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So they will take your old TB and turn it into a better than new one?
Or have they actually taken over the rights to manufacture them new?
Nothings says style like burgundy carpet… Nice 
Maybe with a tiny little PT-6 engine as option…? 
So they will take your old TB and turn it into a better than new one?
Or have they actually taken over the rights to manufacture them new?
They are just rebuilding them.
I guess there is always a market for this sort of thing, to people who just really love the type. My son informs me that the value of particular old Porsches is going through the roof at present because some firm is rebuilding them.
I don’t know if you can do much with TBs, in the way of a business model. They are nice planes (I would say that ) and much nicer to fly in than most of the usual GA types. But whether there is a market for “as new” rebuilds, I don’t know. For example you could take a 1984 TB20 (likely to be well shagged), for say €40k, spend 100k on it, and you would end up with a 2002 TB20GT. But you can buy that for €140k. And the GT is a lot better in many ways than a non-GT no matter how much you spent on doing the latter up. But then the rebuilt one would have the latest avionics. OTOH a 2002 GT could have a GNS430+530 which is only a very short step away from a 430W+530W and LPV etc etc and (apart from eye candy) who needs more?
Why they chose to rebuild a TB10 is a bigger question. If I was spending money I would convert a TB20. A TB20 does the same MPG as the 10, costs hardly more to maintain, while totally outclassing it in every aspect of mission capability. It has 2x the range, for a start (1300nm to zero fuel).
Michael – I see you found their advert
They are selling a 1980 plane for 45k. I would guess they bought it for about 15k, so that gives some idea of the business model. How much do you think they spent on it? Is the panel photo before or after?
Peter wrote:
and (apart from eye candy) who needs more?
Their target market will want more. Whether they will want advanced avionics wrapped in a TB20 is another matter. They will competing with used-Cirrus etc.
The only thing that surprises me is that they need total rebuilding. They are not old planes chronologically, in my world almost new. I guess Euro club service has been hard of the fleet. £45K seems like a very good deal to me regardless, with real world value depending on the details of engine and component overhaul status, as always. Paint and interior does not equal value.
I think the buyer for something like this is focused on core hardware value and flying a plane, as opposed to pushing buttons, and thereby has little in common with the buyer of a plane with advanced avionics.
Peter, pre-1980s Porsches in general have become ridiculously overpriced, with what was originally conceived as a fun little weekend hobby car now valued by a worldwide market at much more than a decent airplane. Same goes for many similar cars in 2016. I decided I have a enough ground vehicles, the market is wacko, and with my money it’s a lot better to buy the plane instead, or a couple of them
Socatas don’t take abuse very well. If you stick your boots into the panel of a 1982 Cessna it will look, ahem, muddy, but if you stick your boots into the panel of a 1982 TB it will be totally shagged now. The plastic trim – common in cars back then and now but rare in GA – doesn’t take punishment. And a lot of people abuse planes; they chuck headsets into the control cluster or the CB panel, etc. There is no need for that at all; my 2002 one still looks pretty new.
Regarding Porsches, this is what somebody is doing
but that really would be the equivalent of spending €500k on a TB rebuild. But clearly people pay it, on the car scene, to get something individual.
But I think the TB rebuilder is just buying very cheap TBs (the one for sale is one of the earliest in existence) and doing them up. There is a market for a TB10 for £45k if the condition is really good and everything works.
Peter,
The big difference being that they take an early 90s Porsche and rebuild it to look like a early 70s Porsche (plus various improvements on 90s technology). What they’re doing with the TB10 is more akin to the old business of tarting up a 70s Porsche to look like a 90s Porsche. That was never very succesful and subsequently noone would touch the bastarded cars with a barge pole.
That said, I fail to really see what they have done? I would have expected the latest Garmin suite, etc, to really compete with the almost-new market.
