• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Mini Controversy!

Share this page

aeronca65t

aeronca65t

Great Pumpkin
Offline
Don't know if any of you are familar with the Barrett-Jackson Car Search TV Show (seen on the American Cable channel, "SpeedTV")
The premise of the show involves three teams who get $100,000 USD and use the money to buy and sell cars on the B-J auction. The profit goes to charity and the winning team gets a prize.

Last week, one team bought a Classic Mini-Cooper from the new Italian Job movie (the one that Charlize Theron drives) for $5000 (!!!).
Seems that the studios use a car and then sell it for what ever they think is fair. This Mini was in mint condition. The purchase price was so far out of line that the team was disqualified from the contest.
From what I hear, the car was just on sale on eBay yeaterday and sold for $39,000. Wow!
 
That's incredible!!!!! Very good for the value of regular Minis!
 
I saw something on that. Didn't quite understand the ins and outs, but so what if the purchase price was "out of line?" Not as if the team forced a little old lady to give it away or anything. Prices for Mini Coopers are lower in the UK than they are here in the USA, so isn't the pricing issue rather subjective?
 
Steve:

You're probably right about the price not being crazy-out-of-line.
I've seen decent Mini 1000s for around that price. But theoretically, this is a Mini with some interesting history *and* it was a Cooper. I'd say a nice Cooper is worth around $10,000 to $15,000 in my area.
Some of the issues with the sale was (I think) that the movie studio was counting the sale as a charitable donation, rather than a straight sale (according to what I read elsewhere).
 
One wonders if there wasn't some sort of connection that resulted in the discount. Then, the disqualification would make more sense.
 
Could be that the controversy/disqualification on a high profile TV show helped to get the price up to $39K.
Assuming the resulting proceeds went to a charity then that would be a fine thing (might even all have been "engineered" or maybe that's just the conspiracy theorist coming out in me)
I want to cry when I think about all those clapped out minis I had in my UK youth.....
 
[ QUOTE ]

I want to cry when I think about all those clapped out minis I had in my UK youth.....

[/ QUOTE ]

Only had one Mini, but still......... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/england.gifyou are right! They were knackered when we bought them, they were just disposable, ten-a-penny runabouts. If we had known then.........
 
The issue was not the price of the car, it was that they passed it off as a "Classic". I believe they said it was a restored 70 something, and as we all know, that was not a classic. It looked like a typical rebadged late model.
 
Interesting. Being in the middle of an extended rebuild have been aware of prices on both sides of the pond.Cars with 'history'-Paddy Hopkirk, Paul McCartney etc do very well.Average rebuilds are in the $5-10K range and really good ground up jobs especially 'S's are in the 6-12K pounds sterling. Sound a lot? Well add it up.New shellor rebuilt Can%3.5-7.5K,engine rebuilt to S specs. with big Weber c/r synchro Salisbury limited slip Can2.5-3K(and that's using freebies left over from racing), 4 pot Rover front discs Can$1200, new rear subframe and bits Can $500-1K and we haven't even got to the carpets yet.No sympathy or derision please. This is just to show how much our hobby costs which will be reflected in prices and it seem people are prepared to pay good bucks for excellent quality
 
A friend of mine in the UK is about to embark on a rebuild of a genuine Cooper, using a new shell. It will be an expensive undertaking, no doubt, and he would not get his money back out of it if he sold it right away (not his intention). I know that the restoration of any car is going to cost big bucks, no matter how small the vehicle may be........no derision from this quarter.
 
I'd be very interested in seeing the ad. I searched ebay present and past Mini sales, and found are no classic Minis there at anywhere near that price.

One optimist had his Innocenti going for $22K, but were no bids on it.
 
Back
Top