Fred's annual rant about comedy bay prices.

[fredster]

This is early this year as usually its during show season that I have to let off steam.

Just been on a UK website selling imported bused where the average price of a bus seems to be £20,000. Clean buses all, but thats just ludicrous money. I quick glance thru the EB vans for sale forum shows that generally speaking £10k gets you a OG rock solid un-messed with bay (usually) from warmer climes, so well done to private EB seller's for "keeping it real".

The sad thing is, there must be people prepared to pay silly money, otherwise the buses wouldn't be that price. And yes, I know that something is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, but feck me, £25k for a bay? We're not talking about show-winners here. That is A LOT of someone's hard-earned.

Right, apols, rant over.

 

[Araon]

Hear hear brother.....rant away realistic pricing for the masses.....thats the RMT coming out of me there :lol:

There are some ridiculous prices out there for what are on the whole common or garden westies panels and microbusses, but as you say if people are pepared to pay it then people are prepared to ask it, as a business you have overheads etc... what I dont like are people that buy a bus put work into it and somehow think that justifies a 5k hike, when in fact rarely does the work you perform on it increase the value over and above what you have put in and indeed in a lot of the cases I viewed it had the opposite effect (a bit like me and my 74 westy skipping the interior wasnt my best move)....

 

[dandaz]

This is a price guide en france

http://flat4ever.com/?page=cox" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

my vans are worth 11 ,700 euros... :lol:

and two of them were only £500 each...Roll on super inflated prices... :msn4:

 

[Austin]

i think prices have just gone crazy!! i remember when a normal dub fan could have his pick of what ever aircooled model he / she wanted, prices were fair then. Now you have to be rich to buy some of these peoples splits or bays. i mean, who on earth has £20,000 cash on the hip to buy a vehicle which may only get used on weekends?

While i was searching for a bus, i saw countless $1500 buses for sale for £7500 and up, what the hell is going on? now fair enough people have gone to the effort of importing at a cost of £2000 plus the cost of the van, so that they can make a few quid, but please, this is just PURE GREED.

I imported my bus myself, to poke 2 fingers up at all the people selling these overpriced greed mobiles. I've wanted a bus for a long time now but it would of only ever come at the expense of selling my beetle, which in the past i've not been prepared to do, but things change and importing it myself makes it all the more worth while.

The prices are going up stateside too, because they know full well there are people over here who want to buy loads of them to sell at stupid prices.

hope this makes sense! my rant is over!

 

[Graham L]

I hope the buses we sell are priced at a reasonable rate, prices are going up in the states and at the moment good early bays seem a bit thin on the ground. We need to make a margin on a bus in order to buy more buses but try to keep it real which means sometimes we get our fingers burnt due to a poor description by the seller in the US and then when the bus arrives its not quite as described or the pictures have been selective :roll: :roll: .

The exchange rate can't seem to sort itself out at the moment either and its hard to predict what the rate will be when you see a bus you want to buy, its not an excuse just a fact of trading in a different currencies.

We have recently had to go VAT registered which means we have to charge 17.5% on all buses etc we sell, we incorperate this into our selling price but we don't get that money it goes to HMRC, the VAT threshold is easily reached if you sell a few buses in a year but I'm not sure all traders bother doing this but no doing it is breaking the law!!

Trust me its not that easy making money out of selling buses (well not at the realistic rates I charge) and I still have to do a day job as well as there is no way I could live on the margin alone I make selling buses on, so we are not all making huge margins out of buses so please don't tar all traders with the same brush.

 

[AxlFoley]

There are a few different ways of looking at this, Yes you can get a bus imported yourself and save a few quid, but then when you get it here you have to MOT and register it, and make it safe as you dont know the history. and this costs even if you do the work yourself. Then there are the importes like Greham who do us all a favour by importing solid busses, he takes the risk on what he is going to get, and having it sat in his shop (or a farm up the road) for a few months, also they get the rust free parts for the UK busses to get repaired, so he has to make a living, so you cant begrudge them making a profit.

its the peaople like (Cough RCC Cough) that try to sell busses for silly prices, that i'm sure are just in it for the cash.

 

[faux]

Classic car prices are often linked to house prices and over the past decade house prices have risen well above inflation. On top of that the rental Market has gone a bit **** up so people are looking for other investments. Vw campers have become very fashionable which has hiked prices and the supply has lessened. I don't like seeing people being ripped off but I do think someone with half a brain would do their research and talk to various dealers and hunt the Internet for forums and private adds. There are still what I cosider bargains out there. Prices will go up! How much was a Mars Bar 5 years ago?

 

[strongy]

i am probably in danger of being shot down hear but if they can get £20000 for a bus, good on em.i run a buisness and if i could get away with that kind of mark up i bloody would :mrgreen:

i wouldent buy one mind, as i like a bargain but if theres people out there spending that much cash without doing thier resurch. unlucky :mrgreen: (im nice really)

 

[robins]

i bought mine when the doller was two for a pound,imported it my self, that is when the $1000 bus was being sold for 7000pound,like Graham said now the exchange rate is not in there favere.
the price of a bus just landed i dont think has gone up,its the ones with new paint that are asking silly prices.

FBI sell cheep importes

 

[Austin]

Yeah i do think not everyone should be tared with the same brush, some people and companies want fair ish money for there stock, but most try to rip the arse out of it.

Makes me laugh when you see on the samba, a really nice well looked after example going for $3000 that pretty much needs nothing other than some flexis for peace of mind and uk lights. Then right above it there is some joker from england selling almost the same thing for £13,000 !! people from the uk would want to lay off the crack pipe if they thought the £13K bus was the one for them!!

Importing yourself is a pain in the ass, and the long wait for it is even more painful, i didnt think i could afford one at todays silly prices, but importing myself was the only option, but once over here (when it gets here!!) its all downhill from there. VW's for me have never been a big money hobby, its all about patience, over the last 15 years i've always worked hard to bag good deals for myself, and never paid silly money for any of my air or water cooled dubs. And when it has come for a time to sell, i let them go for a "keep it real" price, thats why they always sell lightning fast.

i dont know how people afford to buy these buses with big price tags.