Hi Guys,

Lots of excellent replies. I have been keeping an eye out on the used market but in Australia I generally only see cars from the 1970's and 1980's come up.

I know second hand cars can be imported but I went though that process with the Silvia and it is not easy at all, plus I think the current legislation only allow Morgans made before 1989 to be imported.

I have done a reasonable amount of work on cars over the years. I do enjoy using spanners and improving things so from that point of view I would probably enjoy the process of improving the car to my style. Also as Richard said often aftermarket is cheaper than specifying the same on a new build, I have noticed heated seats here are a lot cheaper to retrofit than getting Morgan to fit the heater while the seat is being made and they do both the seat and back rest. Also to upgrade to Stainless Steel wires is a $3900 option but I could buy the same wheels from the MWS dealer here for under $600 each, i.e. buy all 5 for less and keep the silver painted wheels that come on the car as spares or try sell them?

Yes the wide body I read about was on Autocar, just enough information to make you think something is happening but not enough to know what. I didn't actually think about the Geneva motor show but it is in March so not a long wait to see what is going to happen.

As stated I doubt I would get know what finances I could have until mid next year,as that is after the Geneva show it means I can easily just wait and see what Geneva shows.

Yes Kit cars and Australia is a pain. The rules vary a lot from state to state and this often makes it very hard to sell as while a car might be registered to its current owner often it can not be registered in the state of a potential buyer. I would rather fix up an old car than build a kit car as it only has to satisfy the rules based on its age. I met a guy at a car show with a Suffolk SS100 made using the kit they supply in QLD. The car was fully registered in QLD and he bought it to bring back to Canberra in ACT (where both he and I live). QLD has registered the car based on a 1967 model due to the donor XJ6 that supplied the engine, etc. But ACT insisted the car was assembled in QLD in 2013 and therefore had to meet 2013 rules. He spent $1000's of dollars to get the car registered and said if he knew how much he would spend and that the car would end up with many modifications that he feels detracts from the car he would have bought an investment property in QLD to get a QLD address and kept the registration there.

So if I was to go the SS100 route I would find a ratty Mark 4 jag to cannibalize for the engine, gearbox, diff etc. Then use a company called Finch Restorations ( http://finchrestorations.com.au/products/ss100-jaguar ) to build the chassis etc. They said about half of their cars have been totally built by them and about half by owners themselves using period parts from a donor with Finch building a lot of the parts. They also told me that their cars are registered using the pre 1949 Hot Rod regulations that are standard across the country, so much easier if you decide to move, or sell the car interstate.

My Silvia is very similar to the one in this video. As far as I know the first 300 Silvia's off the production line were all Midnight Pearl Blue like this video. They were converted by hand in the factory using parts supplied by Autech (a private company that makes special parts for Nissan and does other stuff) by the factory workers while the production line ran producing the standard hardtop cars. Then a few more in Green, red and white were made but they never sold that well as Nissan priced them over double the cost of the hardtop version.

My car was the 10th car off the production line in October 1988 and sat in a dealership as a display model until sold new in October 1990. I kept it fairly standard until my son crashed it, then while it was at a repair shop they somehow stuffed the engine and refused to have anything to do with the engine repairs saying it must have been like that before the accident. As it is easier to buy performance parts for those cars than stock stuff I ended up rebuilding it looking pretty much stock but now instead of 128KW at the engine it has 156KW at the wheels when I had it tuned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfvT49WNbHk&t=77s

Thanks
Chris