Suspicious Mileage

@wahoo57speedster posted:

This may be sacrilegious but.........Since i became obsessed with speedster replicas the past year when i retired I have felt 25-30% of the auctioned  speedsters  stated mileage was suspicious. Regardless of auction. I realize these are pieced together Frankenstein cars so it makes it easy to change the mileage. I am new to this site and enjoy it but that's my story and i am sticking to it.

Go ahead and stick to it, but I doubt anybody is rolling back odometers.

These cars aren't everybody's cup-'o-tea, and with the market the way it is, it's hard to make an argument for hanging onto something that didn't quite measure up to expectations.

One trip around the block is all it takes for a lot of women to nix the thing. When it's $50K+ sitting there, a guy gets thinking about all the automotive love he can buy for the sale price.

Sometimes, the juice isn't worth the squeeze to people.

I can say this from certainty, many speedster owners are impulse buyers who after a year or less become disenchanted with having minor adjustment and service issues pop up now and then. The owner has zero mechanical abilities and becomes the subject of " their mechanic " who has little of no knowledge of air-cooled. Hence the frustration and resale at minimal mileage.

@Stan Galat posted:

Go ahead and stick to it, but I doubt anybody is rolling back odometers.

These cars aren't everybody's cup-'o-tea, and with the market the way it is, it's hard to make an argument for hanging onto something that didn't quite measure up to expectations.

One trip around the block is all it takes for a lot of women to nix the thing. When it's $50K+ sitting there, a guy gets thinking about all the automotive love he can buy for the sale price.

Sometimes, the juice isn't worth the squeeze to people.

Now this was funny "One trip around the block is all it takes for a lot of women to nix the thing. When it's $50K+ sitting there, a guy gets thinking about all the automotive love he can buy for the sale price."

I have seen so many of these cars with claimed low mileage with new gauges. If the car is only a few years old why replace gauges?

Because the gauges that came before the new gauges were garbage. The Brazilian gauges were so/so, the Chinese "VDO" copies were junk.

What do you consider the new gauges. I have seen what appears to be the same VDO gauges going back 10-15 years. I dont claim to be an expert just mentioning what I perceive from a distant. I  could be 100% wrong.😄

Your blanket statement suggests that I lied about my odometer reading.  If you say, well, not you but..........then did all the others ?  If they say, we didn't lie either, then who's is it your talking about ?  In the end, I guess we're all sticking to our stories.........Bruce

When I see cars with listed 2000 miles and I read serviced regularly and service is every 3000 miles I am suspicious. Think what you like. I just tossed this out their for discussion because I felt the mileage was suspicious in some of the cars I have followed in auctions the past12-18 months. If I am the only one that feels this way so be it🙂

Ok, I'll bite. I built a Spyder in 2002-2005. From 2005 to 2016 I put 40k plus on it. 40,245 miles to be exact. Everything was new when I built it. No "lies" or "suspicious mileage".

Later in 2016, I built another Spyder. It went on the road in 2017. Today it has about 5k on it. I don't drive as much as I used to, retired in 2019.

In general, most of these cars don't get driven all that much. That's the reason the mileage is low. Period.

When you build a Speedster or Spyder, you're using new gauges. The VW Beetle donor had only a speedometer for "gauges" which physically won't fit in the dash of a Speedster/Spyder.

I really hope the OP isn't trolling. Nobody is doing anything wrong here.

Most of the replicas I see in the major auctions have newer gauges. No problem. So why replace them after Limited mileage. Not a troll . I own a 2014 Auratium Green speedster built by Vintage Speedsters in HA Gardens CA.  Like I say just put this out there for discussion. Isnt that what this is for?

A lot of cars of a certain era were originally built with 914 gauges. And, as Stan mentioned, a lot were built with cheesy aftermarket VDO knockoffs. The new GPS speedo gauges that are available now are much better.

All speedsters that I refurbished got a Bill of Sale that no matter what the odometer reading was, included a stated actual mileage statement as TMU.

The bottom line on these cars is the mileage is irrelevant. Some have a few hundred miles when they come up for sale. Some a few thousand. Either way, what you want to know is how the owner(s) treated the car. Was it built properly to begin with? Was it sorted out methodically? Was it garaged? Was the engine filled with the right kind of oil? Did the (Type 1) valves get adjusted properly? When things broke or leaked or sagged (as they inevitably do), were they fixed the right way? Whether the ODO shows 40 or 40,000 miles, these are the questions you want answered.

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So, summing up a few factors:

The knockoff copies of the original VDO gauges were so prone to failure that Beck approached VDO a few years ago and worked with them to make the new, genuine VDO gauges that virtually all modern builders use. These are the 'new' gauges that Stan and Dave ( @dlearl476 ) are talking about. And yes, it's very common for folks getting a used car ready for market to swap in these 'new' gauges for their old dysfunctional ones.

And Ed is also right about the condition, maintenance, and sorting being much more important than actual mileage.

But the biggest factor is probably, as Stan points out, just how impractical and unsuitable these cars are for daily use — something the starstruck buyer often doesn't realize until after the sale. Many folks are too sheepish to admit their mistake, maybe reasoning they'll drive it more eventually, but often end up putting on only a few hundred miles a season — mainly on ice cream runs and local hops to C&C. These are a lot of the 5-10 year-old cars you see on the market with under 2000 miles on the clock.

Even if you buy into all the car's shortcomings for daily driving and decide to drive it as much as possible anyway, you're just not going to rack up huge miles, even compared to other 'playtoy' cars, like a Boxster, Miata, or Bimmer.

I live in northern California, where the weather is more suited than in most of the country to what's essentially a topless car with no heat, AC, rainproofing, or ventilation, and I've only managed 45,000 miles in 10 years. And that's probably on the high side of average — even for the dedicated crazies who hang out here. If I have a three-hour slog on the freeway ahead of me, and no 'fun' driving on the other end, the Speedy is not my first choice for the mission. Or my second.

If you're more used to modern, factory-produced cars, a lot of different rules apply here, and low mileage on an older, legitimate example is one of them.

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Thank you for educating me. I have been following this market for 12-18 months and have owned one for a year. I am a car guy. Have owned 30 Model A Sedan, 22 Dodge pickup, 62 pontiac Bubbletop pontiac w/389 quad, Fiat SuperBrava, Vw GLI, nd a 95 Miata I owned for 21 years finally sold it with 170k miles.  I wanted an old school technology to tinker with. The Speedster is easily my favorite car. I live in Sherwood OR and have been caught in the rain at the beach at car shows. It is not a daily driver. I love this car. My wife hates it. She hates the smell of gas in garage. We take two cars to the coast. She is 5'1 and sits on a pillow. She says why would you own a car you can't lock and is so primitive? I love this car and it is an attention whore. 😄

I have always been intrigued that the style of a 356, either Speedster or Cabriolet, attracts women at car shows like a magnet - "Oh....  Isn't this one pretty!" but those same women probably would (do) hate riding in one for all of those reasons.

These cars aren't for everyone.

@wahoo57speedster posted:

Thank you for educating me. I have been following this market for 12-18 months and have owned one for a year. I am a car guy. Have owned 30 Model A Sedan, 22 Dodge pickup, 62 pontiac Bubbletop pontiac w/389 quad, Fiat SuperBrava, Vw GLI, nd a 95 Miata I owned for 21 years finally sold it with 170k miles.  I wanted an old school technology to tinker with. The Speedster is easily my favorite car. I live in Sherwood OR and have been caught in the rain at the beach at car shows. It is not a daily driver. I love this car. My wife hates it. She hates the smell of gas in garage. We take two cars to the coast. She is 5'1 and sits on a pillow. She says why would you own a car you can't lock and is so primitive? I love this car and it is an attention whore. 😄

My wife hates it ... that made me laugh but it is true, gas smell, my hair gets messy, I sit too low etc etc.  are common complaints   but it truly a recreation machine, in night time driving you can see the stars and in the daytime expecially near highway 1 the ocean takes your breath away ... hard to get those benefits in a hardtop...

Then there is the opposite female take on Speedsters that being my wife loves them through and through. She knows everything there is to know about their functions and quirks, doesn't whine about wind in her hair.... she'll bring along a ball and cap hair brush. Lastly she still talks about that 200plus HP silver outlaw from Texas I finished that she loved to drive that :~)

I think a better question as to Speedsters and mileage, is what was the original mileage on the (if used) motor before they were transferred to the Speedster and connected to new gauges that showed zero mileage. Gauges show mileage since the Speedster build was completed, not necessarily what's on the motor or tranny or frame (a re-build doesn't mean zero mileage).

I find that if you ask how many miles were on the 2003 Subaru Legacy that went into a new Speedster build, you don't get an answer. It's a matter of "true mileage unknown"