$120,000 for a kit car???

Shannon Larratt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:45:14 +0000

I noticed that there’s an original AMT Piranha up for sale right now that’s recently undergone an extensive restoration — here’s a great Piranha fan site. The Piranha was a simple Corvair-based kit car that came to fame due to being the car in the television show “Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, and about a dozen cars in a variety of forms were made, with about half of them still existing in some form (do visit that fan site if you’re interested). This particular one is the Carbijal racer version, and has been beautifully restored (the first photos are of the restoration, the next two are of the car as they found it — ouch, and the last are a couple historical pictures). I agree it’s a striking and important part of US car history, both as a beautiful and somewhat famous limited production vehicle, and as an important part of composite car history… but $120,000??? That seems outrageous to say the least. There are certainly more important cars — the Devin, the Glaspar, and so on — and plenty of kit cars were in movies (a Laser 917 in “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo”, a Sterling in “Condorman” and other films, all the kit cars in the original “Deathrace” movie, and so on), and none of them could fetch even close to this asking price.

Price Of His Toys » AMT Piranha

$120,000 for a kit car???