It is the plan, @El Frazoo. I'm going to get the car as squared away as I can, take some pics, make some driving videos and hopefully sell it on BaT. The way it's going that may not be until next spring.
I want to auction it, frankly, because I'm not sure what to ask. I work cheap: $20 an hour at my regular job. Even at that rate, time and materials would put this car in the high 80s.
I also know most guys will not care to spend money on the things I've done. It's not for them.
Given my own tastes and proclivities, I have pitched Projeckt Spyder to a very small, weird and little-understood subculture within the Plastic Clown Car subculture we all inhabit. I do not know how many people inhabit this subculture of a subculture, and I have no idea how much money they have. I just have a feeling: maybe I am not alone. Maybe there are others like me. Maybe—just maybe—some of them have the means to pay me for doing what they themselves cannot imagine doing for themselves.
This was always going to be an experiment in finding the market.
How much could a small-motor plastic 550 be worth?
A pretty nice one much like mine went for $40k on BaT the other day. It had the aluminum ovals on the rockers. It had the barberpole vinyl. Had the plastic windscreen. He even put one Bendix fuel pump in the driver's side cranny.
—But not the correct two Bendix pumps.
It also had quite a few cracks and blemishes in the gelcoat.
Not a Raby engine. No word on HP or gearing. No Vintage 190s.
VW pedals. Chinese gauges. Correct handbrake but in the incorrect location. No functional jack points, nor reproduction Spyder jack. The horns were not Frenched-in underneath like the originals, and my car. No brake cooling ducts. Not sure about the front grill. VW gas tank as usual. Fuel filler low as standard. Diamond tuck upholstered firewall on the engine side.
No Knechts. No turn-key latches on the clam or front lid. Undersides of the lids not smoothed and painted body color like mine. No inner clam Swiss cheese thingie, nor any aluminum riveted junk hand-formed to mimic the real cars. No correct clam hold-up thing with the ratcheting effect. No "seat" for the spare tire nor any K-member framework on the rear chassis. No dust excluder brushes on the rear control arms. No aluminum underpan. No 547-type breather tube and fake oil tank next to a real, functional oil tank for pre-oil and starvation protection.
I could go on. I probably will some time.
My point is, every one of these details, plus myriad others I can't even remember, took time: time to research, to see what was right. Time to research similar suitable materials, time to plan, form and fabricate. Time to install. And usually, time to take it out and re-do it because it wasn't quite right.
My car is elaborately overdone. Like only one other one I know about. Like somebody cared.
At some point, we'll see if anyone else does.
And then, whether they do or not, I will set it free. Buddha said, "the root of suffering is attachment."