I agree, put it on auction with an exact warts and all description, you may get quite a few interesting bids
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Great idea! Never thought of auction. Does anyone have experience/advice about auctions?
They can be good to or not so. A good deal of, I’ll offer you ex amount if you end the auction early etc. Then folk messing you around bidding then withdrawing.
We are talking eBay, they have buy it nows with offers, again you have to sort the serious offers with the Messer’s.
Proper auctions are another avenue, never entered one in an auction, obviously fees involved, is it worth it really going that route, who knows?
Bet there are takers on here, you’ve just got to take the plunge and think of an asking price, I’ve no idea where to start TBH.
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I’ve sold half a dozen cars on eBay auctions and always got a good price. The secret is a full description. When I say full I mean full. Good points, bad points and every detail you possibly can.
Nobody will be in the slightest interested in anything with a one line description.
I always say ‘You are bidding to buy but if on seeing the vehicle you feel that I have in any way misrepresented the car then I will gladly cancel the sale and refund your deposit’.
Give the bidders confidence in the car and yourself.
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I agree 100%
Full description warts and all indicates an honest car, and most buyers see each small problem and think, ‘yes I can fix that’, and if the worst problems are nearer the end of the list, they are in the habit of thinking ‘I can fix that’ and buy it.
It also clarifies the price point, so there will be fewer hagglers trying their luck.
It also turns off the tyre kickers. They have nothing to talk about!
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Set a best guessimate reserve whatever you do, otherwise if it goes under the hammer for 100 quid that’s all you get.
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Its a tiny market, prices can be £5-25k, I’m guessing this car would be the low end.
I had a M2-1002, one of only 2 or 3 in the country (there were rumours of a third in Hampsire). Paid £2700 as a fixer upper. I mechanically sorted out, but gave up on the bodywork. Advertised to the enthusiasts, had one offer of £1100, sold it to Sam Goodwin for £1700. The loss was somewhat softened by him fitting a new hood to my S-Special, and fitting the P5 coilover FOC. I think he sunk a further £7k into it, before selling it for £6k. It eventually was ebay’d for £3k to an Italian collector, who also brought the other known M2-1002.
When I had it, didn’t look too bad, wrong bumper aside
Sam properly finished it off:
And its final resting place in Italy
For both, the markets are tiny, and the buyers small in number. Not everyone wants a car that looks like a Pringle jumper, and similarly, not everyone wants a MX5 with leather interior, wobbly dials, windup windows and no power steering (and skinny tyres).
With that Le Mans, you either restore it properly, or not at all, and let the buyer do that By restoring properly, I do not mean repair patches, etc, but who hog new rear fenders. Even after all that, it will never be worth top money. Most of the Le Mans out there have been little used it seems, and so there will be a few that have never see a welder. Most of them are still in the UK.
I would let Andrea Mancini know about the car; maybe he is interested. Look up Miataland, for contacts. He has a BBR I believe, but not a Le Mans. And not all the MX5s he buys were garage queens; his M2-1028 arrived as little more than a shell with a Mk2 dash, and he refitted that with M2 parts obtained from god knows where.
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Thanks! That’s very useful. Yours looks stunning btw.
Slightly shameless resurrection of the thread… so just wondering how this ended up as I’m currently looking for one of the cars and I’m curious as to what happened and where it ended up !