The Brand New 1971 MGB...
[MORE ROMANTIC STUFF HERE]
This is the highest quality MGB ever built: Priced in the low forties
Let us create this dream car for you!
Low forties, low forties... What I can't imagine is who they think
their market is. Has something happened while I was replacing the
rear spring bushings on my '71 MGB to drive the prices up to the
point where ANYONE would spend $42,000 on even a first-rate restoration
of an MGB?
Well, all right. I just sat down with the calculator and plugged in some
guesstimates of the cumulative cost to build an MGB from brand-new parts,
except for big components like engine ($1500 from most places), trans
($1000) and rear axle ($1000), none of which are available new in
complete form but would have to be rebuilt. I got to $14,400 and I'm
pretty close, but I haven't included the cost for hydraulic tubes,
the whole clutch setup, heater, or a few little trim pieces. Figure
that a new MGB would cost about $17,000 in all-new parts. Now I've built
MGBs in a couple of weeks, with help; figure it's three weeks work for
two full-time people and you're figuring high; we had a lot of stops
to go buy tools, parts, equipment, pizza, etc... Assuming even $50
an hour (and face it, the shops might CHARGE $50 an hour, but they
sure don't pay their staff that much), that's $12,000. So we're up
to $29,000 to have an MGB made from brand-new parts. (You could save
an absolute PILE by buying a parts car and swapping over bits, of
course, but we know that; the standard estimate is about twelve grand.
The ad says "Brand New," however, so new it shall be...)
What's interesting, though, is that if you take a more reasonable
figure for labor -- something in the back of my mind says $22 an
hour for top-of-the-union auto workers -- you get a $5,280 figure
for the labor involved in building a B. Then subtract 15% from the
parts cost for wholesale and you're back down to $14,450. At $19,730
it's still outrageously high, but it's about right for its market
segment today. (And of course, I'm leaving markup out of it; anyone
know what the markup is on the cost of a car? At 30% the cost goes
up to $25,649; at 50% it's $29,595. And I don't know about the auto
business, but in many retail businesses the markup is closer to 100%
of the wholesale price of an object.)
But the real question, which I don't address, is --
Who would pay $42,000 for an MGB, even a handmade, brand-new one?
And if anyone would, why?
Oh, sure, I can go on for hours (and have done so, here even) about
what a lovely car the B is, how it's new enough to be reasonable in
today's context yet old enough to be a semi-classic, how the performance
is adequate for tooling around public roads if not quite up to the level
of modern performance cars, but part of the appeal of the B is its
relative cheapness. I still see Bs in fairly good condition in the
various advertising media for prices in the $3K-$5K range; are there
enough people who both like MGBs and put a sufficient price on absolute
perfection that they're willing to pay eight to ten times that for one?
I can't imagine so; the concepts of "absolute perfection" and "MGB"
are not exactly congruent... :-) Four million pennies is a lot of
copper.
I dunno. I thought I liked MGBs more than anyone in the world; I hope
I'll always have this one. But if I were planning to spend $42,000 on a
car, well, we've DONE that one, haven't we? (E Type coupe and Caterham
Seven, for those just joining the list...)
--Scott "Think I'll drive home in my FORTY THOUSAND DOLLAR car now" Fisher
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