America Motorworks and Eastwood have begun sending daily e-mails to thousands of potential customers. This takes time and money and employees with Internet skills, but their efforts are paying off with increased sales.
Many mom-and-pop operations that can’t afford daily e-marketing efforts are creating websites, Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts to reach the marketplace. Hobby events aimed at professionals — such as the Racing & Performance Expo, the British Motor Trade Association and the SEMA Show — all offer seminars on Internet marketing techniques to these businesses.
As their marketing efforts become more sophisticated, parts sellers are also discovering that they can use print media to drive customers to their websites. Companies that never ran a print ad before are discovering that a clean-looking space ad with the right design and not much text can generate strong client interaction. The right picture of a car can catch the potential customer’s attention and a simple e-mail address or website link is all that’s needed to bring business knocking. A good ad will pay for itself much faster these days.
While an increase in parts sales would suggest that restoration shops and collector car sales are both on the increase, growth in those parts of the hobby isn’t as clear-cut as it is when a part is “checked out” in an online catalog. Collector car dealers such as Colin Comer of Colin’s Classic Auto in Milwaukee and market players such as Joe Bortz are fairly universal in the belief that collector car prices are off 15-20 percent in today’s market. Some restoration shop owners say that they are busier than they’ve ever been, but others say the opposite.
From all of the indications we have seen and all the comments we’ve heard, it appears the old-car parts niche is improving for 2012 and this trend will presumably filter down to other parts of the hobby. The hobby is changing in many ways, and the wise businessmen in it are getting more sophisticated as the market grows.
This whole custom Retrobuilt seems to be all the rage lately from the Reversion Mustang at SEMA to the new GT500 CS convertible conversion. If you don’t know who Retrobuilt is, it’s a Official Licensee of Carroll Shelby Licensing, Inc. They specialize in S197 Mustangs from 2005-2011 and turn them into a modern classic by using custom fiberglass panels, true steel bumpers, door handles, rear window louvers, Shelby wheels, custom exhaust and retro tail covers. Every car built by Retrobuilt includes a serial number, dash plaque and Certificate of Authenticity.
However, another one just made an appearance on eBay motors in the form of a 2010 Mustang turned old school Boss 302. From the front it may seem to be an old school Boss 302, until you realize that the body is a bit different and then get a glance of that rear. Body panels added to this car go over the doors but replace the front hood and fenders. The rear deck lid panel is new and you can see that it also features the black hockey stick Boss stripes. The front and rear chrome bumpers are both from a 1969 Mustang. A good 58 lbs. have been lost and some of the weight has been transferred to the rear.
The interior features red leather seats and the same pattern is also on the door panels. The seats supposedly have no wear or tear and are in good condition, as well as the headliner and carpeting. Under the hood is the stock V8 complete with shaker hood with 34,973 miles logged on the odometer. This car is still under warranty until the end of September and the title obviously states that this is a 2010 Mustang.
What do you think of this retro Boss? Drop me a note.
I, personally, like it, in an odd sort of way. I’d have to see in it person.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Now you are going to have to figure out how to explain why there will be Shelby Mustang GT500 in your driveway to your significant other.
It’s nearing the peak of summer, which means 2013 model year cars are only weeks away from being released. But before we can welcome in the last of the C6 models for next year, we owe it to the 2012′s to take a look back and see just how well the Corvette did this year. So here are some of the production numbers for the Corvette’s 2012 model year compliments of CorvetteBlogger, and some of them may just surprise you.
Just like in the 2010 and 2011 model years, the Grand Sport got the most amount of buys for 2012. Between the Grand Sport coupe (5,056 sold) and the GS convertible (2,268 sold) , the model made up nearly 63 percent of all Corvette sales. Coming in at a far second, was the base model with 2,820 coupes and just 651 convertibles sold to make up 29.5 percent of Corvette sales.
As far as the high-rolling Z06 and ZR1′s go, only 478 Z06 models were sold, making up 4.1 percent of total sales, and only a measly 404 ZR1′s were sold, making up just 3.5 percent of sales. In total, 11,647 Corvettes were manufactured for the 2012 model year.
Not surprisingly, the most popular color among the 2012 models was Torch Red with 19.5 percent of Corvettes sold sporting the color. The vibrant shade was closely followed by the Carbon Flash Metallic paint of the special Centennial Edition cars. Nearly 19 percent of Corvettes sold featured the special edition package.
Other interesting tidbits we found browsing through the 2012 production numbers were that 62.3 percent of Corvettes were sold with Ebony interiors while only 88 were sold with yellow stitching accents and 105 sold with blue stitching accents.
Option packages appear to have been popular with 2,416 Corvettes sold with the 1LT option package, 1,691 sold with the 2LT package, and 5,510, or 47.3 percent, sold with the 3LT package.
For more of the 2012 model year numbers, check out the full report from CorvetteBlogger.com.
Ok car and Mustang fans you are going to like this:
BOOM!
Agent 47 Harbinger Mustang for racing or street!!!
Isn’t that wicked looking?
They tried for the look of the 69 TransAm Mustang.
Shelby 1969 TransAm Mustang
The Harbinger is built for track or high performance street duty. Here are some specs and more pics. (Check out the racing video too.)
– Limited production of 250 serialized chassis
– Harbingers can be built using a brand new Dynacorn repro body or an existing 69 or 70 Mustang shell. {but it would have to be the fastback or sports back – not my ’70 Coupe 🙁 }
Race spec, low visual obstruction design, 12 point, chassis stiffening roll-cage of DOM steel.
Race proven SLA (double A-arm) Front suspension.
Ultra stable, Bill Osborne designed, V-link rear suspension.
Speedway Engineering 9” full floating rear axle.
Penske adjustable racing shocks with optional weight jacks at all four corners.
Ducted, low drag and lift hood, engineered and crafted by Agent 47.
Come ON!!! Tell me that’s not awesome!!!
Agent 47 designed vintage Recaro style racing seats.
Agent 47 designed, lightweight, Forgeline racing wheels.
Those are nice!!!
Brakes and master cylinders by AP racing.
Check out this set up.
16 lightweight components manufactured using the latest Rapid prototyping technology.
NVH controlled interior with strategic, lightweight, sound dampening materials.
A work of art. Very limited body roll with this set up. Much improved over the original ’69 TransAm
I’m not advertising for these guys, I just really like what they’ve done. There are parts for Fox bodied and other Mustangs as well.
Here a long racing video (cameras are set up for you can see how the body reacts to cornering).
I wanted to share this link because I was surprised at what Tom Pike does to some of the cars he modifies. We are talking 6-8 inches to a Challenger!!!!
– they re-attach the factory fuel door and add a longer filler neck
– for this particular car they shaved the door handles and blacked out the turn signals and side markers
To this car they added 10 1/2″ wide tires in the front and 13″ wide tires in the rear!! They also lowered the car with Hotchkis suspension with coilover shocks.
It’s beautiful:
Tommy Pike’s Customs
WOW!!!
Oh… and the wheel are custom-made by MHT Luxury Alloys. The wheels are 3 piece and took 3 months to create.
Have you even given this a thought? Nope, not me either.
But here’s why you should and why you shouldn’t go cheap.
Engine bearings have the dual function of reducing friction between a rotating part of the engine (the crankshaft) and the stationary part (the main caps and engine block) and supporting the crank.
Because of the stresses caused by the explosions inside the internal combustion engine, the bearing material must be extremely strong, so a durable metal is required.
Engine bearings are small and relatively inexpensive components of internal combustion engines however failure of an engine bearing commonly leads to serious reconditioning works of the engine including its disassembling, regrinding the crankshaft and replacing the bearings. Sound like fun? No. And we all know that it’s not cheap to rebuild, so let’s do it right and not cut corners in this area.
So what should you get? Well considering that there are all kind of ways to destroy your bearing, like dry starting (no oil coating) some of the following:
Yes it’s true bearing take a beating. Here if you go cheap, especially if you are racing, you go home.
So double up on the cash because quality bearings like Michigan 77 or Federal Mogul competition will cost you twice as much. Pay now or rebuild sooner.
