KITS AND PIECES
A CAR WITHOUT A LEGEND, YET
After building and owning my Sabre for 22 years, I have decided that the time has come to start thinking about another project car. As I look at my Sabre and ponder what to do with it, the question that comes to mind is: “Is it worth anything?” Only six of these cars are road legal in New Zealand, or the world for that matter, so it is valuable? What is it that makes a car valuable — is it the car or its back story? When a person buys an investment car, is that person buying the collection of nuts and bolts or is he/she just buying a legend in a very shiny metal dust jacket?
The story
What is the legend behind the Almac Sabre, and does it give the car any more value than say, an equivalent MX-5?
The Sabre is a genuine Kiwidesigned and built sports car. It started life in a relatively obscure factory in Upper Hutt with a staff of two people. The Almac factory was less than 5km away from the General Motors (GM) automotive assembly plant, where over 1200 people were employed. During the ’80s, when GM was turning out around 20 cars per hour, Almac Cars, with the help of Graham Berry Race Cars, was producing between 10 and 15 Cobra replicas per year. Thanks to a Texan by the name of Shelby, they were already part of a legend that was growing, and the Cobras sold reasonably well. Still, even then, Alex Mcdonald, the man behind Almac, believed that he would not sell more than 30 cars. Almost 40 years on, he is still manufacturing between five and 10 per year. The official name for Almac’s Cobra is the ‘Almac 427SC’, as Ford Motor Company owns the rights to the Cobra nameplate. The 427SC, with over 300 sales to date, is a success by New Zealand standards, and any 427SC that has been built in either the factory or an enthusiast’s garage will sell for at least $50K no matter how old it is.
Something more original
Actually, the only thing wrong with the 427SC is that it is not a genuine Almac; at best, it is a copy, or a replica, of a car designed and built by AC in England and tinkered with by Carol Shelby. So, Alex and his son Stuart decided to create their own legend, and design and build a unique roadster. It would be a modern version of the 427SC without the expensive brightwork of the Cobra, and have such luxury items as wind-up windows and a heater, built from easy-to-obtain parts.
In May 1994, a mock-up of their prototype modern sports car first appeared in an earlier version of this magazine, in a centre pull-out section called ‘NZ
Kit Car’. I bought that magazine and was almost immediately gobsmacked that a backwater country like New Zealand could produce such a great-looking car. Later, when I saw the car on display at a show in Wellington, I knew that I wanted one, and I wanted to build it myself.
In May 1994, a mockup of their prototype modern sports car first appeared in an earlier version of this magazine, in a centre pull-out section called ‘NZ Kit Car’
Let’s get started
At the time, I was living in Lower Hutt, and it was only a short drive up the valley to the Almac factory to see the car. This was the beginning of a friendship between Alex and me that would last decades.
Like most people in their 30s, I was married with a wife, children, and a mortgage. The car I had been building up to that point was called a Tri-magnum. It was a scratch-built car and had a maximum budget of only $10 per week. The cost of the Sabre in kitset form was $9K ($14K today, adjusting for inflation). Fortunately, I did not have to buy the entire kit outright, but the first component I needed was the chassis and that was $3K. Not only that but the prototype was still being built, so I could not take a Sabre for a test drive, and the common advice is never to buy a car that you have not driven. That is good advice which I, of course, ignored, as I knew that any engineering problem is solvable. The difference between an excellent-handling sports car and a car that is rubbish in a corner is, generally, a few pieces of steel welded into the chassis to increase its stiffness, or changing out suspension or steering parts until you get the car handling the way you want it to. As the donor car for the Sabre was the MKIV/V Cortina, I knew that most of the steering and suspension work had already been done by the men in white coats at Ford.
A little cooperation
However, before I got to that point, I had to come up with the money for the chassis, without selling the house or the wife. At this point, I must stress that the car would never have happened without the generosity of Alex Mcdonald or the help and support of friends in the Constructors Car Club. I agreed to help Alex write the build manual for the car, and be a test case in the building of the first production car in exchange for him letting me build a chassis using his jigs. I invested $300 for the steel needed to build the chassis and turned up on a Saturday morning with four blokes from the club, who reckoned that they knew what they were doing. By Saturday evening, thanks to Roy Hoare, Tim Hutchinson, Alan Price, and Philip Derby, I had a chassis.
From that point on, with the help of many friends, especially George Ross, who turned up at my house every Thursday night to not only work on the car but also to spend considerable time, as we worked, solving the world’s problems. As I was determined to set aside a regular time to work on the car — that is, Thursday nights, Saturdays, and one week of every holiday — I knew that I would eventually finish it. Four-and-a-half years later, in October of 1997, I not only fitted the registration plates to my finished Sabre, but I had also, along the way, gained a swag of lifelong friends.
Engine changes
I was pretty pleased with the car, as the donor Cortina had been the one with a 2.3-litre V6. However, it had been built to a strict budget, and the following 22 years would be spent gradually improving the car to get it to a point at which I was truly happy with it. For example, the 2.3-litre motor was changed to a Ford Capri 2.8-litre V6, when I discovered that said engine, which I had acquired quite
The car I had been building up to that point was called a Tri-magnum. It was a scratch-built car and had a maximum budget of only $10 per week. The cost of the Sabre in kitset form was $9K ($14K today, adjusting for inflation)
cheaply, would bolt straight in. The car was now not only more economical but also had a much better power-to-weight ratio. I was happy, but my now-teenage sons were not, as the car did not have a stereo.
Being a purist, I could think of no reason to fit a radio/stereo to an open-top car. The point of a roadster is to enjoy the wind, the sounds of the country, and the visceral experience of navigating a winding road, focused on the apex of each corner, without the distraction of somebody wailing out of a speaker somewhere. Yet, if I was going to fit anything else to my car it would have to have the right sound. I fitted a Rover V8 and there were no more questions about a stereo.
Fitting of the V8 occurred during 2010. It was a major upgrade to the car, which involved revision of the front suspension and a whole new drivetrain from the engine back. Then I had to put the car through the Low Volume Vehicle (LVV) certification process for the second time. Again, this would never have happened without the help of Alex Mcdonald and other friends.
Creating the legend
Thus, like the woodsman’s axe, the car has been gradually improved and upgraded in the time I have owned it. During that time, it has been driven over 90,000km, 10,000 of those with the V8. It has been driven over most of the North Island and a large chunk of the South Island, most of it with the top down. It does not matter where I go, almost nobody recognizes it. To this day, it is still a relatively unknown New Zealand sports car. Of the five Series 1 Sabres that are currently road legal, four of them are powered with engines that are a derivative of the Rover V8. The sixth road-legal Sabre is a Series 2.
Only two were built in the factory, with the rest being sold in kitset form. It is a similar story to that of TVR. TVR started out making kitset cars before going on to sell only factory-built cars, and it used Ford V6s and Rover V8s. Yet TVR has a worldwide following, most of which is due to the size of its market and media attention. The comings and goings of TVR are media events. The Almac 427SC has gained TV, magazine, and newspaper attention, not because it is an Almac but because it is a ‘Cobra’. Some Cobra owners in New Zealand are not aware that their Cobras are actually Almacs! The Sabre, not so much — perhaps because few are interested in a unique, New Zealand– designed car?
The car is not without its faults. For example, it is very hard to compare the build quality of a home-built car with that of an MX-5, which has had millions of dollars spent on its development. In that regard, I will let the pictures tell the story.
Without a legend, it is hard to guess what the car is worth. I suspect it is less than a million dollars but, hopefully, it is worth more than a similar age and mileage MX-5. After all, at least it is unique.