I'm not following the logic here. You'd have a hard time getting $10k in parts if dismantled. And there's no visible rust, damage, salvage, etc. So it needs ignition parts, reverse clutches, maybe a used diff, radiator, and fluids/filters. How does this make it a rolling parts car? Especially when the odometer will sell for ±$40k once the rest of the car is restored. Even assuming a pessimistic $20k cost to restore, that's still $10k profit.
I get you are yanking my chain, but remember this forum is read by people worldwide who don't understand the inside jokes. It sounds like you consider the car not worth restoring, which I believe is not accurate. It doesn't have enough substantially wrong with it.
Add up the common maintenance items, plus what you list above, plus a bit more for things that will be discovered along the way.
It's not a matter of this car being WORTH restoring. It's more of a practical matter: who on God's Green Earth is going to spend $10K for this car, and then spend another $20K+ to bring it up to a decent (that means a good quality daily driver, perhaps something that would look nice at a Cars and Coffee) standard ... when they could just pay $30-35K up front and buy a FAR better car right now?
VERY VERY VERY few people. Very few people. Maybe you.
Maybe. Me? I'd take
@Ntrepid 's or
@8899 's cars 8 days a week over this one. Because getting a sorted car that works as it was designed to is worth a big premium over the $10K for this car. The folks who bought Robert's and Greg's cars are the ones who got the "steal" deals, not Hoovie. Because not only do Robert's and Greg's buyers get well-sorted cars that have been intelligently and conscientiously maintained, they get years worth of proper E500E fun.
Meanwhile, Hoovie is going to be sitting around futzing with this and that to get his $10K 500E running 50% the way it should, and even then it will never be right. Eventually he'll give up on it and move to the next shiny thing. Or I dunno, maybe he'll take $20K+ from YouTube channel profits and sink it into this car, and challenge 600Eric to win the next Legends of the Autobahn judging.
The value of a parts car is not (necessarily) to buy the car for $10K and then disassemble it, and sell every flower-bolt for $50 and transmission support bracket for $200, and front fenders for $500 apiece, until you recoup your money. It's to provide a supply of used parts, to replace NLA parts, to help keep the better cars on the road.
It's a food chain. It's just not economically feasible nor viable to invest tens of thousands of dollars to bring a low-end example up to snuff, when you can pay the same or less and enjoy a far better car now. Sure it's harsh. Sure, it's black and white. Sure, it's a bit of a chain-yank (only for you, because you do most of your own work, and your perspective is skewed and not indicative of the real world), but it's true.
How many people in the 500E community have EVER taken a decent example and brought it back to a "Lowmania" level stellar condition car. I can think of 600Eric (better than it left the factory), and perhaps our Norwegian friend, and 1-2 others over the years. 600Eric's car was actually quite decent to begin with (I saw it up close several times before he bought it). Others have taken decent cars and made them more decent, perhaps repainting them and doing some mechanical resto. Plenty of folks have done this, but they are not spending huge bucks to do this. Nobody (save for a few folks above) is spending $50K on bringing a low-end E500E up to a higher end one. It's simply easier to just spend the $30-40K and get a really nice one to begin with.
Many folks here just say "screw it" and opt to sell and get a better/newer car, like an AMG whatever or a Porsche. I can think of a couple of current longer-term forum members who have either bailed out, or have one foot out of the E500E ownership door, or will be exiting shortly.
90% of the lower end cars are NEVER going to get any better than they are today. In fact, most of them will seriously deteriorate in the future. Only the better cars around today (the condition 1s, 2s and the cream of the cream of the crop 3s) are going to be the survivors. Here in the US, in another 10 years, we are talking ~500 examples at best (out of 1,500+ imported).
