Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimman
Price estimate has been climbing in the rumour mill, and people are justifying it by saying it will be 'low-production'. That was all to demonstrate that the parts are in fact the opposite. Toyota could realistically sell this for under $20k and make money on it.
As for the Impreza suspension, yes. The rear uses a rear multilink, with lower radius rods and a compact upper wishbone.
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What it the basis for your assertion that "Toyota could realistically sell this for under $20k and make money on it"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimman
This whole 'low-volume' thing for justifying high cost is another thing that pisses me off. We haven't seen a lot of stuff on this car that is super-fancy-expensive, which is where the price of performance cars gets driven up. The parts are expensive, so the car is more expensive than its peers to make. Therefore to account for less sales the manufacturers tack on a bigger price for higher profitability.
But why so on the FT86? The transmissions are probably shared with the Lexus IS250, the suspension in the clear Subi display in the current Impreza, the motor's bottom end and accessories are from the car that Subaru expects to be their highest volume vehicle, rear diff probably comes from it too, with an LSD added. So we have some mythical Yamaha heads and D4-S. Whoopee...
Toyota should price this car low enough (less than the bigger motor tC) to MAKE it a volume seller and recoup their money on high sales numbers. Because even if the car is awesome, it won't bring back passion to any brand if no one is driving them. They need the legions of owners like the Civics have, so the there are enough people (percentage-wise) to do all the crazy shit to them, not just buy TRD parts from the Scion dealer so that they are all 'customized' the same...
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There's no point in getting angry.
Low volume means R&D and tooling costs are going to be higher per unit sold.
The Kappa twins were both parts bin halo cars that
shared much more with other vehicles than the Toyobaru will. They weren't profitable. In 2009, the base Solstice started at ~$25k and the GXP started at ~$30k (I don't remember the cost of the coupe). The Saturn Sky was an extra $2k.
The Toyobaru ought to sell in higher volume, but they're an example of how volume affects profit (and yes Pontiac and Saturn were also failures overall... that doesn't negate the point).