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I had the pleasure of visiting with Mel and Ken at their shop during September. These guys are old school and honest businessmen. I ran a 30 day ad on the Saab Network for Mel and Ken during June 2005 to promote their last run of wheels. Most of those sets were sold in Sweden and Europe. Here is the price info from that batch -
Price: 175.00 GBP per wheel (about $325.00 U.S.) plus shipping, insurance, and U.S. Customs duty
Manufacturer: Compomotive (these wheels are good quality)
Weight: 15 lbs.
Shipping/Insurance was about 225.00 GPB for 5 wheels
U.S. Customs import duty for wheels is 2.75% of the merchandise total. plus a small administrative fee. Duty cost can go higher if U.S. Customs decides to unpack and repack your shipment for inspection.
You must be prepared to spend between $1,500 and $2,000 for a set depending on whether you order four or five wheels. Keep in mind if you only order four wheels and happen to trash one while driving, you will be left with a set of three.
The price is high compared to mass market wheels produced for mass market cars in the U.S., but keep in mind these are an extremely small run and must be imported to the U.S. by the customer. Highgate is not making a lot of money on these wheels and are taking a huge risk to their business with each run as they are a small two man operation. Yes, they have difficulty getting the money lenders to finance efforts like this. My intent here is to impress upon those who are considering a purchase that these two men are doing this out of their love and commitment to old Saabs and their customers. They are not being adequately compensated for the hassles they have to endure. So don't express an interest unless you are serious and willing to lay out earnest money (a deposit).
If you just want wider wheels and want to retain the soccer ball look, Motorsport Service can widen them to 5.5" for you for $180.00 each plus shipping. This includes refurbishment and polishing. The catch is you need to provide them two rims for each one you get back, as they need a front from one and a back from another to make one wider rim.
Another alternative is for one of you to contact a manufacturer in the U.S., and drum up enough customers for a cost effective run. The advantage with this is the sky is the limit on choice of style as many custom manufacturers can easily build them from universal components to your bolt pattern, width, diameter and offset specifications. If you do this you will begin to gain an appreciation for the level of effort Highgate has to put out.
posted by 68.69.1...
, Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:20:56
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