Has anyone actually built a car to sell?

[albino_insect]

Since FSAE is supposed to be about designing a car within a budget cap that performs well for the price, I was curious to know if anyone had actually produced a car to sell. I'm not talking about selling the car you ran, but actually building a car because somebody wanted to buy it. Perhaps producing more than one car (of the same design) per season and selling them could be used to fund the team.

For the cars that have sold, what price do they generally bring?

[albino_insect]

Since FSAE is supposed to be about designing a car within a budget cap that performs well for the price, I was curious to know if anyone had actually produced a car to sell. I'm not talking about selling the car you ran, but actually building a car because somebody wanted to buy it. Perhaps producing more than one car (of the same design) per season and selling them could be used to fund the team.

For the cars that have sold, what price do they generally bring?

[Maverik]

If you have that kind of time to build an extra car each year, you aren't developing your primary well enough. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif
The only time I know of a car being used for any other purpose besides FSAE is when an alumni who built it wants it back for value... the consequences of selling it to someone not on the team could be fairly high though. Imagine what happens to your school if the car you built and sold to a private person has any sort of accident... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_eek.gif

[TG]

You just need to sell the car "AS IS" and you shouldn't have any trouble. That basically means the buyer is accepting the car in it's current condition and will be using it at their own discretion.

In fact, the school can't even be held responsible for any SAE activities off school property. I just went through risk management to get a liability waiver for a sponsor donating material, and they made a point not to include the school in it because the club is considered an independant entity.

Legal council's wording:

3. SAE understands that if the organization or individuals associated with the ASU Registered Student Group have any concerns about the quality or safety of the donated items, it is their responsibility to discuss their concerns with an appropriate professional familiar with the technology, materials, and equipment before deciding to accept them.

4. This Release and Waiver does not and is in no way intended to apply to Arizona State University, the Arizona Board of Regents, the State of Arizona or their officers, employees or agents.

[Wright D]

We (http://www.peterdmotorsports.com/) build cars to sell to people all the time, but we are not an fsae team. I can not imagine a fsae team being able to build cars to sell, and develop their own car for competition at the same time! After graduating from FSAE I went on to work for a race car designer and builder. This experience has thought me something interesting about building race cars for profit. The most interesting thing I learned was that we make very little profit of the sale of a car, in fact we don't make anything of the sale of our base model. We make money by selling replacement parts, and service. This is our business model; others have different models which are also successful. But the sale of a race car usually generates little profit, so to make up for it most manufactures try to make it up in volume. I would stick to just building fsae cars for competition, and maybe selling off old ones to raise some cash. Others might have varying opinions though.

Where I went to school, all of the clubs' stuff; including the cars and raised funds, belonged to the university. So we were not allowed to sell anything our selves. We would have to turn over our car, or whatever a club wanted to sell, to the university surplus department. The surplus department would then auction it off, and give us 80% of the winning bid.

Universities have vastly different policies on clubs, and clubs' properties. Be sure to find out what your school's stand on this issue.

[Homemade WRX]

we have a guy/potential sponsor who really wants us to build one...we would probably just let a machine shop do the work and we assemble it, as compared to how we build our own...

[Moody]

there's a guy building one similar & has plans to sell a version of it - it's really interesting, and he has a full blog of the development/construction ... pretty damn cool.

http://www.dpcars.net

[Blake_DFSAE]

Couldn't you sell an old car (like a full generation old)?

So long as you sell it without title and as is I don't see a problem with it. Plus you raise some funds, I'd argue that a good FSAE car is worth a pretty penny to a fairly wealthy enthusiast looking for a track day car.

[albino_insect]

You should, theoretically be able to farm out the work if you were selling the car to a customer. There shouldn't be any work that a good race shop couldn't do or parts that couldn't be bought. If you just sold a lease on the design, then there would be no added stress on the team.

I am fully aware of the DP1. However, it is nothing like an FSAE car. It is far bigger and more powerful and is really designed for road racing with a possibility for autocrossing rather than pure autocross which and FSAE car is designed for. Also, he plans to sell it for far more money than an FSAE car should sell for.

[raska]

Blake one was just sold and ebay a couple months ago. I'm forgetting the team and the exact dollar amount but it was somewhere around $7000US.

[Blake_DFSAE]

Ah.

Probably not worth it then.

[Korey Morris]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by albino_insect:
You should, theoretically be able to farm out the work if you were selling the car to a customer. There shouldn't be any work that a good race shop couldn't do or parts that couldn't be bought. If you just sold a lease on the design, then there would be no added stress on the team.

I am fully aware of the DP1. However, it is nothing like an FSAE car. It is far bigger and more powerful and is really designed for road racing with a possibility for autocrossing rather than pure autocross which and FSAE car is designed for. Also, he plans to sell it for far more money than an FSAE car should sell for. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think that may have been a Rolla car. I remember using that eBay auction as a slide in one of my presentations to freshman.

We sold our 2002 car to a grad student who was involved during his undergrad, but has no time for it now. He autocrosses it regularly. The car was a pile when we sold it, and had no engine or diff. No it has a gsxr1000 motor and a university special (back) in it. The local SCCA region lets him run it in FSAE class since we're the only other car that ever shows, and we're not really there to compete. We do frequently outrun him on the small courses though... Mainly because that was a POS to begin with. Had bump steer problems out the wazooooo. But he did most of the design work, so he knows exactly what he got into...

[STL1PSU]

Blake, It was UMR that sold their 2002 car #24 on ebay. Sale was for a race ready car with a few extra's. (body molds, etc...)
It sold for $6643.21

[JerryLH3]

The car that sold was a UMR car. They even posted the link to the auction on here somewhere. I remember it pretty well, since it was during our design retreat that the car was up for auction.

And I see this was answered a few minutes earlier. See what happen when you step away before replying?

[Homemade WRX]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by STL1PSU:
Blake, It was UMR that sold their 2002 car #24 on ebay. Sale was for a race ready car with a few extra's. (body molds, etc...)
It sold for $6643.21 </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
that sucks...I would have put a reserve on it...

[STL1PSU]

UMR had a 5K reserve on the auction. At the time it was said that they may be selling more than one car but it doesn't look like that's the case.

[TG]

We got $9k from the sale of an old Formula Lightning car we bacame in possession of a while back when their group sort of dissolved. It had an old Porsche transaxle in it along with Penske coilovers in the spec chassis. I think the battery charger that was sold along with it was worth a bit, too.

[mtg]

UMR had been trying to sell the 2001 and 2002 cars for awhile- we started in 2003/2004, didn't find a buyer, there was another large effort in 2004/2005, and finally both of them were sold this past fall.

When I graduated, there were 6 complete cars in the shop- so $6500 to get rid of one was a pretty good deal.

[Greg H]

You might have been thinking of Missouri - Columbia too. I was trying to see if there was interest out there last fall since we are trying to get rid of a car or two. We have 7 old cars and a new one nearing driving status. Even if we did get all of them running at once, we wouldn't get enough people to drive them all. Getting $5000 for a car would definitely benefit the program more.