Quote Originally Posted by ambientgoat View Post

Now on the other two matters, that's up to each individual buyer and seller. To debate that would be as productive as me arguing with Byron that a supermint with stripes, HZ 253 4speed is the best sandman ever. While he is of the opinion that DL7 not green and 308 auto is the way forward. I mean, clearly I'm right and green and manual is best, but there is no future in me trying to sell this concept to Byron. So in that instance agreeing to disagree is fine, and we can all walk away from the argument feeling we know what's right.
Goat is right, value is basically governed by what someone will pay. When it comes to vehicles, that value is governed by many things. As goat has said, I would pay more money for a 173 trimatic not-green HJ Sandman than I would for a green 253 4spd HZ Sandman in the same condition. The long term top dollar car to me is the most highly optioned first car of a run. So that means a HQ Kingswood Sandman ute in 308 trimatic with air and steer, and this would be my choice closely followed by a HJ with the same boxes ticked. However what is good is that others disagree and like other versions better.
How that flows across to cars missing their original chassis to me is the car gets devalued as a result, probably by as much as 50%, however that may not deter someone from paying more. Personally, if I was to look at buying a restored HJ TH400 308 Sandman ute that didn't have its original chassis I would expect it would be worth less than if it had its chassis, but I wouldn't expect to pay half of what the numbers matching car was worth. If the numbers matching car was worth $25k, I'd probably happily pay $18k or so, however others may not.