Europa
[QB]
Will it be driveable on the road?
Don't forget you would have to beef up braking & suspension components etc. (Also, don't forget about conversion costs from dead-beam rear axle to independent rear suspension, fuel tank relocation, body strengthening due to removal of rear crossmembers etc. etc.)
How about insurance?
Are you sure you could really do this work for under $30K? (including engineering & certification costs)
[QB]
Yes, I know, I know, I know! The thing is you have to do almost EVERYTHING yourself. Once you start getting other people to do stuff, that's when it get's WAY above $30,000. There's two ways of doing these things, either with LOTS of time, or with LOTS of money. As you probably know, the "lots of time" type of projects often never get finished, whereas the "lots of money" ones often do, so that skews the perspective of what can be achieved quite abit. As you said the major costs will always be the engineers certificate and insurance.
You would also have to spend ALOT of time tuning and modifying it to get it to handle, as you mentioned.
As for resale value. I would not put all that work in to any car, if I had plans to sell it. Actually I don't even buy any car anymore, if I think I'd want to sell it one day. I now only buy a car if I plan to keep it.
Anyway, don't worry, I don't actually have any plans to actually do this conversion. I just like discussing crazy froggy conversions on this message board (you may have noticed some of my other similar conversations in the Peugeot message board). As I said I don't sell cars, so therefore there's a definite limit to how many cars I can buy (and modify) before it gets out of hand. At the moment it looks like I'm just going to end up with my 505 for every day, another highly modified 504 for weekends, my Peugeot engined special for club events, and a shed full of 504/505 parts including a few spare shells. In addition to these I may have one old Subaru that's been raised, for getting to a few inaccessible places.
Now, IF after that I have any space/time left for anything else, then I may decide to build a PRV engined sportster, or restore an old Alpine or something (if I can get one cheap enough), or I may decide to lighten a 505 extensively and modify it along the lines of what I posted in the Peugeot forum with a 24V 605 V6 or something, but realistically, I don't think I will get the time.
Anyhow, where did that person find that cheap A310?
Dave