Ben, as I'm feeling a bit shit at the moment and, consequently, over-sensitive-my guess is that remark was aimed at me?

Perhaps you should go and read my last post on Snailsheds thread in the "Going Spare" thread?

I gave my last AKS400 away and sold my AZU for £1800 with full ticket, new chassis, floors, sills, brakes throughout inc pipes and so on.

So Paul, I reckon 5-6K?

Main reason for posting this on here is that having added up what the parts, paint job and the original cost of the van it all adds up to 3,750 euros.

I have spent about 120 hours on it so far and will spend about another 20 putting it all back together.

I am looking to sell it for about 5,500 Euros [about £4,600] which seems to be the going rate over here. This means my hourly rate is 12.50.

I suppose it shows that renovating 2CV's using new parts is not a money spinner. As its just a hobby now for me I am happy if I achieve my asking price, but.... am I contributing to the ever increasing inflation of prices as bemoaned on here regularly or am I saving a van for another few years of use.

No, you're paranoid it was just a lighthearted remark along the current theme of why or why not they are fetching money, and anyway a late car needing work is in a different bracket to a van imo. Anyway , i responded to your post and hope that's cleared that up

To put that in perspective I bought an abandoned restoration project from Germany, which had been done professionally to a pretty high standard. There was a bill with it for removing the body from the chassis, repairing and repainting the body, the wings, doors and other loose panels.

Meanwhile the owner took the gearbox to a specialist, the engine to someone else and had all the suspension arms powder coated and the original chassis galvanised. He paid for all that separately.

The bill for the disassembly, paint, reassembling the chassis, rebuilding the brakes, fitting the rebuilt engine and gearbox and putting the repainted shell back on the chassis was 13K Euros. At that point there were no other panels fitted, the shell was completely bare, no wiring was in place....

I'd have thought that providing your van is shiny it is worth £7K minimum. It may be worth slinging it on US ebay

A handful of cars aside, since when did cost-to-restore bear the slightest resemblance to value-when-restored...?

That's the 2cv's biggest problem, iyam. Values are high enough, and the car simple enough that people think "Oooh, restore, shiny-shiny, profit"

And we all know where that ends up. Restoration companies going titsup, and leaving customers out their cars or a chunk of money. Other restoration companies producing shiny-shiny stuff that'll only stay that way for a year or two.

The only time that restoring 2cvs - commercially, properly - will make financial sense is if either prices rise a lot higher (yet parts prices stay where they are), or if there's a customer for whom the final bill is less important than the quality of the job because of an emotional attachment to that particular car.

Which is one of the reasons why it is worth paying a price premium for a good car. You know exactly what you're going to get. You pay the money and have the finished article.

Personally I have no issue at all with properly sorted cars selling for a decent amount of money. What does piss me off is tarted up junk masquerading as something it simply isn't. Last year I sorted out a Bamboo for some friends of my sister. The thing had been to a "specialist" to get its floors and sills fixed following an MOT failure. And they'd been charged real money for the work.

The only thing I could do to put it right was to cut the sills and floors and toe bopard out completely and start again.

<sigh> How many guesses do we get?

It wasn't that wank-pit I had was it? Had its front floors welded in upside down and the wrong sides. Top job!

For what it's worth, we had our 400, which is half decent although not perfect, advertised for a couple of months, and taken to a couple of camps sporting for sale signs, and apart from a couple of dreamers who drove it round the field, agreed it was nice and then suddenly didn't have any money, there was no interest. That was at £2650, and we'd have taken £2k for it.

I do it for a paying hobby. Restoring cars is a bit of mugs game and there can't be much profit in it unless you are working at the top end. I suspect its half the reason why certain restoration companies make such a poor job. No real money in it. My view for them is don't bother.

Nail on the head in the last half of the last paragraph, Adrian - that's the only situation where there's a living wage (and that's a modest living wage!) to be had.

As for parts prices staying where they are - have you seen what's happening with them?!

Roll on 65....