Quote:
Originally Posted by Ro_Ja
I don't understand. Even if it's for race teams, what race team in their right mind would drop that kind of money when they can get an alternative for like $4k?
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The demands put on a part for a race car are not even remotely close to the demands on a part for a street car, even one that is taken to track days and occasionally given a good beating. A $4k supercharger would probably not last through one race in this series, and if it did it would not make enough power to compete. These teams need one that will last through an entire season, although I wouldn't be surprised if they rebuild them after every few races just to be safe. Now, once you have this supercharger that you think is built up enough to survive in the harshest possible operating environment, you are not going to just set up an assembly line and build thousands of them without making sure all the bugs are worked out first. That means you build a few of them by hand, making it even more expensive. Race teams buy these hand built, expensive parts, in the hopes that they are reliable enough to win them some races. In return, they provide feedback about what can be improved, and once the manufacturer decides it is good enough to mass produce, they mass produce them and that's when they go on sale to consumers. That's how just about every car part worth buying has come into existence.
You could also ask why would a race team buy a Ford Racing Boss 302 for $130,000 when they could get a regular one for $50,000? The street car has brakes that only need to stop from 100+ once in a while, it has suspension that never needs to be tuned for specific tracks, it has a transmission that does not like to be jammed into gear over and over for hundreds of miles. By the time you put in the overengineered, low production volume parts you need to make your stock 302 into a spec race car, you'd have spent well over what Ford charges you to do all the work for you.