This is the real decision when considering building a 356-esque car. Open topped cars certainly represent a more romantic era of motoring. Wind in your hair and all that. In South Africa, where I am building this intrepid racer for the road, open topped cars are a bad idea. Rain will hardly be an issue and the winters are fairly mild and short, but the sun is merciless and will burn you to a crisp. It renders the car almost useless except during twilight and evening driving, or during autumn and spring. Its also a wild and not very safe place.
So without a doubt, a coupe it would be. Except that, despite being closely priced initially, by the time I finally decided to pull the trigger, the price of the coupe bodies had increased to exactly three times that of the speedster. Ah the sweet pang of disappointment. It’s not cool declaring that you are ‘budget conscious’ when approaching engineering projects. You won’t find Aston Martin declaring that the Valkyrie was built to a budget. Or that Boeing built the Max to a budget… Although obviously it must have been… bad example. But you are clearly going to be budget conscious if you are building a plastic car in a shed. This is due to two reasons 1) If you are Seinfeld, there would be no building and faffing about in the shed as you would just buy a real RSK and be done with it. If you are reading this, your are probably interest in building and faffing. And you are probably not Seinfeld. 2) This car is obviously a passion project with minimal resale value. Although cheaply executed ‘kit cars’ are just sad, building something completely without a budget is just foolish. The coupe was now hurting my budget. So back to the debonair-rebel-without-a-cause-wind-in-your-hair-sunburnt-slightly-cautious freedom.