Buy a kit car

JQ.

Why a kit car? Unless you build the car yourself then you're taking your life into your hands. For the money you're considering spending you can get some serious performance cars.

I've just sold an MX5 for considerably less than £7,000 that was totally modified - 260bhp, roll cage, uprated suspension, uprated clutch and plenty of other mods to improve it. 100% reliable, better performance than a 911, M3 or Bentley Continental GT, and was used daily but also was was at home on track. Far more useable than a kit car, but better reliability, cheaper running costs and more practical.

There's one for sale at the moment for around your budget which is a crazy car - achievable 400bhp in a car of 1 tonne - that will destroy most Supercars.

http://www.mx5nutz.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=90534&st=0
http://www.rockbeareweather.co.uk/slowmx5/index.htm

bluesnake

Mate, this post nearly made me turn on the central heating. Wrong time to start, you are going to freeze you acorns off this time of year.

My friend is currently building think a 1/6???? - a scaled down model of something. This model only comes in kit form and the manufacterers will not build it for you. Made for an electric wheelchair engine but he wants to put a scooter one in.

If he does a good job, I could envisage some parents buying their kid one and him making 100% profit (think the kit is around £800) Takes about 100 hours.

forgotmyname

If you research how many kits are sold and how many actually make it into the road. A small number.

Buying a kit in chunks is OK in the short term but, Long term its risky.

Plenty of manufacturers have come and gone. Kits modified slighty from customer feedback so may need to make your own parts or modify the ones supplied.

How good are you with a spanner? Can you weld? What are your facilities like?
Do you have room for a partially built car and the separate bodyshell?

Get some DVD's " A car is born " Mark Evans. He rebuilds a jaguar E-Type spending over £100,000 and sold it for £65,000 i think?

Budget of £10,000 to build his Sumo. Blow when he spend £4500 on an engine alone.

Strider590

JQ. wrote: »

Why a kit car? Unless you build the car yourself then you're taking your life into your hands. For the money you're considering spending you can get some serious performance cars.

No your not, that's what the single vehicle approval test is for (SVA), it rocked the kitcar industry quite badly, but the result is safe road worthy cars.

I have a Westfield SEI, 1996 kit, with a 1700 modified Ford x-flow engine. It's capable of 60 in 5.5 seconds and costs next to nothing to insure. Only downside is 7mpg on the track, 25mpg on the road.

I consider this type of car to be AS close to a road legal racing car as you can practically get and they're simple for the home mechanic to work on.

As a "fun" 2nd car, you just can't get better.....

rxbren

never saw the point of having a light weight kitcar and fitting a crossflow or zetec engine in it

atrixblue.-MFR-.

there are many regulations in order to pass the tests in order to register the car.

you must considder where the fuel lines are how their mounted, brake lines and wiring go and mounted.

ive seen many kits with sierra engines (pinto or rs cosworth 2wd) rover v8 and so on and mount locations have to taken into considderation when building to what engine you going to put in it.

forgotmyname

Even an old 1600cc ford lump with 60bhp will feel fast in a low slung car that weighs approx 1/2 to 3/4 of the original car.

Dont the emissions get based on the age of the engine?

Netwizard

rxbren wrote: »

never saw the point of having a light weight kitcar and fitting a crossflow or zetec engine in it

Why on earth not?

Most kit cars for around this budget will have these sort of engines in anyway. They are MORE than adequate for road use.

I once had a Westfield Carbon Sport fitted with a 1.8 zetec on Jenvey's and it was bloody lightening quick. 150bhp is more than enough in a car weighing around half a ton! Mine was actually fitted with full weather gear, spare wheel AND a heater. It was more aimed towards touring rather than a stripped out track motor, but even with this extra weight, it was still very very quick and impossible to use that sort of speed on the road.

The most fun I had with it, was in the wet. It was very tail happy and roundabouts were immense fun.

Now is the best time to buy one! Prices do dip once winter hits, and its an ideal time to buy one that might need a little tinkering. Get it exactly how you want it over the winter, and then bring it out to play in the summer.

Caterham's are out of your budget, but you will get a very good westfield for that budget. Ignore bike engined cars if its primarily going to be for the road, stick to car engined westie's. If you start doing some track days and want some bike power, then progress to a bike engined car.

Forget about wet weather gear (hood). You wont use it, it will be a waste of time! If your going to have one of these cars, go topless all the time!

My car was registered on an 02 plate. Q plate cars are somewhat snubbed in some kit car clubs, but come MOT time, they are much better in terms of emmisions, as Q plate cars only get tested on visible emmisions.

Its nice to buy one and tinker with it, and probably even nicer to buy all the bits in a kit and build it yourself, but you will need good mechanical knowledge and a lot of spare time!

I'd buy a good zetec engined one second hand, and then spend any chance on tinkering with it and adding bits as and when you need (cages, throttle bodies, different ECU's etc)

https://www.wscc.co.uk is a good place to start (westfield owners club) and also take a look at pistonheads classifieds. There is a kit car section there: http://classifieds.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/kit-cars

Eventually, I sold mine, as all I seemed to be using it for was driving to work and back. I rarely got much time to enjoy it out on the open road. Out of all the cars i've owned though, this one was the one that got all the looks, especially when driving down the M6 in the pouring rain, the bus full of french students thought it was hilarious!
OP - If its what you have a passion for, then certainly go for it. You have a good enough budget to get something very nice indeed

Hope that helps

davemorton

Wheeler dealers lost any respect they had from me when they were doing up an eightys 3.2 911 and suggested checking the oil/water for creamy white emulsion!

Stooby2

Opus, now you've had some reasonable advice, it's time to start buying kit car magazines, get on kit car forums and if you've got Sky, see if you can watch a repeat of that Mark whathisname's "A car is born" series. Get an idea of how much work, time and expense it's going to be.

You'll need a large, decent and very preferably, heated garage and a very good set of tools to do a proper job of it.

See if you can find (via a forum) someone local who's building one and ask if you can pop along to see it, discuss what's involved.

And good luck if you go for it!