1957 MGA ~Value~

I don't know anything about these cars.
If someone could help me get a market value I would appreciate.
It has undergone a complete restoration, Car looks great.
There is a dent on the drivers rear fender. The rest is very nice.
I told the owner I would list it for sale for him, he really doesn't know current market value. I want to price it to sell.
He is also selling a 97 Harley FatBoy.
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They are selling for around $18-20K for a nice driver

 

www.manheimgold.com
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it looks very clean (although the steering wheel is not original/correct). Assuming that the engine looks as good as the rest of the car I agree with Moretti124 that 18 to 20 is about right. You could probably get as much as 24, but that rear fender damage will definitely put off some buyers. The early As were kind of underpowered w/ the 1500 motor and had drum brakes all around. check ebay, there are almost always between 6 and 10 A's for sale at a given time, from basket cases to complete resto jobs.

Here is my 1960 1600 - I have just put a ported and polished 1800 head on it from an early MGB for better breathing/power.
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With the dent maybe a $2K repair, deduct that from an otherwise nice clean driver car I'd peg this in the $17-19K range.

Hard to tell more without some information about the restoration work. You know, the who, what, when, where.

One man's restoration is another man's refreshing, so you'd need to find out details and produce receipts to maximize price.

I sent you a PM.

Dave M.

 

Nice!

 

thanks! I like to think that I have both ends of the foreign classics spectrum; at one end the fairly crude, nimble British roadster, can't really go much faster than about 80mph but fun in the twisties, and at the other end the sophisticated, 4.4 liter V-12 ultimate grand touring Ferrari built for long highway trips and not really happy below 80mph.

I have a soft spot for MGAs; my dad raced a '57 w/ a Judson supercharger in California until he sold it to get his Ferrari in 1960 . . . .

 

As nice as the rest of it is, I'd have that dent fixed first!

 

I would not give more than about 15K for this, to be honest.

As a side point, why is it that most MG enthusiasts seem to have very little good to say about the twin-cam version of this car?

It always seemed to me that the twin-cam should have been a great collector value, but most MG owners I know put it down for various mechanical issues.

 

Guys who really know the cars love the twin cam, at least the guys I've hung out with that appreciate LBCs.


Side note: I think $15K is a little light on this car. $16-17K is probably more like it (after a couple conversations with broker/dealers)

 

Interesting - now, do you mean 16-17K as it is, or including fixing that fender?

It might also be of interest that I once looked at a very similar car at an old-car dealership in Bentonville, Ark. once while I was there to work on the Wal-mart computers. This guy had it priced at 26K and did not show any interest whatsoever in coming down at all.

I think that these cars may be a great collector value right now - look at what people are asking for an Austin Healey 3000 or any of the Alfas of that day that are not totally rusted out. Not to mention a Jaguar or Corvette.

 

As is, assuming the photos I've seen are accurate and it's a restored/refreshed rust free car..

 

everything you ever wanted to know about the twin-cam here -
http://www.mgaguru.com/mgtech/twincam/tc.htm

and the explanation of why the twin-cam was not loved more than it was (from the same mgaguru website):
"Apparently the single most important lesson to learn about the MGA Twin Cam engine was not figured out by the factory until after this model had ceased production. The engine had been plagued by burned pistons, quite mysterious at the time. The factory first retarded ignition timing, then lowered the compression ratio (both reducing power output). They finally gave up on production when the engine could not be made to run reliably.

Sometime later avid driving enthusiasts were to discover the cause of the problem to be a resonant vibration of the SU carburetors at certain select engine speeds. Such vibration would cause foaming of the fuel in the float chamber, which in turn causes a lean runnig condition, which in turn leads to low power output and burned pistons. The problem may be overtly obvious if the car is run on a rolling road with power monitored as the engine speed increases, and there may be a sudden unexpected dip in the power output right in middle of the sweet spot on the power curve. Using some modern technology, an O2 sensor in the exhaust may also disclose the lean running condition.

The solution then is to install vibration isolating flex mounts between the intake manifold and the carburetors. Once this was resolved, Twin Cam enthusiasts have enjoyed may years (even decades) of high speed motoring enjoyment with a generally reliable engine. If this problem could have been known by the facetory it might have been fixed during production, and the MGA Twin Cam model may have survived for a much longer production life. The Twin Cam engine might also have followed on to subsequent MG models. Can you say MGB Twin Cam without a flutter? There was at one time a Twin Cam engine MGB prototype. This page then is dedicated to the trials, tribulations, and final solutions to the Twin Cam carburetor vibration problem."

 

Great research Bryan! Thanks for sharing.

 

That was great research, ++.

I had always wondered about this car. I had a high-school physics teacher who had one, a faded out red fixed head coupe. He was the one who told me the engine was junk, and then I read it a couple of times in such publications as Hemmings. But, it was still running in 1967 when I took his class.

It is a kind of wishful thinking that this engine could have found its way into the MGB or MGB/GT. (after being perfected) - Instead of that big heavy six or the V8...

BTW, the owner of that Testarossa that I am trying to buy is selling all his cars except for a 1949 TC...and, a leased Audi A4 as a daily. He just said that he feels closer to it than anything else - including a Jaguar XK150, an Alfa GTV track racer, an early XKE, and probably some others I don't know about.

 

I should be getting some pictures of the motor.
I haven't seen it yet, but from what I hear it's very nice.
We'll see..

 

Here are some pics from a few minutes ago.

If anyone is interested in this car, I can put you in touch with the owner.
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This thread was like seeing an old girlfriend from high school, and discovering that she had aged better than 90% of her classmates.

I went back to Hemmings and now think its worth more like the 17/18K mark.

BTW, the only twin-cam advertised has been listed for two months at 48K, only about 10-12K less than an entry Testarossa. Or, more to the point - more money than an average Austin-Healy or Alfa of the day. Porsche 356 range, in fact.

So maybe it has held more respect than I was led to believe.