Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharroll Celby
So, tell me YOUR understanding of auto sales dynamics and costs.....
|
Well, we're a little short on room. Ford can't make a car the way the Kirkhams do - it has to be engineered, part by part, from the ground up, for production in a particular fashion. When there's a suitable platform to borrow and reshape, it saves some work. But the bottom line is that Car #1 from an assembly line costs $200M or more in development and production readiness.
Now, who do you sell this car to? The market for a completely custom-engineered beast is very slim. They won't sell millions, or even significant thousands, of something in the $50-60k range. So you move down market and build it on a Mustang or similar platform... thereby losing all the buyers who want a properly engineered sports car, not a reworked Mustang at a premium price. And you still can't sell all that many snarky 2-seaters... go add up the sales of the Vette, the Miata/MX5, the S2000, etc. and I don't think you hit 100k units a year.
Your "millions of them at $25,000" is a pipe dream completely unconnected to car-making and -buying reality. This isn't esoteric knowledge - anyone who's paid attention to production car history for the last 20-30 years would grasp it.
Quote:
|
Ford (and others) make MILLIONS of cars a year. Why NOT make one that has some style to it?
|
I think they do. Not Lamborghini-Ferrari style, because there's a limited market for those cars and it's pretty much saturated. But I think Ford does well serving the markets it does with the vehicles it develops. Could be better. Could be prettier here and there. Could be there's there's an occasional clunker in there. But not bad. Better than cookie-cutter, rebadging old crap endlessly GM!