Is that the Bristol based company? If so you may have had a lucky escape. I've never heard anything good about them.
ok, thanks for that, good to know. now i have the westy i'm not in the market any more.. but if i was, i'd prob do the same as ricky - ie personal import rather than use an importer who's going to take a big margin.
He must be a very wealthy man . there is a few USA importers in Britain on google . How much does he want to spend ?
Money well invested, they only go up! When I bought my early about 5 years ago, I was looking at a beautiful deluxe RHD red and black splitty for £12k. Nobody was interested. You'd be lucky to get it for £20K now.
There is a fella i used to know from school who went out to Ramona in California to visit his son , he ended up living there and started to import mainly bikes and Chevvy pick ups and mustangs , then delivers them back to his sisters farm ready for picking up . I emailed him and asked if he ever comes across any bays or split buses . he said yes come across a few but mainly deal in bikes . He emailed me a picture of a 79 tin top bay which looked straight and rust free so asked him to bring it over for me , it came with a 1.700 type 4 and gearbox slung in back , it cost me £ 3.700 all in with duty paid and registration . Other guys round here get him to bring just engine and gearboxes slung in the back of some shoddy buses sold as job lot . Probably does splits as well now . If anybody is interested i could look in to what sort of deal you could get . The last bus i saw up at the farm there was a camper jam packed with two type 4 engines gearboxes and other associated parts .
Ah well fing is it has to be your deal, I have ex-sister in law in South America always offering to look them out, but she knows not what she's looking at!
Splits may be always going up in value (as obviously are Bays) but everything for them costs so bloody much... unless you buy wisely you can easily end up with a money pit and struggle, if you sell, to break even. I love both Splits and Bays... but I much prefer Bays... as in to live with and actually use. My Split spend a lot of time in the garage either broken, or not being driven because I wasn't happy leaving it parked anywhere. Bays however for me (and I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir) are so much better in pretty much every way... but then they should be... they were the next evolution. Have always enjoyed the Bays I have owned way more than Splits or T25s. As to best place to find a Split... I know it got mentioned, but I think The Samba is pretty much the best place if I had to pick one. But so much better starting with a Bay than a Split IMHO. But some folks just want one and that's that I guess, they will probably buy a T5 in a few years and reminisce about when they had a classic camper. I went for a meal with someone I had not seen in 30 years and somehow we got onto cars etc and I said I was selling an old VW camper I had had a few years and he immediately started on about wanting one to drive to Cornwall (from London) for weekends. When I said, best bet if you don't have anything special in mind is get something modern with air con and turbo diesel engine etc he explained he wanted one with the two front windscreens... LOL.
I remember seeing a 23 window red devon listed for over £100 grand quite a few yrs ago ,had only 30 thousand miles, was the owners if I remember.
