Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 13:42:22 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: fryday ..be glad you dont rely on lifetime service from
dealer ...
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right ...
I know it's around 1 %..
and as you say ....1 % of One Thousand dollars is 10 bucks..
and ..that's in One Year..
so you tie up $ 1k for a year to make 10 bucks..
that's not even lunch money.
for a Year's investment of a pretty nice chunk of change. !
anything else that pays better has risk with it.
now I'll tell you a good investment..
vanagons ! .
only partially joking.
their real value is in their utility ..and of course this great
family/community of owners .
And one doesn't usually 'make money' off a vanagon ..
but when you factor in all the great things about owning and using one ..
whether it's family camping trips,
or satisfaction of working on it for those that enjoy working on them ...
or what you can carry in it,
or how you can sleep in one if you need to,
or that they have pretty sporty suspension and handling ..
and good ground clearance ( a brilliant vehicle design feature if there ever
was one !! )
I dare say $ 1K invested in a vanagon will earn back way, way more than a
measly 10 bucks in a year.
heck ..in a year 10 bucks won't even be worth 10 bucks.
But a vanagon , taken care of at all, will still be there , and in some
cases even rising in value.
another great thing about them ..particularly westy's and campers..
you don't have to drive them thousands of miles to enjoy them.
You can get full camping value and joy out of one , often, not even a
hundred miles from home.
heck, they make great lunch and nap time 'mini-living rooms' for breaks at
work. ...things like that.
and if you invest sweat equity into them ..
say you buy ..and I have ..I have gotten a running westy with decent body ,
but needing many things still, but runing, and not 'that bad' for $ 1,000.
A huge majority of what I fix on these 'found' near homeless vanagons just
takes lubrication, cleaning, adjusting and so forth. Collecting good used
parts helps of course......
but with some cleverness and dedication , a few tools...
you can turn $ 1,000 invested into an early westy into $ 5,700 in a year or
so.
with maybe only a thousand spent in parts ...to make it fully roadworthy and
happy.
Collecting old vanagons and parts helps a lot of course. ..and not everyone
has a place or way they can do that , but if you can, opportunities to get
vanagons at low prices happen here and there.
maybe we'll get to hear what year AW Ben got, and 'mabye' some idea of what
it cost..
but I don't expect to find out about that especially.
I hope it's a good color and a good year.
I think the camping interiors are near worthless. and very poorly made,
based on how bad mine was when I got it ........and I also want room for
lots of stuff and the occasional engine and trans in the back ..
and the stock AW interior had nothing like that in mind of course . Need a
repairble aluminum water tank for an AW ? And I do like the propane heater
...though it's one that old is large, noisier, and uses more propane and aux
battery power than the modern pretty expensive compact ones do ...but I do
like that feature.
Btw..I know of two very good west coast SVX Syncro Westy's for sale...both
quite good. Around $39K.
what fun !
Scott
turbovans
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike S" <mikes@flatsurface.com>
To: "Scott Daniel - Turbovans" <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Cc: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2010 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: fryday ..be glad you dont rely on lifetime service from dealer
...
> At 10:57 PM 10/8/2010, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote...
>
>>where ?
>>where is a safe bet to make much of a return on $ 1K these days ?
>
> CD or money market pay around 1%. 1% of 1K is $10, which is not
> insignificant when the average person gets maybe 2 $30 oil changes a year.
>
> Of course, some of us can do much better than that, but "if you have to
> ask..."
