1963 Flavia Coupe at Anglia car Auctions jan 25th sale

[eog]

What's not to like about this car

https://angliacarauctions.co.uk/classic/saturday-25th-january-2020/1963-lancia-flavia-coupe/

And no it is not mine!

[lancialulu]

Well you did ask..... The colour and the interior. Very Liberace and not quite Lancia IMHO

[frankxhv773t]

Discussed at length after it was for sale at the NEC. The consensus seemed to be they have spent far too much money getting it all wrong.

[eog]

okay so what's to like about this car!

[bobhenry999]

Chaps,

Having owned Flavias of many types over the last 37 years, along with Tim and others who have commented about this car I feel that I have a valid opinion.

Where does one start ?

As others have mentioned - The non original Fiat paint colour, the awful re-trim in what looks to be white, the incorrect shape of the sills (What on God`s earth did they come from, a Transit van ?) the incorrect Pininfarina badge on the boot lid, the body colour engine bay which should be black, the awful piano black trim on the dashboard, the shape of the OSF wheel arch etc, etc, I and am sure that you/we could go on.

Why did someone  (Allegedly) spend £40,000 to restore a car to such an awful standard ?. And as for the statement that there are only 3 others registered with the DVLA I think that there are a number of us that could dispute that fact !

Sorry to appear to be so negative about one of our own cars, but really ? If that`s worth £32000 - £ 40000, I can`t imagine what some of our cars are worth !!!

Bob

[Kevinlincs]

The hammer went down at £29,500 or thereabouts......

[Sliding Pillar]

The hammer went down at £29,500 or thereabouts......

The hammer when down, but it didn't sell.

[frankxhv773t]

The hammer goes down to close the bidding and end the auction of that lot. It does not signify a sale. As to why someone would spend £40,000 on "restoring" a car to such an inaccurate standard why is there any question about this? It is surely either what the owner wanted, though we might see it as a case of having more money than sense, or it  could possibly be a case of an owner inadvisably giving their restorer more discretion than the restorer deserved. It wouldn't be the first time a restorer has spent more than the owner intended or carried out work that doesn't bear scrutiny.
 

[mikeC]

Bob has highlighted a number of areas which he thinks are 'wrong'. I am not sufficiently familiar with the Flavia to pass comment on the shape of sills and wheelarches, but if they are wrong that that does, indeed, point to poor restoration work. But as for colour schemes, that is a personal matter for the owner, and if he wants his car in a non-authentic colour, why not? Personally I think the car looks superb in that colour and I would be very happy to own it; the interior trim is another matter - that really looks cheap and nasty to my eye, but that's my opinion! As for the body-colour engine bay, I think that looks a hundred times better than the 'original' semi-matt black finish, which has always seemed an unattractive feature to me; and the piano-black dashboard looks great too.

[TonyLanciaBeta]

I was at the Auction, here's a quick video of it going through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqPBKYqwuNE

[GG]

The hammer goes down to close the bidding and end the auction of that lot. It does not signify a sale. As to why someone would spend £40,000 on "restoring" a car to such an inaccurate standard why is there any question about this? It is surely either what the owner wanted, though we might see it as a case of having more money than sense, or it  could possibly be a case of an owner inadvisably giving their restorer more discretion than the restorer deserved. It wouldn't be the first time a restorer has spent more than the owner intended or carried out work that doesn't bear scrutiny.
 

Some time back, there was a brief analysis in Sports Car Market letter about the value of a car vs. the cost of restoration. In short, the most valuable cars were close to $1 market value : $1 restoration cost, and that you could sell the car, once restored, for what you had in it. Occasionally, you might find it sell for more than it cost to do the work, but this was rare (the odd, unusual Ferrari, for example).

More interesting was the other part of the picture - that it was more typical to find 50 cents market value for $1 of restoration: restore the car for $50k, only to find its worth $25k, for example. This was the most common example, although some (such as complex Italian cars) might be as low as 35 cents per $1 spent on restoration, the definition of a "labor of love". It was shocking to read, but it was a baseline of what really goes on.  True restoration costs are rarely discussed openly. The costs of the Flavia restoration were surely more than the sale cost, if done properly.

[Mikenoangelo]

It's a mistake to think of our cars as an investment. We have them because we enjoy them - so what if they lose money - some people play golf on which you get nothing back for the money spent.

Of course those who work on the car themselves lose less money and probably have more fun!

Mike

[frankxhv773t]

If it's your car you can do it any way that pleases you but really the issue here is the demonstrated expectation that it will sell for that sort of price. So far it is demonstrated that it won't.

[DavidLaver]

"True restoration costs are rarely discussed openly."

I once kept a spreadsheet of costs as a learning exercise. 

The lesson: that I should not be keeping a spreadsheet of costs.

Head in the sand works for me

[Kevinlincs]

I personally didn't think the car was that bad, certainly something I'd have been happy to run around in.
The white seats weren't to my taste, but were done very well and didn't stick that far out of place.
I thought the dash covering looked perfectly acceptable, nice even. If the original dash was cracked or damaged then it's a nice outcome.
I don't know enough about the cars to know what was wrong with the sills...
Appreciate the colour not being a Lancia OE colour but it was hardly fluorescent green was it! Suited the car very well I thought.


For what my opinion is worth it looked as good as the vast majority of cars there, certainly 99.99% of the public would think so.

If it was being passed off as being 100% correct then fair enough to have a dig, but as far as I have seen it wasn't, just a nicely restored Flavia.
The issue on value is ridiculous, it is worth what anyone will pay. My friend with me bought a 1999 T plate Mercedes C200 that was pretty much spotless and a warranted 37,000 miles or thereabouts for the princely sum of £850, as near as dammit what someone paid for a shed of a Polski Fiat 125p that was all but useless, value is very subjective.

I can't think of anyone that seriously goes into a restoration hoping to make money, either self build (tricky to break even) or paying for it (tricky to not lose your shirt) so if that was their plan it's only ever going to be trouble.

I went to view a Toyota Corolla GTi that on paper looked like with a bit of welding, paint, general wake up repairs after 10 years of slumber I might be able to make a few quid, as long as it could be bought for under £1,000 I could make some money out of it. The fact it needed a lot more work was hardly a surprise, don't they always? But sills, floor edges, chassis ends, front wings, around ALL glass was rotten. It'd be a mammoth task, that was obvious to me and in all likelihood only worth £6 to £7k afterwards. The sums didn't make sense, even with my labour for free. The fact it sold for £3,600 shows that the value isn't always representative...