17-05-2020, 11:38 AM
One of the comments of the Facebook A7 page about this £125,000 car questioned how much it would cost to build entirely new A7.
I did once calculate, roughly, the cost doing this based on what I was told about the construction of an entirely new, exact down to the finest detail, replica Sopwith Pup fighter - an entirely professional build that started with just an original instrument panel. In 1985 the Pup came out at just over one million dollars (2.25 million today) - though the wealthy American enthusiast who commissioned it was more than a little cagey about the fine details... The job included such things as commissioning tooling, pattern making, casting, machining, the weaving of an exact reproduction of the original fabric covering and manufacture of the machine-gun 'interrupter gear' (a friend made all that), etc. However, it did not include the cost of flying over a Hollywood film crew to record the step-by-step stripping of an aircraft - belonging to the Science Museum - whose fabric was going rotten. In 1985 the cost of completely new 1928 Chummy built in the same way as the Pup, came out (as far as it was possible to estimate) at around half as much. Of course, with all the tooling and machining contacts in place, production replicas could have been built in a short series - the bare cost of these being around £50,000 each. Would any have been sold - who knows? If, today, an exact copy of a 1928 Chummy could be built on a mass-production basis, like any other modern vehicle, what could the price be? The cheapest modern hatchback is around £6000 - so, possibly £2500 (and only for sale in a Communist dictatorship with - assuming you to be a favoured person - a 10-year wait for delivery).
In the vintage aircraft world, things have moved on, take a look at these: https://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects...w-albatros https://thevintageaviator.co.nz/sales/ai...opwith-pup
I did once calculate, roughly, the cost doing this based on what I was told about the construction of an entirely new, exact down to the finest detail, replica Sopwith Pup fighter - an entirely professional build that started with just an original instrument panel. In 1985 the Pup came out at just over one million dollars (2.25 million today) - though the wealthy American enthusiast who commissioned it was more than a little cagey about the fine details... The job included such things as commissioning tooling, pattern making, casting, machining, the weaving of an exact reproduction of the original fabric covering and manufacture of the machine-gun 'interrupter gear' (a friend made all that), etc. However, it did not include the cost of flying over a Hollywood film crew to record the step-by-step stripping of an aircraft - belonging to the Science Museum - whose fabric was going rotten. In 1985 the cost of completely new 1928 Chummy built in the same way as the Pup, came out (as far as it was possible to estimate) at around half as much. Of course, with all the tooling and machining contacts in place, production replicas could have been built in a short series - the bare cost of these being around £50,000 each. Would any have been sold - who knows? If, today, an exact copy of a 1928 Chummy could be built on a mass-production basis, like any other modern vehicle, what could the price be? The cheapest modern hatchback is around £6000 - so, possibly £2500 (and only for sale in a Communist dictatorship with - assuming you to be a favoured person - a 10-year wait for delivery).
In the vintage aircraft world, things have moved on, take a look at these: https://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects...w-albatros https://thevintageaviator.co.nz/sales/ai...opwith-pup