Mike buys a late 1300 beetle in poor condition..

Ed decides to make it into a Buggy with shortened chassis
but decides that the chassis is too rusted so
He buys a chassis already shortened...
New RED fibreglass body..

on channel 635 discovery last night.. WHEELER DEALER

LEE

I've seen that episode before, it's pretty ridiculous. Good fun to watch and the buggy that they produce is really nice, but in terms of the economics and the premise of the show, it makes no sense! I know, let's buy a knackered bug as a money-making venture. The most profitable thing to do is a complete build of a buggy, replacing almost everything with new parts! All of the wheeler dealers episodes obviously lie about prices though, and discount the huge amount of free labour. I would love to build a buggy like that one day though!

if you use your head and are good with tools, it's possible to build a pretty reasonable buggy for around the $8k mark. Of course, that depends on getting good deals on motors and trans. That is the single most exy part of the build. Engineering certificates also add costs as well.

yeah, I saw the edition a while back myself. And I'm sure you are right re them exagerating profits. However, despite what you'd think, there is a huge kitcar market in the UK that makes that sort of car much cheaper to build than it is over here. We have like 2 maybe three body builders. They have between 5 and 10. Other thing is, most of our rusted cars are also dead mechanically. The brits have rusted car with mechanicals that are still ok. So a 1300 that totally gutted rust wise might have an engine with only 50,000miles on the clock. It's all those mechanical bits that cost the money in a buggy build.

For example, lots of our guys are using kombi trans. 10 years back, you could get a good second hand trans from a kombi. Now, you'd better budget for a rebuild. Rebuilt kombi trans cost around $2k including the initial cost of the trans. So you can see how it all adds up.