Quote:
Originally Posted by AL427SBF
For objective club members to present ideas, suggestions and opinions regarding a FFR MKIV aluminum outer shell and other structural, mechanical or cosmetic upgrades.
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Ah yes, but to stay objective, one must first see where Alloycars is coming from. To do so, they only have to
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As stated elsewhere, the idea and concept is sound, yet in order to reach their broadest market (the FFR rebody concept), they will need to make subtle and not so subtle changes to their "molds" and substructures.
MK I
Mk 1.5 (known as the first tweener chassis)
MK II
MK II.5
MK III
MK III.5
and finally
MK IV.
Each chassis had running changes made to them, and as such, each offering from Alloycars will need to be able to adapt to those changes from one FFR chassis to the next, especially with a "bolt on" aluminum body offering.
One idea would be to offer their services to adjust and custom mount such a body/subframe to a customers rolling chassis. In this way, the craftsman who are building their 550 Spyder could do the intricate work required to get the body installed and properly aligned on each specific chassis. This would eliminate the need for multiple offerings as stated above.
Another idea, one which Ingo/Tom alluded to would be to offer a body already mounted on a new MK IV chassis.
Now, staying objective, the main issue I see is cost, if they can do it for say 20K (body mounted on chassis, not including FFR base kit in that figure), they will hit it out of the ballpark. if they expect someone to cough up say 40K+ for one of their bodies mounted on the customer supplied chassis, I think they will miss the target audience that they are going after.
Same goes for the offering of an aluminum body for an ERA, SPF, Unique, etc. As the engineering that would be required to adapt an aluminum body to each would be cost prohibitive, even with a projected 10 year break even.
Just the two cents worth from someone who has been around these cars since 1979/1980 and has watched all sorts of companies and ideas come and go in that time.
Bill S.