Discovery of a donor

I'd been toying with the idea of working on a classic / sports car for a couple of years. I'd been looking into a number of different cars. A classic mid 60s mustang, a classic Porsche 911, building my own Locost (Lotus 7 replica), or my favourite... a classic 50's Cadillac.

The 50's Caddy is a big favourite but a single garage put paid to that. The car would barely fit let alone give me room to work on it.

Porsche 911 was a bit more than I wanted to spend and parts etc aren't cheap

60's Mustang would have been good to fit the kids in but a good solid car was going to be costly as a starting point.

So building the Locost had been a front runner for a while. Its small, so easy to work on in the single garage, its cheap to build in comparison to most cars, its going to perform well and its going to be a great learning experience building the car. Some of the down sides are only 2 seats and no roof so it is certainly a fair weather toy.


Donor cars in north amercia for the Locost are in short supply. There are very few front engine rear wheel drive 4 cyclinder cars. Miata (mx5) is probably the most common. The ultimate donor though is the S2000 but they are not the most common car on the road.

I'd been looking at JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) engine imports as an option. Nissan has made a number of front engine rear wheel drive cars for the Japanese market. Front clips imported from Japan can be bought as a donor. Most of the engines are a few years old now and parts are not readily available in North America.

So by chance, I'd been looking at a local wrecking site and to my surprise a damaged S2000 was for sale. I was still procrastinating on the project and not really ready to start, but the car raised my interest. I went out to have a look at the car and it seemed to be just the thing. The car was written off due to the number of panels damaged, lights, radiator etc but the engine transmission etc were still in good shape. So before I really knew what I was doing I'd bought the car.

The car now sits in my driveway while I finish a couple of house projects and clear out the garage. Its certainly a conversation starter with nieghbours who wonder about the damaged car in the driveway (there goes the neighourhood). I'm hoping to get the house projects all but done this weekend and get the car in the garage by the end of the month.

The good thing about buying the S2000 is not just that its the perfect donor car, as it is a bit of a high end car, I'll hopefully make back most of the cost of the car parting out the bits I don't want. I've listed my first part on eBay last night (the antenna) and will likely list the floor mats this weekend. The plan is to sell a few of the cheap items on eBay, get some good reviews so I can sell some of the bigger items later with good feedback... that's the plan anyway.

So for now, I've got the dream donor car and I'm itching to get it into the garage and start stripping it down. Its certainly good motivation to get the house projects finished.

I'll post some photos of the car soon before I pull it down.