Cars or their parts?

[Ben]

Remember TG last series or the one before that, they were set a challenge. £1000 each - buy a supercar, do this, that and the other then sell it and see if you make your money back. Clarkson won as he sold his car as component parts rather than the whole thing.

Would this work for other cars?

Say i went to a back street garage and bought a Ford Escort for £450.00 - a real knacker of a car, took it somewhere where i could strip it to its component bits (like in the Short Circuit movie), and sell the bits.

Would i get my money back or better still, make a profit?

Or would cars with owners clubs be better, like the old mini?

[Ayd]

I'd say depends on the car

a 1.3 escort no chance, a written off Series 1 Rs Turbo with sound engine and interior, more than likely but then again the owner would probably know that.

there will be some bargains to be had out there, just keep your eyes open and not in the usual places. I did hear of one guy who bought an old Saab 900Turbo off ebay for around the £200 mark and sold the boot spoliler for that much so it's doable.....

[ini]

It varies with make & model, and the current average value of the car and parts.

It helps to pick the car to wisely. (ie: many VAG vehicle parts will last forever, and will be hard to shift, buy cult cars that fall to bits and have a large fan club)

Mostly as a hobby, i have been stripping 80's-90's hothatches and mail-ordering the cleaned polished parts.

Some of the cars (1.9 205 GTI for example) are worth more whole, especially as the price for a scrapper has trebled in the last year.

Stripping popular fast road bikes is also a 'very' lucrative hobby.

If you did this full time, you could achieve around 40-50k a year.

[Captain Answer]

Certain vehicles and cars yes, I use to make a nice income with this as a student but you could pick up rot box cars alot cheaper then