Anyone turned this love of VW into a business?

I have certainly fallen into that trap in the past! I had to give my head a wobble, and bin off own projects, and knuckle down to make it work.

The biggest problem these days is finding a workshop big enough to take 2 or 3 buses apart in, that doesn’t cost a millionty quid. When I started, my first unit was £250 a month, twelve years later, finding anything under a grand a month has been hard work. And then you have insurance and public liability etc… it certainly does become more like hard work, than a hobby!

Still, I will stop moaning now lol.. I guess I must still love it, or I wouldn’t keep doing it!

 

Part the reason I’m think a few years down the line is we are not far off having no mortgage and I’m considering buying or have a commercial property built as an investment (more something to leave the kids). All just ideas at the minute and will be for a few years

 

This is what crossed my mind… use the next ten years to establish a base that generate its own income alongside your hobby.

I guess that if you had a couple of hire vehicles they would take up a fair chunk of time for maintenance and turn around once a week. Perhaps with one vehicle on the rotisserie for you to play with during the week?

I guess as Zed says… as soon as it’s about the customer then the expectation is much different.

I’ve previously had similar thoughts in my own industry (construction)… take away the customer and I’d be free to do what I want!

 

I am late 50's using the absence of a mortgage, and a working from home saving on a 35 mile round trip commute and not buying too much food for lunch and junk from Middle of Lidl to help pay for upgrades and errors on my own bus. Lose weight, save money..

 

Is it me or has the price of welding gone through the roof? I suppose some of the "resto" people have to cover for inflated costs but my pension doesn't go up. I may have to sell.

 

Well to me The hard work and hours that have to be put in
In order to get this sort of Finish
Versus

What job people should get when they don’t want to pay for it !

 

Maybe it's just that idiots like myself who didn't charge enough have all gone out of business/given up.

 

Do it as hobby and enjoy ! but working full time on cars i personally would not recommend this to anyone .

 

Indeed milky,
I was in the bodywork game back in the eighty’s ,
There was an element of satisfaction when a job turned out well,
but it is a hard dirty monotonous job ,
I do miss the smell of Belco 222 though.

 

I don't mind paying for good work. Good welding is an art but because the good guys put up their prices so does everyone else including the crap ones.

 

We’ve just had 3 quotes from different kitchen fitters to fit a tiny corner kitchen with an island in our new extension.
If I were you, I’d stick to fitting kitchens, if you charge anywhere near this lot we had…Failing that, just save up for a 23 window Samba. Shouldn’t take long.



Or just buy a rat look bay panel van,and have you’re company name in bleached out paint on the side, as a spare/summer van.
Great advertising. win win.

 

Hello everyone,

I'm more of a bad seller - too empathetic to the buyer - although I know bargaining from bazaars in Africa and Asia. So bad prerequisites as a vehicle or parts dealer.

And the love, research time, preparation and search for good, preferably original parts, implementation down to the last detail in my restorations is expensive in terms of components and tools, expensive in terms of space used, priceless in terms of working time. And I still make a lot of compromises in order to finish affordable. Not everyone can do that much themselves. But very expensive restorations in specialist workshops or even at VW Hanover are mostly insufficient and faulty for me - but what is currently affordable on the market as a compromise. I don't want to have to work like that. And if customers then have no idea about technology, with strangely low price expectations and expect a new car back, even less.

Not every classic car workshop owner has become happy and successful with his old hobby. At some point, some people prefer to drive completely different cars or quit their company to work 9to5 at Tesla. But there are also successful examples - I would not underestimate the effort and commitment. Thank you to these experts in the market who I also owe a lot for parts and work on my classic cars and some of my stupid questions.

After 25 years vintage VWs & more as hobby I'd rather stay in my high-tech IT sector in the B2B market talking nearly only to other experts...

regards,

 

I did up a few busses, maybe 20 odd, I was in Cornwall and the scene was great...

I had a lot of time to do other things as well..

I remember turning down a 1971 with mot fail (maybe a couple of days work) for 125 pounds, like zed says your projects take over..

I ended up filling every drive in our street with vws

Sent from my ART-L29 using Tapatalk

 

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I'm about half way through my resto and using current figures I recon if I did sell it at the end I'd make about £10K. However I would have put about £30K of my own time into it! So as a business model it's an epic fail.

 

I'm surprised no one does a Ted Bunny experience! in there latebay's But maybe there is WHO!