1912Staver

Only the latest Model T's have a frame number, 1926 and 27 as far as I know. Otherwise they are registered by engine number only. Once a 23 T { or any other 1925 or older Model T for that matter } has lost its original , factory installed engine block it looses any way of documenting its origin. Thousands of Model T's out there , but many have had a engine replacement or substitution over the last 100 years. Much the same as vintage Harley Davidsons. Engine number only, they did not get frame numbers until somewhere in the post war era. Around 1962 as far as I know, but it did not match the engine number and was not used for Title or registration purposes. Not until 1970 did Harleys have a matching engine and frame number.

In the 1980's the owner of the shop I worked at was doing much the same. A good friend since childhood, his family was quite well off and had property in California which made the buying end a lot easier. That's actually where I first saw the usefulness of having a piece of U.S. land to store things on while all the details were worked out. But I was Canadian and on the West Coast so 95 % of my disposable income was tied up in paying for my Vancouver area house. Still is. I live a pretty good life right on up to where old cars are concerned. Great house these days,{ finally } but still not enough shop space. { does any old car guy ever have enough ? } As for several million , well we can all dream. For me it is simply a hobby. When i made my living with old cars it was just work. Getting into another line of work { ships engineer } gave me back my hobby.

I actively buy anything from these cars, parts ,wrecks, carcasses and bones, Anything. TVR 1958 - 1976 But restored, driving cars like these ones are well beyond me. Unlimited sweat equity available. But limited $, it has to be under $10,000.00 CDN.

In my case the #1 deal stopper is the need for a Title. The cars I am personally interested in are almost always projects, and the paperwork side of things is more often than not missing. Next hurdle is transportation. My old truck is just plain old, good for trips I can afford a tow home from , but beyond that you are rolling the dice. It's just the reality of being a retired person in Canada { at least 80 % of us or so } these days that you can't just go to an auction and take your pick, pay your money. Any car I am INTERESTED in; in running , driving condition, is going to be beyond my means. The reality of living on a pension in the Vancouver area. I am pretty capable, have a comprehensive tools , shop equipment set up, lathe mill, welding ,fabricating, and over 40 years experience in industry building things / and 4 years restoring cars in a commercial shop setting. So I am much more of a project person than most. So like I say, in my case at least the border is a 50 ft high wall. Pity as I only live about 15 minutes from my local crossing into Washington State. I really need to buy an acre or two of cheap WA. State land and buy all the parts cars I think I can use. Strip off what I need at my leisure and bring it back home a few parts at a time. That way the entire Export process circus is avoided. But even cheap WA. land has gone up quite a bit since I first started seriously thinking about that solution 20 or so years ago. Artic Buicks , how do you handle parts cars ? Or are they just not worth your time from a business / profit generating point of view ?

Thanks for the clarification. I have actually only done it 6 times myself , but each time it seems to get more difficult. Not the Canadian side of things that's just money and the tip of the cost iceberg at that. But rather the U.S. part. It's to the point where I have almost given up the thoughts of any further imports due to a combination of cost and the flaming hoops you have to jump through to do the U.S. side of the export. { import into Canada } But I don't do it for profit like you do so if the process becomes more trouble and cost than it is worth to me it is easy to just walk away from the whole situation. In your case earning a living has to make it worth your time and trouble regardless of how convoluted the process becomes. I am at the point in life where I don't need any more old cars. A person like me for some mysterious reason always seems to want another one, but another 10 years and I doubt that will even be the case. Every 6 months or so I see something Stateside I could really get excited about, but when I work all the costs involved I; out of facing reality , realize the numbers don't work. Prices are dropping , but I am afraid I am going to run out of years before they drop enough for me to rejoin the ranks of buyers again. I really only have to buy one or perhaps two more cars to achieve my car hobby goals, if I don't find them in Canada the desire will probably go unfulfilled.

The Roadster Factory has always been my choice for Triumph parts { that is the things that Good Parts does not supply } but they recently had a catastrophic fire and who knows what will happen with them. Moss motors has lots of parts, but most of it is offshore made and of suspect quality. I hope The Roadster Factory gets back on its feet soon. They were really great .

Looks quite good. One thing to be aware of on these is the crankshaft thrust washers. The rear one { the one that takes the load every time you step on the clutch } can become worn and fall out of place. Then you have metal to metal contact between the crank and the block every time you step on the clutch. An expensive mess caused by a $20.00 part. I ran into this quite a bit back in the 1980's when I was a British car mechanic. I always change the thrust washers when I buy a TR6 or TVR { uses the same engine }. Cheap insurance. Most of the ones that came into the shop I worked at with failed bearings were less than 100,000 miles, often 70,000 - 80,000 . TR 6 engines use thrust bearings quite unlike normal U.S. made engine practice. Look at a diagram and you will see what I am talking about. Google has tons of information, a well known problem. And easy to fix if you don't let things get too worn. Good Parts have much improved ones for not very much money. Everything Good Parts sells is very high quality. A big improvement on original Triumph quality.

Unfortunately the law in Canada at least is pretty vague and unspecific. But in the end it is just how much tax you have to pay, a relatively small issue compared to all the other costs involved with importing a vintage car into Canada. in most cases transportation and exchange on the dollar is going to a lot more expensive than the tax.

Unfortunately these days a great many of us can't even afford to buy one in that condition , let alone restore it. Prices on E types just out of this world.

That will sell fast! Great deal.

I agree demco32, especially one as nice and as historically significant as the one you have linked to. Any BDA powered motorsport Ford is quite expensive these days. Cheaper than a Stratos however I expect.

Cortina's were popular for rally use. But it's the slightly younger brother MK 1 Escort that still rocks in rally circles to this day. One of the superstars of off pavement motorsport.

I should have known. But the price does surprise me, I would have guessed 1/2 or less. if any Chevy Vega was worth a ton of money it would have to be this one. I wonder what the Camaro would bring ? Even more iconic to those of us growing up back in the early 1970's.

That looks like it was one of the larger ones. Probably not very many survived compared to the smaller ones.

The term " special interest cars " was at one time tried for these not very old vintage cars. But it never did seem to become generally used.

I can't imagine any Chevy Vega being worth even a small fraction of $577,500.00 so I assumed they must of been talking about one of the others. I doubt even " Grumpy's Toy " would hit this sort of a price. Even the best Facel 2 in the world would have a hard time achieving that sort of a sales price.

Are we talking a Lockeed Vega or a Facel Vega ?

Yes, the spare parts. A good friend rebuilt his 3.8 E type engine recently. Parts were far from cheap , but the aftermarket parts in many cases looked to be of a fairly low standard. Off shore parts are ruining the old car hobby.

Notice the entry fee, 24,000 pounds, about $30,000.00 U.S. dollars. And that's just the entry fee, many other costs on top of this, many.

The impression I get about events of the sort you are interested in is that the car itself is only the tip of the iceberg regarding expense. Jag's in general tend to be one of the more expensive British cars to work on. I was a British car mechanic for some years in the late 1970's - early 1980's and the sort of repair bills I routinely saw made me realize there would probably never be Jag ownership in my future. And so far there hasn't been. But a few friends have them with pretty crippling expense seemingly the norm. There are quite a few cheaper British saloons out there that you might try out before you jump head first into the deep pockets world of Jaguar motorsport.

If you can afford to vintage rally { a Sahara event is a HUGE expense } you can afford to keep the Mk VII as a road car and prep a MK 2 as your rally entry. Why degrade what your car already is ? Cheapish Jag's are reasonably easy to find. Mk 2 's are really great cars. Far more suited to any form of motorsports than MK VII's.

Actually the small number of people that have just 1 old car, in mint shape, that may or may not leave the garage a 1/2 dozen or so times a year and probably pay someone else to work on it eliminating a huge outlay of time and money on all the parts of the hobby apart from the car itself are the sane ones. 90 % of the remainder of us fall into your definition pkhammer. About 5% of us are in Ed's category from what I have seen. My father put it best years ago " if you had put just 10% of the effort you put into learning about old cars into learning how to make money all of your problems would have been solved years ago." Unfortunately time has proved him so right. I continue to learn about old cars with great enthusiasm, the making money part has been a far less successful.

But for $300.00 Canadian if you need anything off it it's probably a good investment.

Here is another one as we are talking Monarch's . Pretty rough ! But some very rare parts. (3) Marketplace - 1958 Ford Monarch | Facebook

Other than the DeSoto grill it does not look like much of the Monarch specific stuff is missing. The grill swap was quite popular back in the later 1950's. My father had one back when I was very young. Sold to move up to a 1953 Ford. Ford was very low miles according to my father so even though he preferred the Monarch in many ways the Ford only had something like 1/3 the miles on the clock so practicality won out. When I was young back in the early 1960's Monarch's didn't seem especially rare. But my father was always on the look out for them and would often point them out to me when we were driving together. I think he would have liked to own another one later in life but never did. We almost bought one as a father and son project back in the early 70's but it got sold before we could make up our minds. Of course if you look at convertibles only , even in the early 1960's they were quite rare. Most were regular 4 door sedans.