It’s not often you see a YouTuber rebuild with as high stakes as this. For good reason — a Rolls-Royce is an expensive car, made up of thousands of very expensive parts. Trying to put a crashed car back together would work out beyond the realm of most YouTubers. But Mat Armstrong isn’t just any YouTuber. When UK footballer Marcus Rashford’s Mansory Rolls-Royce Wraith met with an accident and came up for auction, Armstrong rolled the dice for the sake of content. Against all odds, he’s just managed to get the car driving again but it remains to be seen just how roadworthy it is and how much it will eventually sell for.
Depending on your risk appetite, that’s either a foolhardy move or a stroke of genius. The Mansory Rolls-Royce Wraith is valued at over $883,000, but Armstrong bought the crashed car for a little over $230,000. The accident itself, which saw the Rolls-Royce rip out a pole with its rear end, didn’t result in a lot of damage to the car on the face of it. The more the YouTuber dug into the car during the repair process, though, the more it became apparent just how bad the scope of the damage was.
If it isn’t bad enough that a lot of the cast aluminum parts that hold the Rolls-Royce’s subframe in place had clean sheared through, the Mansory parts the car was fitted all came with significantly higher price tags than the already-atmospheric price on OEM parts. A Mansory grille surround alone, for example, is over $5,300!
Fortunately, the footballer’s team reached out to help with some of the parts missing from the car, that were retrieved from the crash site. While a stroke of luck, Armstrong was still faced with hidden damages that could add up to a point where there would be no hope of making money back on it.
The only option was to find an older Rolls-Royce Wraith to use as a parts car — all $123,000 of it. The plan was to use what’s needed and sell the rest to recover his cost — a risk almost as great as buying a wrecked Rolls-Royce itself.
However, the latest update from Mat Armstrong’s channel points to this move having been the right choice. With all the parts replaced from the parts car, the wrecked Mansory is driving once again.
This build series is ongoing and from the looks of it, has caught the interest of gearheads in a big way — the three videos on this build have already amassed over 12 million views in just a couple of weeks. While Mansory-kitted cars have always split opinions, it looks like this YouTuber’s Mansory rebuild has everyone rooting for him instead.
