Agreed Ian – they never cost it, wouldn’t be economic I’d imagine.
IIRC the DBS was auctioned and the ‘profit’ was given to the owner rather than the total. I suspect the profitability probably rests on how much he’s paid for doing them, if he was a hobyist in a shed then it’s possible to make a profit, subbing it out or even paying himself definitely wouldn’t.
They should bin the whole “auction it as a good deed” angle as the cases are increasingly less worthy IMO.
I thought that but then they were all filmed before the series started so they could have tweeked the order to prevent that. So I assumed that maybe this weeks was maybe a bit too recent/personal and maybe the dad asked for it to be cut to avoid distressing the kids? Otherwise it was just ‘mechanic buys uneconomically restore-able transit and gets £9.5k for it’.
Mk1 transit with the bull nose aren’t that rare either. Not as common as petrol versions, but rarity was probably in having the original engine (they alluded to that but tried to imply that it was “the only one” that shape). But they’re hugely in demand as you can’t re-engine the petrol version as it used a V4 to save space.