If purchasing overseas:
- Government charges (GST, Import Duty, Quarantine fees etc)
- Transport costs: Transport in country of origin from sellers property to the docks. Shipping from country of origin to Australia. Transport from dock to your home.
- Have a trusted inspector look over the car for you, or consider flying over yourself. Neither of these options completely exclude surprises once you get the car home.
General:
- Do you know much about cars? These cars are 40+ years old now. They require regular maintenance and care. They are generally not comparable to cars of the current era in safety, performance or comfort, so don't be surprised when they aren't.
- If you can't maintain the car yourself, you need to find someone who knows the cars, and be able to afford to pay them to do it for you.
- Check for rust in typical areas. Some examples are floors (especially front), bottoms of doors, cowls, bottoms of fenders (front and rear), chassis rails.
- In regards to panel and paint the costs of a good job on these older cars is generally more than expected because the body work usually involves rust/damage repair, panel straightening and possibly body aligning.
- Buy the best body you can for the money you have. Everything bolt on can be replace realitively cheaply, but rust and accident repairs can easily blow out to huge costs.
- Budget in cost of getting the car compliant in your state. (Belts, child restraint points, light colours etc
- Check for accident damage current and dodgy past repairs
- Have VINs checked for authenticity if you're buying a "special" model.
- Make sure any mods are legal in Aus
- Careful of unfinished project cars. They generally don't end up cheap.
- Make sure the wife is across the costs, time and effort involved!
If you guys think of any more, reply to the thread and I will add them to this post and delete the reply.boofhead wrote: I would like to see some positives to balance out the negatives.
We need people to be the next collectors and owners so these cars out live us.
So may i suggest
1) Learning to work on them yourself is a rewarding experience.
2) There are great people to meet that are associated with owning these classics.
3) Your keeping history alive which is a worthy thing to do.
4) They (atleast the V8 s - he he) sound fantastic [hence lower performance and handling and safety not an issue when cruising and listening to the music the engine makes].
5) Drive them and enjoy - no need to worry about the mileage since it been clocked several time already.
I am sure there are many other benefits just to tired to think...
2012/03/19 - Added suggestions from Foresight
2012/03/20 - Added suggestion from cage, and Nuts & some benefits from boofhead