In a slightly pickle here with my S1 (remains) sadly, I’m after a valuation to sell the complete car to the garage I use. I have a rough idea but wouldn’t mind a few more opinions.
Back in Feb I was hit bang centre in the S1, LH side, damaged front and rear clams, sill, door, front lip and unfortunately the chassis . Was and still am devastated as prior to finding the chassis damage (sill was cut off for it to be seen) it looked like I got away with it and got the go ahead for 23k repair bill! Now with the chassis they deemed it Cat B.
14k VHPD
Full service history, always serviced regardless of use.
Completely original bar short shifter, rear diffuser.
Interior is blue alcantara steeling wheel/ sill pockets, blue comfort seats and mats
I’ll add some pictures below and this isn’t a for sale add.
Tricky. I suppose you need to make a guess at parts that are valuable and unique to the S1 Exige. The vhpd must be 4K with all the bits, motorsport seats are easily 1k5 and the clams and roof would be worth a fair bit when repaired. After that it’s really elise prices and your garage needs to make some money AND whilst the parts have value the demand is slow. It could take months to sell the engine.
Firstly really sorry to hear and see an accident in a S1 like that. I hope you were / are ok. What a sh*t thing to happen.
Re values I m absolutely not an expert, sure others here more knowledgeable than me, so more thinking our loud, but think the shame is the premium an exige generates over an Elise isn’t the same when it’s for parts as when its a finished car, thinking an exige is normally x2 or x3 the price of an S1 Elise as I guess fundamentally they are the same when into components.
The unique clams body wise being damaged. The bits of high value would be the vhpd engine, CR gearbox, engine cover, roof panel, rest wing and uprights, wheels, LSS shocks, and interior especially is MS seats etc. lights especially the clear indicators.
It’s hard to know what to say as car value. You’d be better breaking it yourself I think in terms of a £ return than selling complete being honest. It’s easier to value the parts than the car I think.
Sorry not answering the question, but maybe £7k of obvious parts as point of reference.
Sorry to see these pics. I know that island well (Stapenhill, Burton?) and it’s a nightmare at times.
Slightly left field thought but the comments about the relative differences in S1 Exige vs Elise values got me wondering :
Would a rebuild around an S1 Elise chassis be feasible?
Yes there’s the initial cost to bear in mind, especially if buying a complete donor car was necessary, but a good chunk of that could be recouped by selling the parts from the Elise.
If your garage is wanting to buy the Exige to strip, then surely that says there’s mileage in a rebuild?
I think it’s the economy of repair. An Elise based Exige rep I guess is £15-20k in today’s market? You see a few motorsport bodied Elise but I think that ballpark. As a CATB it can’t be repaired and returned to the road, so can’t be an Exige again even with a replacement chassis and can only be broken for parts or be a track only car. Seems a horrible category when you’d like to find an option to rebuild it.
If value doesn’t matter and your just going to build it for “you” and keep it, the Elise approach is a good one. Transpose all the Exige bits and you know what you have and values don’t matter but wouldn’t be cheap as an exercise.
But if car had been paid out on and was “mine” I think I’d consider it just to keep hold of it.
I was working on a rough cost of £11k for an Elise, then recouping say £4-5 of that from the combined pool of spares from both vehicles.
Since the parts commonality means some things wouldn’t need to be moved over, that would reduce the overall amount/cost of work.
Being cynical for a moment, if your garage is interested in the salvage then there’s clearly money in it for them. That being so, it must be worth more, as-is, than they will offer. That’s a simple commercial fact, no more than that.
Something that comes to mind is that Porsche Motorsport will reissue chassis numbers where a replacement has needed to be used. This is for race cars I know, but would the principle be possible?
I’d certainly try to keep it if, God forbid, the same happened, with a fully documented and recorded rebuild process so there can be no doubts.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply!
All parties involved were OK. Sadly the other driver was looking left at the roundabout before pulling out and T boning me, just glad it wasn’t a biker!
Yep, stapenhill roundabout, used to live just off it as a kid ironically so I rolled her into the drive.
Unfortunately I’m an ex pat, time is valuable to me when I am home and with this pandemic stretching on and on it looks like I’m never getting back. I’ve spent 10 days in UK since last October so to rebuild myself is out of the question unless I store for a few years until I’m home for good.
I have pushed to try and get a spare tub, but there aren’t many/any and the one for sale are asking 8k+ for a early year bare tub. I was ok with going ahead with it, but labour costs alone would be the real killer here with the strip and rebuild.
Insurance co. Have paid out 49.5k after much persuasion and 2 additional valuations being carried out. Chassis buy back was 2,100 - ill let the garage have for 5k, we both make money at the end of the day and it’ll help them out amid pandemic and rescission fears.
I could get another S1 but anxiety of it happening again is all too real for me which hurts, dream car achieved to be taken away. I’ll get a another for sure, just not a minter, may even dabble in the V6 realms I think, but I’m never using that roundabout again
Thank you for the kind words! Shall see whats left for me when i finally get back into country.
Fingers crossed.
Definitely, on co part I saw an elise S2 hit well over 7k.
Granted he’ll have to take in account paying employees to strip it, then add VAT on top which all adds up. Initially I asked for 7.5k, but reduced to 6k (was a typo before), I scoured alot of sites for past item sell prices and he should net like 14k or 15k easily -when the items sell that is.
. Was and still am devastated as prior to finding the chassis damage (sill was cut off for it to be seen) it looked like I got away with it and got the go ahead for 23k repair bill! Now with the chassis they deemed it Cat B.
