Send it up to me and the 15K and I will get you sorted out
Seriously though, £15,000 would buy you a decent CNC Lathe, in fact probably half that. Big advantages is they will have toolchangers, ballscrews etc. You could then sell the old motors drives etc on eBay and fit AC Servos, unlike Jim I think speed is definitely important, with tool changes you will want serious rapids, my Lathe does 3.3M/min at the moment but once the SmoothStepper has the threading sorted it will be getting fitted to the Lathe and my Rapids could be as much as 20M/min, but I think 10 will be what I settle on.
Just my opinion but I was thinking along the same lines as you in that I was going to retrofit one of my manual lathes, glad I didnt
Hood