At $15,000, Would You Become a Bricklin Baron?
Today’s Nice Price or No Dice contest isn’t for a single vehicle, but for a package deal of three. Let’s see what you all think of the price of this tempting trio of Bricklin SV1s, and whether misery loves company.
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Yesterday, we talked about Mini killing off the Clubman model, and how the original version, with all its odd doors, was perhaps the one worth keeping around. The 2008 Clubman we looked at came with those doors, as well as low miles and a respectable appearance. At $7,500, quite a few of you felt it was a keeper too, a fact made apparent by the Mini’s stellar 82 percent Nice Price win.
While watching the Netflix docuseries on John DeLorean the other week, I found one particular bit that struck me. The narrator stated that John Z, after leaving a cushy life at General Motors, embarked on a project that no one in modern times had ever dared — to building a brand new auto company from the ground up. Incredulous, I sat up from the couch and yelled at the screen, “Wait, what about Malcolm Bricklin?”
Bricklin, of course, had preceded DeLorean in building a safety-oriented sports car under his own name and, also like DeLorean had failed in the endeavor. Hell, both cars even had gull-wing doors! The big difference between Malcolm Bricklin and John Z. DeLorean, however, is that Bricklin didn’t almost go to jail as a result of his company’s financial collapse. Before the axe fell, though, Bricklin’s New Brunswick, Canada factory managed to pump out about 2,860 cars over the course of the 1974 through 1976 model years.
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Today, we have three of them.
The first, and seemingly most complete of the three is red, featuring factory turbine wheels. The second is orange wearing the same wheels but is in an obvious state of disrepair. The third of the bunch is white with a checkered flag detail on the rear fender. That one appears to be in the most dire straights, denuded of doors and bumpers. Remarkably, the seller boasts to have had each of the three running at one time or another. All three are also claimed to have clean titles, which is a plus.
Per the ad, one of the cars is a 1974 model, powered by an AMC 360 V8 and sporting the extremely rare 4-speed manual. The other two are ‘75s, which means they each have Ford 351 Windsors under the hood. Both of those are automatics too.
None of the cars has particularly good bodywork. The fiberglass on these cars tends to delaminate and curl with age. That results in ill-fitting hoods and hatches along with wonky bumper gaps.
We don’t get to see the interiors on any of the three, nor do we get any information in the ad about how well the gull-wing doors work on the cars that still have them. Those doors can be a pain point for both their actuators and their failing seals that can turn the cars into bathtubs. Notably, the orange car is missing its actuator strut, demanding a hunk of lumber to keep the door aloft.
That’s less of a problem, though, when you’ve got extra cars to pull parts from. There’s also a strong enough community for the Bricklin that it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities to get all three cars up and running and back on the road again. I mean, come on, crazier things have happened.
What might someone reasonably expect to pay for that not-quite-so-crazy vision? The seller asks $15,000 for the trio, lock, stock, and barrel. Add to that the cost of towing at least two of them away, plus finding a space large enough for them, and things start to get complicated.
Before we go down that rabbit hole, though, let’s start by thinking about the initial purchase price alone. What do you think these three Briklins might be worth? Does $15,000 seem like a fair deal for the triplets — especially since there’s a rare AMC-powered 4-speed in their midst? Or, is that too much to haul away someone else’s shattered dreams?
You decide!
Portland, Oregon, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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