MadUsa1

Hi All,

My brother (fellow scooby enthusiast and owner) has recently quit his job to go start a car restoration business in Dubai. Idea is to restore and restomod Triumphs and other classic british sports cars.

He’s starting from scratch and will be recording the journey for YouTube.

Here’s the link to episode 1. There are 6 Episodes so far.


Hope you like it!

Jake

The Joshua Tree

I'll watch that later as i like resto programmes, good luck to your brother with his venture

IdonthaveaScooby

Why Dubai

lockheed

iTrader: (1)

Because that's where the money is numb nutz
Or is that a conspiracy too.

IdonthaveaScooby

yeah , an American taking British cars to Dubai to do up flog to people with more money than sense

MadUsa1

My brother is British, but he has been living in Dubai for the last twenty years.

He noticed that there’s not much support for classic cars over there - that’s why he decided to start up there.

Cheers,

Jake

BMWhere?

Good luck to him!

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Good luck to them. Hope things work out better in Dubai than in the UK

No money in restoring cars to sell as a business model in the UK. Materials, labour (with fair wages) business rates all too high unless you cut corners or the car has a really favourable sales price or the customer is willing pay far more than the vehicle's value to restore it.

Last one we did was a early series II E-type FHC. Bill once the body and mechanicals were done was over £70k, that doesn't include the purchase price of the car, probably just about break even on that one and that purely due to E-type residuals/desirability - even the ugly duck 2+2s

As an aside if anyone wants a basket case Triumph Stag (manual with overdrive) as a restoration project, give me a shout. Currently dismantled with shell metalwork approx 70% completed ( needs offside rear quarter finishing). Owner ran out of money to finish the job. If I won the lottery I'd drop the shell on a Corvette C4 chassis (wheelbase is about right). C5/C6 torque tube and subframes could work but would need a hell of a lot of shell strengthening (Stag shell not rigid enough for more than 200bhp let alone 400bhp so better just to plonk it in another chassis ).

MadUsa1

Thanks for your comments everyone, hope you enjoy the video series. Indeed will be a hard business to make money from!

silver-sub

And he drives a Scooby!

MadUsa1

Yes indeed! Lovely car it is too! Not as raw as my Blobeye obviously, and quite a different driving experience: modern, solid and capable without being too sanitized. Still plenty of Scooby character in it. It's far more oversteery than the older ones: Seems like the chassis is set up to quite happily transition into power oversteer.

BMWhere?

Particularly tricky to make money if he spends all his time making detailed CAD drawings of all the parts he strips...although that could turn out to be a more profitable business if he has a full database of all TR6 parts in CAD!

Great series so far though, really enjoyed watching!

MadUsa1

Thanks for the kind words, I'll pass them along to him. Episode 7 should be out this weekend :-)

LeighOchoa

Best of luck, I love it. Thanks for sharing. I would love to see more uploads from you

MadUsa1

Episode 7 is out now!

IdonthaveaScooby

Is he keeping original engine ?

I hope not going to stick a cosworth engine/ some other daft **** in it

MadUsa1

Not sure yet, I think there are two options at this point - either bring the original engine back to life and lightly modify it for some more power and reliability... or perhaps drop in a modern Duratec...

There's some appeal to originality. But a beautifully built modern ford engine running 200 horsepower and revving to 8'500rpm is also pretty appealing.

I guess it will ultimately depend on the customer.

Have to watch the upcoming episodes to find out!