Recently my 1997 Daily driven race car started falling apart on me. Interior falling apart, leather cracking up and ripping, Electric shorts, rust, etc... you name it. I noticed Victor Sokolowski had a clean show car/ drag car shell for sale. (Red devil) It came with some cool suspension components and it was gorgeous inside & out. I bought it for close to his asking price. I talked him down a couple hundred because I had to install the gas tank, radiator and a couple other parts.
I paid a good friend of mine (and amazing mechanic) 1400 to swap my engine, trans, exhaust, fuel system, and most of the suspension including struts and springs to the new body. While doing the swap, I also had him install some beefed up valve train components. I parted out the 97 body and interior parts & made $750. Then I sold some of the more extreme drag parts off the new shell suspension aand replaced them with my parts. I even sold my trailing arms, and some other parts because what was on the car already was an upgrade from where I was at.
Vic had a 3 gauge pod. I only had 2... Mine got sold. You get the picture. This made me close to $500
I sold my 18 inch rims to a friend for 450 with tires at 15% tread depth. Then I bolted my stockers back on
After selling body and interior panels, engine covers, switches, suspension parts, etc. I scrapped the car for 275 bucks. Add this up and labor , plus about $500 toward the shell paid for!
I only paid $1000 for the shell. 750 was cash, the remainder was labor. This was a great deal, and I guess I got lucky.
This car has black leather in 10/10 condition with heated seats & a heads up display. I had no hud and my seats were camel, ugly and not heated.
Just thought it'd be interesting to show how you can jump from a 200,000 mile beat up race car to a good condition gtp for a few hundred bucks. It eats me up to see stout builds get de-modded and sold off. So for all my highly modded 3800 guys, just something to think about.
Big thanks to Victor & Brent Dyer for making this all happen. What a rush to pull something like this off!
