Projects More then it's worth

I recently and several times have read the comment that when building a car you will never get back the money put into it. This baffles me. I have built a lot of cars doing all of my own work and have never dumped more money into anything I have built then what I could sell it for. I have several projects and purchase the majority of parts through craigslist, swap meets, and on here, etc. Time wise I have been wise enough to choose said projects that will be worth the effort and time spent. And buy some with intent to sell for profit and have never lost money. I see ads all the time of cars listed for sale saying so much invested, sacrifice selling for a third or half of what they claim they spent. Am I the minority?

 

Most of that comes from the guys that can't do the work themselves. Then there are the guys that have to have everything new, a big horse crate motor, all new rear assembly. All new chassis, ect. If you are a scrounge you can build a fair car for fair money and make a few bucks. Then if you truly keep track of all the extras it takes to build a car, Shop materials like oxygen and acetylene, cut off wheels, cans of chemicals, light bill ect. We usually only ad up the big things. A shop adds up everything, all the nuts and bolts and the time to get them to the job. You might find out you are working for about $5.00/hour. Which is better than sitting in a pub spending $10.00/hour.

 

Don't drink or smoke and enjoy working the in shop, making deals, swapping as much as driving and attending events. The dealing and swapping furthers the hobby/passion. Very little money comes from the household budget. Beats building bird houses or watching the boob tube.

 

If you accurately track ALL costs like Oldolds says I would be surprised if you break even or make a little money. If you do good for you! I don't build with an eye to make a profit, much to my wifes chagrin! I build what pleases me and that sometimes means I need to spend some money for things I don't have or can't make. In the end just because I spent time and money on a car doesn't necessarily make it worth some X factor more in dollars. Be great if it did. Its worth what its worth. Sometimes the market is good and I get what I have in it. Sometimes not. If I do I am lucky and thankful for the time I spent doing what I enjoy. Of course if your doing a car like a Ferrari or something along those lines then all bets are off.

 

If you can charge yourself $70-$100 an hour for working on your stuff, you can do OK. If you choose the right car and do the right things to it and find the right guy to sell it to, you can make enough for the next build. Sounds like you have figured it out.

 

I assume that if you're making money building hot rods, you're reporting all that income to the IRS. And if you're writing off your garage, you're keeping track of the expenses so that you can recapture depretiation (sp?).

 

Doing most of your own work, fabricating, trading labor and parts and scrounging for usable used parts is "traditional" Hot Rodding.
Depends on what you build. If you pick an undesirable and expensive to build car, you'll have a tough time recouping the investment. If you build something like your avatar, things are different. Fenderless, hoodless cars without a ton of chrome to send out go together cheaper. It also depends on how much you have to pay for the car on the front end. Sometimes a guy gets super lucky and starts with a solid car that he was able to score cheap.
A lot also depends on your level of talent and how much free time you have (or wish to invest). Some guys can do everything on a car. Some can do most but choose to farm out a couple of things they despise doing such as body work.

There's usually two camps when it comes to stating how much $ guys have invested in their car. The guy who's downright proud to tell everyone he has 200k in his car; "That's a 50k motor, 30k paint job you're looking at", etc.
And the lowball guy who tells you he built the entire car for 5k.

Good for you if you're sticking to a plan, scrounging and doing most of your work. As mentioned, don't forget to add the electric bill when you're running lights, compressor and welding all month. Consumables like welding and body supplies as well as a few hundred bucks worth of hardware bought $10-$20 at a time, etc. Cars will $20 and $50 you to death.

 

Been in the hobby for a lifetime and never even considered breaking even. Some projects take a wrong turn and you do what it takes to stop the bleeding and sell it as is, others turn out so nice you wish you had spent a little more on them. The real payoff is those times you are just standing around with like minded friends raising Hell with each other and enjoying the moments. We are all legends in our own minds and the goal is to convince the others.

 

I tend to think of them as a savings account, so i just try to keep them all!

 

Hi. I have a local friend who seems to be a whiz at finding vehicles from the Model A's thru the late 60's. He seems to always get an affordable price as he is not dealing with owners that are into collecting or rebuilding old cars & just need to make some room. He usually has 8 to 9 cars all the time. What he does is really clean them up and detail well, do whatever it takes to get them running both safely & dependably as daily drivers. Beyond getting them running & often new tires he does not spend much cash. Every day he drives a different old car to wherever he goes. Drives them a year or so & finds something else he wants & gets rid of one or two & always seems to make a thousand or two for his trouble. Again he does not do all the frills & add on's, just makes them look as good as they can be with what they are, gets them safely & dependably running with parts in the style of original. No disc brakes, crate engines or front end clip changes, etc. They still are what they were originally.

He just found a really nice barn find with a really good body in a 42 Ford 2 door sedan for little or nothing. Needs new tires & the steering is froze up. That will not be a big deal to fix. To make room he sold a Model A Huckster pickup & a 57 Chevy 4 door 210.

Getting your money back depends on doing your own work and not adding every option & upgrade known to man. I know this works well for him.

Now if you build one the way I am building my 46 Chevy coupe & having to pay some labor in the process, neither you or me will ever get all the money back. I am rebuilding about everything.

Jimmie

 

LOL I don't try to convince anyone.

Where the never get out what you put in comes from a time that hot rods and customs had no resale value. There was a time that modified cars were only popular with hoodlums. Today any middle aged boomer who spent the last 40 years making a life instead if living it is willing to lay out their life's savings to be the cool guy that they never were. That is a game changer.

 

I have found that profit (when it exists) is inversely proportional to the amount of work I put into improving something. This also corresponds to how long I keep something. If I resell something right away, there's a chance I could sell it for more than I paid. Even if its junk, it's easy to sell cheap stuff. When I invest money into truly making something nice, It's harder to find a buyer willing to pay for those investments.

 

Yes, to answer the OP question.
I do 90% of my work.
My biggest cost is parts.
No patience or time to search for the best deal or trade work or parts.
When I am in the middle of a project. I am in a trance waiting for next step. At that point I don't care how I get there.

 

As has been said,if you do your own work you can generally recoup the money invested if you don't get strapped and are forced to sell,then you are guaranteed to loose money.

I personally try not to keep track of the expenditures because I approach the builds like I will never sell it ~ The Ranch Wagon is a prime example,this car will stay in the family come hell or high water,worst case scenario,we can sleep in the wagon! HRP

 

Some people are definitely making a profit on rods/old cars, but like anything else they are smarter and better at it than most of us.


I'm good at woodworking, so I really can sock it to yuppies who want their house to look like a magazine but couldn't read a tape measure if their lives depended on it.

I have/will never make a dime on any car though, (not great at it) But that's probably a good thing, I used to really have passion for woodworking, but now after doing it for profit, there's no joy in it at all for me, that would really suck if I ended up feeling like that about cars. Imho

 

Well I have made money from hot rods, enough to keep me on the road most of the year on my bike. I made it from working on other peoples hot rods. LOL

These days I measure my profits in fun. Hell I guess if I was honest my whole life can be measured that way. When it stops being fun I'll quit doing it.

 

How does the old saying go?

"The best way to make a small fortune in Hot Rods is to start with a Big Fortune"

 

Bingo! Well said.

 

Like most topics on here, each person and situation is different. Time is the major factor here. If you can make more money building Hot Rods, than at any thing else. That is great. But for most people its just a hobby. Which is one of the reasons that it is so much FUN! After you put your heart and soul in one, how can you sell it, anyway? Value is not only measured in dollar and cents. And as the wife says, { Investment ? } ha ha Ron...

 

Most of the guys that build Hot Rods and claim that they make money doing it are not counting their overhead in the garage at home, nor figuring in their time. Sure, then you can say you made a profit, but add time and overhead and that small profit definately goes away.

The only guys that I know that consistently make money on Hot Rods are a couple of guys I know that buy and sell cars. These guys are good, and smart, and lucky. But they are the only ones that I know that make a profit on Hot Rods.

 

How much profit or loss you make depends on if you consider your time and labor is worth anything.
It's kind of hard to say you do it for fun and your labor isn't worth anything when you do the same work for a living on other folks' stuff.

 

Where is this pub, please.

 

I usually don't have much cash in what I do,for me the fun is in fabricating. I also don't like many catalogue parts anyways. I have made ok money in flipping cars that have a couple hours of clean up invested, and I justify my tools and shop with side projects for money. Overall, I spend less on my hobby than friends of mine with boats, bikes, sleds, planes or my wife's horses.


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

It also depends on what you build.......meaning desirable cars with strong resale or odd ball stuff, my dad loves his '58 Olds 4 door and has spent way more than it is worth in paint and interior so if he sold it he would lose 50% of his investment, if he had done the same to a '58 Chevy Impala 2 door it would be a money maker, same argument for the guys that build '32 chevys and '32 Mopars , yeah they are cool but they cost about the same to build and sell for a lot less than a '32 Ford, no offense but it is reality...............Personally I have made the most $$ on flipping cars that I invest the least amount of money and time in, once I bought a '59 Porsche shell in a junk yard in Colorado and never even unloaded it from my trailer and made $5k.

 

never figure in labor, sand paper, etc. so, back to initial purchase price and required work/parts replacement. even starting with what seems to be a good quality foundation, the unexpected can raise it's nasty head. then there is the fact that since you are replacing this or that need to replace whatever it is attached to, etc. plus, the quality of the stop now and sell or lose $. even if all of that goes as planned finding a buyer for the price you need can be a big challenge. I have sold cars in less than two hours after putting up the For Sale sign. others have taken months. others I know did not even have their ride up For Sale but, gets a over the top cash offer and makes a deal. some will never sell their ride(s), others are always looking. much depends on being in the right place at the right time. just watch the TV car reality shows and see how it all works out so easy.

 

I only have $50 in my car-- $50 for this and $50 for that etc !!

 

Aside from how much work you can do, also include how many parts you can make. As for time, if you have the tooling, you cut time down dramatically. Sure you can build one simple ladder type frame in a day or two on your concrete floor, but if you have a frame jig, that changes to 2 or 3 frames in one day. Add a CNC plasma, and now it is 2 frames with all brackets welded to it. You can make money, but talent/skills, tooling and how well you find cheap parts you can't make plays a HUGE roll.

Just last week, I paid $800 for a model a coupe body, and a Chevy roadster roller, and several extra axles and a truck full of parts, including NEW chrome roadster headers and turn outs from a guy because he needed rent money. Another guy sold me a Muncie m20 he had rebuilt years ago, a bop bell and a new clutch for $200 because he needed money. Another guy GAVE me a 32 Studebaker dictator body because he was moving and didn't want to take with. It's hard not to turn a profit that way as long as you build it bare basic and don't go nuts on overkill parts.

Just because YOU (not saying you to anyone in particular) can't make money doing it, doesn't mean others can't. I have a friend that is a professional poker player and makes good money doing so, where I would lose my house on a nickel slot machine.

 

If you are capable of doing everything yourself, you can make money. If you have to pay someone 10 grand to paint it it's going to be tough. Besides, the color you chose may make it less desirable to the buyer. I've seen guys buy a fresh build and immediately get it painted and reupholstered. I like to sell them done, ready for finishing.

 

If you can do everything yourself maybe you'll make money.

When Lynn and I had the shop way back when we built a lot of old wrecks. A total properly repaired is a good car or can be. On some cars we made money and on others to quote Lynn (who was a pretty shrewd businessman) "All we made was wages"

 

I kept meticulous records on time and money spent on my 40. logging everything on my computer at the end of the work day. Complete frame torn apart and started over. (literally) I did all body work, paint, upholstery, engine (not machine work) 276 w/blower.
RESULTS 2400 hrs and $26,889.67. Don't have any idea if I could sell for a profit but sure has been fun. My answer to "how much do you want for it?" is "I haven't heard the figure yet. lol