In our car market, everything is getting more and more expensive. And, incidentally, that includes the original Tesla Roadster. You know, the one that was sort of junk and based on the Lotus Elise? That one.
According to InsideEVs, a 2008 Tesla Roadster just sold for well over $US250,000 ($347,050) from Gruber Motors – a shop in Texas that specialises in Teslas. Granted, this isn’t a run of the mill Roadster. The grey on black car one of the first ever made – VIN013 – and it has just 1,352 km on the clock. It was the thirteenth car in Tesla’s original “Signature Series.”
Apparently, the owner accepted an original offer of a quarter million dollars before he received a number of other bids over the asking price. Unfortunately for sickos like me who enjoy seeing people waste their money – the final price wasn’t disclosed.
This example of the Roadster came with all the kit – a hardtop still in the box, a 220 and 110v charger, both keys and the original owners manual.
Tesla being Tesla there is a TPMS warning for a faulty sensor, but the company says you can get that fixed at any Tesla Service Centre for a few hundred dollars.
During the original run of the Roadster (not the fake one that Elon has been saying will come out for years now) Tesla sold about 2,400 cars between 2008 and 2012. The car in question was assembled on September 9th, 2008.
There are now certainly far fewer than that around. A fire at Gruber Motors in October of last year destroyed over 30 Roadsters that were waiting on repairs. According to Electrek, that was the second fire at the shop in four years.
It is yet to be determined if the original Roadster will actually become a collectors car in the same way that other “first cars” from brands do. But, if they keep catching on fire at this rate, whoever has the last one is going to make off like a bandit.