New financial decisions -- 80 pace car

[1980Esprit]

Wondering what you guys think of a vehicle I may be getting. I currently have $2000 to this other car. Hopefully this Sunday a guy will buy our car for $1300. That will be $4,200 left onto this other car if we decide to take it. It is the 1980 Official Indy 500 Pace car. He wants $7500 for the car, an extra turbo wheel, original build sheet, bill of sales, and dealership kind of sheet. Has matching numbers. Nothing wrong with interior. Has bit of rust on doors, and around the door jam on the bottom. Has gasket kit for the motor, and some other stuff.

Is it worth the money. Car is 1,000km from our house but transportation is not an issue. We have dealt with this guy before and he is good to deal with. Runs and drives perfect. Around 86,000 miles on it. I will try to upload pics on my profile.

Tell me what you think???

 

[melsg5]

Go to www.nada.com consumer/classic cars and check the price. I would not buy a car without personally inspecting it or having a third party check it for you. Especially if he is claiming matching numbers, that term may mean one thing to you and another to him. Price is suspicioulsy low, check other prices using google.

 

[1980Esprit]

We have already seen this car in person back when we had bought snowflake rims off of him. Its not in perfect shape and does need door jam corners replaced. Interior is like it came from factory. needs new paint. The vin is stamped on the block, However the reason the price is low is because the engine needs new gaskets. That is no problem for me because I`m hoping to be going into apprentice (Here in Canada to be a mechanic) I have had experience with builds before. I have been seeing around 15k for ones that have everything pretty much good/decent. Not show cars though but original. Nada shows 25k - 35k for more of show cars. He would be asking around the 10k area for the car if gaskets were fixed.

 

[melsg5]

If this is equipped with the 4.9L/301CID Turbo engine, I would do some digging on parts availability, when you saw it, did the engine run?

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[1980Esprit]

He already has the gasket kit with it. It runs, and he was also driving it during last summer around once in a while to get things moving again. He also has pictures of the car when he had been driving it. (Same car). Got an e-mail, I could send you a few pictures of it?

 

[1980Esprit]

added 3 pics to profile so far, but got to go to school. May put on more after school. I know, new exhaust and 2 front fenders are repainted.

 

[melsg5]

Saw the pictures, keep us posted, lots of luck with your purchase.

 

[1980Esprit]

I have uploaded a few more pictures. I read back in the email he will include the following; Door, turbo wheel, factory owners manual, repro window sticker, original build sheet, bill of sales, repro correct door jam stickers, water pump, timing chain, turbo ring, and gaskets.

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[Milly]

The market on the Pace cars is not set in stone. Some sell for high prices, some for very reasonable prices. The main concern most Trans Am collectors have is the bad rap the turbo engines got back in the early 1980's. You'll have to crunch the numbers to decide if you can afford to put enough time and money into the car to make it a $25,000-$35,000 show car. The average private party selling price I'm seeing for nice cars is $10,000-$15,000. Auctions seem to bring more money if the cars are super nice #1 condition.

Parts are out there for the Turbo cars. There are services that rebuild the turbos and Q-jets. There is also a great website dedicated to them: www.301garage.com. You can also find a ton of help and tech tips on www.transamcountry.com.

 

[1980Esprit]

This is going to be a show car with a couple of years. Also, I can rebuild Rochester at school (Rebuilding actually a 72 Q-Jet for a 400, also building the 400) My plan was to also rebuild the carb on the new one if it needs it badly. I am going to definitely check those links out, Thanks.