McRae 550 Spyder For Sale

SPECIAL LIMITED TIME OFFER
Cancled Due to Lack of Interest.
If you are interested call or e:Mail
Information and contact info at www.jimsgems.com

(Message Edited 1/24/2003 1:36:06 AM)

Jim, there's not much of a market for Spyder replicas compared to Speedsters and convertible "D"s. Frankly I was surprised that anyone would try to "mine" a new source, especially one in a faraway country. Good luck with selling your car.

George,

Not much of a market?

My guestimates of the US Spyder market so far are, around 1000 Beck Spyders, several dozen TR Spyders, dozens of Vintage Spyders, a few Martin and Walker's, and a sprinkle of Ryans and Perry's.

Also, there is 600+ members of Spyderclub.com

Is there need for another supplier/manufacturer? Maybe not. Is there room for a good, customer service oriented builder/importer with some unique powerplants and suspension systems? Yes. I wish Jim all the best.

Aaron

Aaron, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of Speedster and convertible "D" replicas. The ownership turnover rate in Spyder replicas seems quite high too; I've seen the same cars several times on Ebay and in other venues. Speedster and "D" replicas also have a fairly high turnover rate.

Yeh. I donno what I was thinking? I thought a properly run business would be nice for a start, quality product at a fair price and returned phone calls and e:mails. What was I thinking?

There are over 30 makers of Cobra Replicas and not one of them have the reputation like some of the makers in the "Spyder Community", not even FFR.

IM & Vintage Speedsters and Chuck Beck have always been (in my experience)very professional and I'm sure some of the others could stand to study how they are doing business sucessfully. Just my never to be humble opinion. Like I said... "What was I thinking?"

Jim,

I happen to agree with you. There is always room for competition with good solid business practices. How some of these guys are staying in business is beyond me. There is demand out there, and given a equivalent product and better service, market share should come its way. As always, capital up front will be real important.

Mike

Mike, having owned, operated, and sold 4 businesses at a profit I can tell you that for big ticket manufactured items like Spyder replicas the demand had better be solid, steady, and large enough to support a rather substantial operation. You need to make jigs and tool up to produce frames, exhaust systems, brackets, shift linkage, etc. You need to obtain quality rebuilt transaxles and engines (or build/rebuild them in house, which means more tooling and parts inventory), obtain or make molds for fibreglass parts, establish relationships with subcontractors (interiors/seats, electrical components, windshields, etc). And you need the square footage to support a light industry operation with space for in-process cars and sub-assemblies, raw materials, painting, office space, showroom, etc.

For instance, Henry at IM told me he orders 100 windshields at a time to get the best price break and insure that he doesn't encounter delays due to unavailability.

There will be a break-even point below which you won't survive for more than about three months unless you are independently wealthy or have friends at the bank.

(Message Edited 2/14/2003 4:08:57 PM)

Uh, George, I have owned several businesses myself and have also run large manufacturing facilities making complex configured products (aircraft systems and modification kits)..I do know what it takes to make a business run.

Whenever there is a business that has backlog and can't perform to satisfy pent up demand, there is opportunity. I think that could be the case here with one of the manufacturers.

Thank you,
Mike

(Message Edited 2/14/2003 8:53:05 PM)

George, et al; I appreciate the caveats, and you are correct, it would be expensive. I am a manufacturing / process engineer by trade and the cost of setting up a plant, tooling and training is always a concern, parts, disk brakes, engines and transaxles are not the problem.

The problem is in a still maturing buyer

Jim,

What other historic car could fit the bill?

Mike

Jim, most people who buy replicas never held an SCCA license or attended one of the performance driver's schools. To them, a car that doesn't mush up and down in a corner and try to get sideways at moderate speeds or with abrupt throttle changes in a corner "handles great".

Then there are us motorcycle guys who have done two-wheel drifts at 140 mph on banked racetrack curves. What fun...

The problem with these Spyders is that they don't corner as well as a Boxster or Superseven on a autocross. They work preatty well on Solo2, because the SCCA tries to keep the speed under 65MPH. With the PCA (porsche club) the speed can exceed 95MPH on a autoX course, that's when it get a little tricky but still tons of fun. The tires touch the fenders almost every corner, hard braking and the understeer difficult sometimes to correct (too much power). But, what an amazing race car the spyder is. I defenely recommend autocrossing it. I can't wait for the next Solo2 event here in San Diego this upcomming March.

(Message Edited 2/27/2003 6:48:58 PM)

Hi Martin,

I was thinking of going the the Solo2 also. I've only tried my RX-7 and that was fun. I'm not sure if the Spyder will be ready but hopefully I'll see you down there.

I heard it's not at Qualcom this year, any truth to that?

The rumors has it that the qcom stadium may not be available much longer and some alternative places like california speedway (fontana) and other may be used in the future. I know I will be going to Fontana with the Porsche Club this year (but they don't really like replicas, so I will be driving my boxster there).


But for the Solo2 See: www.sdr-solo2.com

See you at the stadium. Are you the one with the red Turbo charged RX-7? If so I think we met at the Solo2 before about 1 year ago or so, last year I was mainly driving with the PCA.

Martin

Actually mine is a silver twin turbo RX-7. Fun car, but hard to handle at the limit that's why I wanted to run the car fairly hard in a controlled environment in order to learn how to drive it better. But screw that, I've got a Spyder to toy with now!

Martin,
Please let me know the time/date you will be at the Q, I certainly want to see the Spyder do it's thing. Will you also be running your Boxster?

John,

Yes, I will drive the Boxster on the 15th with the Porsche Club and the Spyder on the 14th or 16th not sure how the SCCA is planning this weekend since the schedule says March 14-16th.

Martin

I won't be at the stadium since I sold my car.

Martin Reinhardt, I found the almost total ignorance (NOT STUPIDITY) of the average Spyder replica owner to be considerable. Totally lacking in any knowledge of automotive engineering, beyond

Sorry to hear that Jim, it would be good to have someone else in the fray but I can understand. Maybe later!

Jim, perhaps after you get your own and every one see's how great it is you can pick this up again.

Easy Jim,
Sounds like you are a bit bitter from your failed attempt to bring another Spyder to market (as in pig). My suggestion to you is buy yourself a Cobra since you seem to think they and their owners are so superior to Spyders and their owners. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed in your ramblings. And yes, I read your last post several times so I would not misunderstand you point.
I know for a fact that the Cobra owners I saw at Knott's and other shows are not the same intelligent engineering wizards that you make reference to.
So Jim, ease off on us poor ignorant know-nothing Spyder guys.
Thanks
Hans

Jim,

There must be something else behind your words. Until a better Spyder is out here and people get to touch and feel, I doubt there will be orders booked. An unknown supplier has to build credibility, even if there is much frustration in the current market.

I hope it comes together, because, in the long run, I thnk there is a market for someone that can produce a quality/configured product in less than a year.

Don't give up on us. I don't like Cobras because they don't excite me like the Spyder does. I don't slam them though for not appreciating my vision.

Mike

Hans; Sorry if I offended you. No the Cobra Guys are not much more sophisticated than Spyder guys so please don't get your nickers in a twist. I wrote it out of total frustration. I'm not bitter, disapointey yes, bitter no. If you sat in my seat for 20 minutes, you might understand. It is very frustrating trying to deal with the cults of Beck, Vintage and TR.

The over all understanding of what constitutes a proper frame and suspension is sorely lacking here in Spyder country, probably in the Cobra community as well, though perhaps not as common. Sorry but that is my point and I'm sticking with it.

Hans, The Pig metaphore is an old one, I didn't mean Spyder owners are pigs, ease up just a little, don't take this so seriously.

I love the Little Bustards (550 Spyder replicas) and I know they can be much more than what is currently on the market. That doesn

Jim,

Buy one, get it over here and let's take a lookie see.

Have it at the Knott's show. Get some press releases...

But then if the supplier won't commit contractually, then it is all for naught.

Mike

I have been thinking of getting a Spyder kit and have been comparing the various manufacturers. I ran across this thread and thought I would add my 2 cents.

I can see that it is easier to copy a 550 with the VW front beam suspension and VW swing axle rear and Type 1 engine to mimic the original design. This was a good design back in 1955, but there have been a few advances since then. I would like to see a vendor add the option of unequal length A arm front and rear suspension with adjustable coil over shocks. A more modern IRS with limited slip would also be nice. A more modern engine with EFI would also be welcome. Perhaps a Boxter as a donor car and use the engine, trans, and front end?

After looking at the price for a Vintage Spyder on Ebay that was over $35k for a turnkey, I wonder how much more it would cost if it had the more modern parts. I would have to say the price would be over $60k. For that price you can get a new Boxster with a lot of creature comforts. The Spyder would run rings around the Boxter, and be a real head turner but I guess it depends on what you want the car to do. As Jim points out, if you want a boulevard cruiser to look good and dice with BMW Z3's or Miata's you can have a Beck, VS, or TR with 50 year old technology. If you fancy yourself as the next Fangio or Moss and want a race car that can be driven on the street, you might look at the McRae. I went to his site and info is very sparse as to what you get for $16500. I take it from Jim's post that he was trying to be the US importer for McRae and did not get much interest in a car that was much more expensive than the competition with their inferior designs.

yep, something like that.

Another thought popped in my head and I wonder how much profit is in these turnkey spyders? I wonder how much the raw materials cost to make a turnkey car and then how much work is involved in turning it into a finished car? Since there is no car dealer involved in the process to add their profit margin, does the manufacturer maybe charge a little more? For instance when GM builds a Vette, there is a material and labor cost and a profit margin and GM sells the car to a dealer, then the dealer tacks on his own profit margin and sells it to the end user. GM reports profits for the year in the billions based on the price they sold cars to the dealers. If you could buy a Vette directly from GM it seems it would be a little cheaper.

Ah, Mr. Watson, I think you're missing the point, which is that these cars are 550 Spyder REPLICAS.

You seem to want to build a "SPECIAL", which is a totally different thing.

Why not compromise? Build an RS replica using a 901 5-speed with torque-biased differential and one of Dean Polopolus's custom four cylinder 911 engines? All that's required to adapt the CIS injection is a slightly modified 4-cylinder Bosch fuel injection distributor.

Always good to meet another George. I do realize it is a replicar, but in the interest of safety I would like to see some modernization. I am assuming the original 550 had drum brakes and was raced at speeds over 130mph. I would like 4 wheel discs if I were to drive a replica at that speed just to be safe.

George, my new IM Speedster will have around 200 to 215 BHP hooked up to a custom close ratio 901 5-speed. The "look" at first glance will be 356A wheels/brakes but look closer and the wheels are Alex Bivens' CNC aluminum 550RS replica wheels (10 lbs. each) on CB Performance wide-five disk brakes (cross-drilled) front and rear. Koni shocks, rack and pinion steering, 19mm front and rear anti-sway bars, and 24mm rear torsion bars will help keep the rubber on the road in all but the most bizarre circumstances.

Hi George;
Your Speedster sounds terrific. I seem to remember you are in Texas from another post. I would like to see it in person if you show it at car shows around Houston. It sounds like you have done some modernization yourself with the discs and 901 tranny. Do you also have a 550 spyder?

I'm a 23 yr old ME student at UW (washington). I don't follow your argument about how the spyder, or cobra, or any other group is ignorant about chassis strength or stiffness issues. Can you look at a picture of a chassis and tell me how stiff it is, how will you quantify that? I'm a senior now, I'll graduate after this quarter, and if someone showed me the pictures of the vintage and beck frame next to one another I would be very careful about what I said. More precisely, I wouldn't say one is better than the other without at least performing some kind of testing, as a minimum an FEA approach, and better yet, put strain gauges all over them and drive the actual car. If you can look at pictures of chassis and say, oh yeah, this is definately a superior chassis, you are a better man than I.

manuel -
Well go buy a chassis from both Beck and Vintage and do the test. We will all be eagerly waiting for your results.

Joe

PS

Gladly, someone want to plunk down the 40k for a copy of ANSYS, a few more for solidworks, and a program that will allow me to import my .sldprt or .assm file into ansys, then pay me about 10-15 for my time? I figure 60 grand and about 3 or 4 months of modeling and I can give you pretty detailed information about each chassis. 1000 words doesn't go far in describing something as complicated as a chassis. If you are unwilling to do this, then don't tout your car, or one mfg. as being better than another, unless you want to take your car the to track and show that it handles better by winning races with it. Showing me pretty pictures and telling me I'm ignorant, and that you know right off the top of your head which is best tells me something about you, not your car.

Well Manuel, you can get an idea of the frame stiffness by looking at the VS and Beck frames in the web site that Joe gave. A FEA program would give a definitive answer and I think I could cobble up a model of both in a few hours if I had the dimensions for the frames. I would use 6 DOF beam elements in liew of a FE mesh of each tube.

Take a look at the Beck and it is mostly in one plane which is OK for bending moments about the vertical axis, but not very good for bending moments about an axis parallel to the front and rear axles(transverse direction). The torsional resistance about the longitudinal axis is also not very high.

Now compare the VS frame with the stiffining hoops at the windshield and behind the seats, plus the frame around the engine and transaxle in the vertical plane. The stiffness for bending about the transverse axis will be much better than the Beck because of the increased moment of inertia. The torsional resistance will be improved also but not to a really great extent because the openings for doors and seats are there and are not diagonally braced.

Take a look at the aluminum tube space frame for a Porsche 917 which weighs about 126 pounds. This frame put 1400hp to the ground for the turbo Can-Am cars. It is very boxey. Porsche learned a lot about tube frames between the 550 and the 917. I read that they would put pressure in the frame tubes to find cracks between races kind of like finding a leak in a tire.

This thread has mostly evolved into a technical discussion (which I really enjoy in case you did not notice) from the for sale ad that it started as.

I'm a little busy with classes now, I'll be done soon. However, if someone wants to 'cobble' up 2 or 3 chassis to compare and can do so in SW format I can perform some very simplistic FEA with COSMOSexpress. I would put the models together myself, but I honestly am not that interested in spending the time doing it right now. I have looked at the beck and vintage frames, and while I agree that the vintage 'looks stiffer' this may not be true. All things are not as they appear, the beck frame is a larger tube (and i haven't heard anything about wall thickness or material for either of them), hence would be stiffer in longitudinal bending (assuming same wall thickness as vintage) which i think you may have mentioned, and furthermore I agree that the tubes present in the vintage and lacking in the beck may not have a profound effect due to their absense at the midsection of the car. You believe that they will decrease deflections in torsion, which may be true, especially at the front and rear, but what if twists significantly more than the beck in the midsection, wouldn't that be just at bad then? I would be surprised if there is a huge difference between them. But I wouldn't be greatly surprised, and that is my point. If you want to denounce other mfg's quality, or suitability of their chassis in racing applications, have something to back up that statement, and no, pictures just don't do it for me. Their nice, but really don't tell me much.

George, I was born and raised in Dallas but now I live in Maryland.

The new Speedster is still in the formative process at Intermeccanica, and yesterday I spoke with John Collins and Dean Polopolus and am ordering the "kit" to build one of Dean's SOHC 911 four cylinder engines (see this August's issue of "Excellence" for an article on the 911-4). The 911-4 will be a project for next spring to replace the highly customized pushrod type 1 VW engine.

Right now the question is whether to go normally aspirated or with a turbo for the 911-4.

I almost bought a used Beck about 3 years ago but the seller (a car broker) was asking too much based on the build and condition and would not negotiate. To me a Spyder replica is something you buy after you have the other cars you want as it is probably the most impractical car in the world.
(Message Edited 7/11/2003 9:31:59 AM)

Hi George;
Too bad you are away from Texas. Post pictures of your Speedster when you get it done. Good luck with your 911-4 project also.

Hi Manuel;
If you can convince both Beck and Vintage to supply the dimensions and member sizes of their respective frames, you could build computer models of both and see what the deflections are for loadings in several different axis.

After a limited time looking at both products, it is my opinion that the Beck version of the 550 is trying to faithfully reproduce the 50's version of the original 550 Spyder while Vintage is going for a more updated version of the 550 frame. The McRae version is more of a modern race car engineering version with a 550 body.

Again, my observation is that the Beck will suit the average enthusiest that wants to drive the car somewhat quickly on the street and rarely on the track. The Vintage is more suited for the person that wants to really tear up the street and joust with Vettes and Vipers and often race the car on the track. The McRae is for the real racer who wants to ocassionaly drive to the corner store after the race.

While the Beck more faithfully reproduces the 550 as it existed in 1956, the McRae is more in line with 1956 Porsche philosophy to build a race car that is driven on the street by the rich and famous.