Does Anybody Really Pay These Prices?

I can only come to the conclusion that those who want parts at bargain prices, for a car that's been out of production for nearly 40 years, are going to be provided by some sort of charity? Those who know me, will also know my background & I've seen & heard it all before & I can tell you just how counter productive this general attitude is. People want the parts for nothing, but when their car, for example, fails it's mot because the ball joint in the front bottom link strut on their V8 is knackered, they start crying that parts suppliers should be doing something about it.
Why do you think anybody is going to invest many thousands of pounds in remanufacturing a part, only for people to say, I'm not paying that, I only paid 'X' for the car.
Seriously, £90 a corner for a new steel wing, is proper cheap money, I know how much Heritage wings cost & I mean what they actually cost, to the supplier, wholesale, not retail & it was a good 30% more than £90 & that was over 15 years ago.
 
This certainly has sparked some interesting debate! I still am not convinced that daily drivers actually spend very much on spare parts (compared to a full restoration using correct parts) and certainly not enough to keep the more difficult to get spares into reproduction. I go back to my original point though. eventually it is the daily drivers that disappear and the 'garage queens' that will survive and carry the model forwards. Have a look around the NEC classic car show and see how many models there are and then consider that almost all of the cars there live most of their life off the road. Very few of any of these models now are seen as daily drivers because they are now all very old cars, usually poorly made from new, and the daily drivers will inevitably eventually succumb to rust.
 
I pay as much money as is required to obtain the parts l need. If l can get a good second-hand panel for £25 then l will as l know with the right preparation you can't tell the difference between used or NOS. You could also argue that it's sound practice enviromentally-speaking, to use the parts that already exist rather than re-manufacturing them. After all, the continued use of existing products is one of the arguments often put forward in favour of the classic car movement.

A daily driver will need more mechanical parts than a weekend car so it's swings & roundabouts when it comes to cash spent by various owners.

It stands to reason though that most old cars are hobby cars & once the remainder of a certain model has been either scrapped or restored & the cars themselves are used less & less, the demand for most parts will largely fizzle out naturally.

Incidentally, l don't think £90 for a new P6 wing is unreasonable at all. It just depends what your priorities are.
 
Nothing wrong with 2nd hand parts & yep, we all like to have a result & bag a bargain, but I think owners should be realistic in their expectations of parts availability & pricing.
 
Not sure why necessarily "daily drivers" will eventually die of rust. If they were going to die, then after 40/50 years then this would surely already have happened?

Modern materials such as epoxy paint, dinitrol and two-pack finishes are infinitely better than what left the factory. Sure, you can't treat it like a modern car and you'll need regular inspections and repair but other than fuel consumption I can't see many barriers to using a P6 this way. Most restored examples are done with far more care than the production line ever achieved.

I don't BTW because I can't commit to this level of care but it usually comes to work 1 or 2 days a week if the weather is good all year round.
 
I have always thought of the P6 community being a wide range of people, from the daily driving enthusiast struggling to keep his car on the road with super tight budgets (I have been there as I drove P6s from 1977 to 1999 with very little money), to the people who search for a fully restored P6 and do nothing to them except hoover up all of the show prizes, and dust it off once in a while. There is of course a myriad of people in between.

There are people who drove them all of their lives and can now own one as a hobby, and can afford to spend whatever they like on it (Me now 8) for instance), there are people who have just bought their first P6 and are getting used to them, there are people who do all of their own work on them, there are people who know what they are doing, there are people who don't, and many many others.

I personally welcome all of them and feel that I should mention that I am getting just a little concerned about this thread.
 
My view is that the very best way to look after your Rover is to drive it regularly. Sure some parts will require replacement more often than if the car was driven less, but other items like the engine and transmission will give better service if used often.

My Rover now has over 324,000 Miles (522,000km), having been a daily driver since 1985. Like your own body, exercise often and it will work well. Use it little and it will break down.

Ron.
 
I think maybe a little bit of the problem is that there are people that don't have the knowledge or tools to repair panels and or the money to get pattern parts painted. so if for example a wing with no rust comes onto the market they are almost forced into paying the asking price or try to out bid everyone else. Just because a car is a daily driver or just used at weekends and is someone's hobby makes no difference. The issue arises when people look for what others have sold their parts for and expect or want to get the same price or better thinking their part is better than someone else's because its a genuine one or less rust or whatever.

twice now a member on here has been helpful and pointed me in the direction of a part that is exactly the same as the one for a rover but is for a mini or something else. this has enabled me to save 100's but with out that advise I wouldn't of known and been forced to pay for a genuine rover part. knowledge is everything as well as a little luck to be in the right place at the right time.

hope this makes some kind of sense
coop
 
cooper1203 said:
twice now a member on here has been helpful and pointed me in the direction of a part that is exactly the same as the one for a rover but is for a mini or something else. this has enabled me to save 100's but with out that advise I wouldn't of known and been forced to pay for a genuine rover part. knowledge is everything as well as a little luck to be in the right place at the right time.

I just bought this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151694860932? ... EBIDX%3AIT

For £20. Instead of this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rover-P6-Pair ... 27fbff7c42

For £340 a pair

It's not the right part but the head is identical to the Rover and I have a perfect base/stem :) I'll happily save the other £150 a piece and screw it on myself.
 
keynsham1 said:
I still am not convinced that daily drivers actually spend very much on spare parts (compared to a full restoration using correct parts)

Granted I am probably unique in the UK in term of how much I use my P6 (no disrespecf to Ron), but I shudder to think how much money I've spent on replacement parts and consumables keeping my car in daily use.

Dave
 
Granted I am probably unique in the UK in term of how much I use my P6 (no disrespecf to Ron), but I shudder to think how much money I've spent on replacement parts and consumables keeping my car in daily use.

Quite. I have all the receipts but dare not add them up!

I reckon the most common after service items are brake pads/discs/lines followed by suspension rubbers and ball joints.

But the truth is if you want anything more than a "used" car then the biggest cost by far except for labour if you can't DIY is finishing items and trim because you if you need anything better than the used items you have this means rare NOS or remanufactured as "good secondhand" doesn't really exist. For example, I realistically need to replace all the perished body rubbers and that's the thick-end of a grand. And I quite appreciate that the market for someone to make these is always going to be limited hence the cost.
 
One of many Dave3066.
The P6V8 has now been 15yrs my daily so far,and a classic has always been my daily since 1977.
I shove any parts purchased invoices in a drawer,and do 99% of the work on it myself.
I was thinking of changing my daily for another marque,but cannot find anything else to compare how easy they are to work on.
 
It's ironic isn't it. We need car prices to rise to make it worthwhile restoring and parts values to fall to stop them from being broken and to make restoration again more economically viable.

In a way we have the worst of all worlds.

It never ceases to amaze me how many Rovers worldwide seem to come out sheds. I observed this first when I was a kid in the 1980s. People held on to P4s. They didn't necessarily drive them but there were at least 6 I knew of in my area sitting on driveways.
 
A good price for a car in need of some serious work & it doesn't even have leather seats. I wonder if the sale has actually gone through, there are lots of messers on the bay.
 
I helped the seller see that car, before he bought it, and strongly advised him against doing so - the bulkhead is rotten and has previously been repaired, the advertiser said it ran and when we got there we were told 'well it ran a year ago'... All I can say is that he's in profit of more than what he put out in the first place at that price, but that must be a fluke or a mate, as this looks to be a better car: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rover-p6-v8-m ... true&rt=nc

which goes against the trend.
 
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