Kiln Red's estimate is on the low side I would say. Speaking from experience.

 

We have seen many ex Japanese cars being resold in Canada for often quite low prices as decent looking running driving cars so they clearly are being sold in Japan for even less. The thought of "SAVING" one makes no economic sense at all but if you want a big hobby to absorb your time energy and money few cars are better at that than a neglected 928....

 

The thought of "SAVING" one makes no economic sense at all but if you want a big hobby to absorb your time energy and money few cars are better at that than a neglected 928....


Damn JB thats so true and funny too

 

the seller dropped the asking price to $1000. If its $500 I will take it.
The other cars are done.

 

That is pretty funny actually.....as if $500 makes any meaningful difference in the total equation for saving/ restoring any 928.

 

Having a good parts car with a good interior is a good idea.

The fact that you can do a lot of this work yourself, including the body & paint, is a huge plus and makes this more realistic.

I do all of my own work aside from transmissions. If I had this car for $500 and another for $2k, then I am very confident that I would be able to make this car happen with a $10k-$12k budget. That's doing ALL of the work myself with some helpful connections for paint chemicals, too.

This car needs a right 1/4 skin, though. A good parts car could donate it, but I'm not a big fan of re-using 1/4 panels. Might be better off to make this car the parts donor and the other the fixer.

 

Ok, I'm gonna buck the trend here. I'm a bottom feeder. I bought a 92 968 for $1800, but I made sure the engine ran before buying it. It ran - barely.

Invested ~$4000 in interior bits, paint, tires, electrical, TB/WP, and some small stuff. The car was sound, so all it took was a ton of clean, fix, clean, fix, clean fix. After 3 years, I sold it for a small profit.

Now, I'm in the process of doing another 928. Just finished the body and paint, I did all the prep and had it shot and polished by a small shop near me. Total out of pocket was $1100. This is NOT typical for body and paint! Usually a black car will run $3500 in the US if you do most of the prep work yourself. When I'm done with this car, I'll have about $9-10k invested, and it should be worth a bit over that. Again - small profit for a lot of time.

Interior stuff is a complete hassle. If bits are missing, you need to have a breakers yard nearby with a car you can take from. Sadly, quite often the same parts you need are the ones that are missing or dead on the donor car. Another call to Roger.

So, I guess if you get for $500-1000, and you are meticulous and can spend hours and hours, and hours of time, I think you can get it put together for maybe $10k all in. This is NOT gonna be a perfect car, this is just a decent driver with fair paint and int. I'm talking you remove the windows, hatch, bumper covers, headlight bezels, door handles and locks, etc. You remove the entire interior, clean out the gunk, clean all the carpets, make some new where needed, and then put it all back in again. Maybe recover the drivers seat which is always the worst.

YMMV, don't try this at home, pro driver closed course, and may cause **** leakage.

 

Don't underestimate how much the value is reduced for anything less than factory quality paint and interior. The most common mistake fixer uppers make with a 928 is the assumption that a future buyer will be happy with a $3k paint job. $3k is barely enough to replace all the rubber parts that should be replaced.

Isn't there some huge expensive inspection required on older cars in Tokyo? Its the reason I hear most often for the low cost of exported cars.

 

Rufrob,

Are you able to get access to the auctions around Tokyo? I got mine from USS Tokyo but I used the guys who would typically import Skylines/ Rx7s and the like into Australia. I looked at the auctions (nationwide) for about a year but Tokyo seemed to have most 928s that turned up, on average one every 2 weeks.

From my observations, for a grade 3.5 car with a 'C' grade interior and between 60,000 - 80,000 km on the clock and around a year left on the shaken, you should be paying around 800,000 yen at auction. You'll still need to invest money in a car in that range, mainly rubber items - tyres, hoses, timing belt, brake lines, etc That could be enough to keep you interested in a project before having to invest some super serious coin.

My one I paid 1,620,000 yen at auction for my grade 4 B car, with 17,000km on the clock but still need to invest some serious coin (around $20 k AUS) just to get it on the road, mainly perished rubber parts from sitting in Tokyo. Really poor ones car chew up money.....