The Lotus –Price- Effect?

[jeff8875]

Originally Posted by SweetDaddyD

Why is everyone on the board jocking the turbo's so hard while complaining about the price, and totally ignoring everyones favorite low cost turbo alternative - NOS? Ohhhh, there is a big lore around Nitrous, it's gonna kill your motor, blah blah. Yeah, I've had friends blow their motors on squeeze (150 shot on a probe, and it held up through several full bottles!). And I've had em that have been juicing them (50, 75, and 100 shots) forever and they are still going.

It should be no problem to safely run a 75 shot squeeze on these motors, and there are plenty of progressive control options now to not have the harsh on/off that many of you may be accustomed to. The only issue that may come into play is if Lotus has significantly advanced the timing of the motors over Toyota's specs to get their extra couple ponies. Since the gain is not that radical, I wouldn't think that to be a major issue.

I have been wondering about NOS as well who is in the know?

[evomind]

if u want to keep the car a roadrace car, NOS usually isnt a good idea....if ur building a 1/4 mile car, NOS may be a great idea....

[Evl]

Can we please either call it N2O or nitrous? "NOS" is a brand name.

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by Forcedfed

As I said from the beginning, if you do not like our pricing buy someone elses turbo package. Our pricing is not for everyone and contrary to what some people think we are most definately not making a good margin on this product. We just love the car and it works as our halo project, not as our main source of income for our company. Otherwise our doors would be shut in a month if we had to rely on this one project sustaining our business.

For one I was surprised by the price, in a good way. People on this board really need to realze this isn't a volume car. My daily driver, the M3, which has about 4x the volume of the Elise is still more expensive to tweak. If you own a Lotus, Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, or Benz the fact that the parts for your car are more expensive than a Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or Honda is just part of the deal you make when you buy it. If you don't think those cars are worth the premium then don't buy one...

[Derek]

Originally Posted by evomind

first off brett, i would like to commend ur efforts on the fabrication of the turbo kit for the elise. even though u usually dont address my posts, thats ok....
i said from the beginning you and anyone else will charge whatever you think you can get. most of the rationale among tuners for high dollar cars, ferrari, bmw, lotus, etc, is that anyone who can afford the car can certainly afford 4k for an exhaust....no bull****, no excuse, THAT is the economy of scale were talking about here.
dont get me wrong, its a free enterprise, free market. and please, before i get people telling me how economics work, ill let u know im an accountant by trade. so i have pretty good concept of how things work here. whether its high volume, low volume, u and anybody else will charge whatever you think u can get for for any given product....whatever the market will bear is the simplest, purest way to put it. and right now u have earned the right of being the only game in town.

that said, i agree that items produced in mass quantities will be cheaper to produce per unit than low volume items....no kidding. i think we all understand that. that is where some people around here and i take a different turn. it seems that certain people around here think the 2zz engine is "different" or "special" because its in a lotus elise. many of those people have never had the experience of finding a tuner and going through the process of custom fitting parts to a car. someone around here it seems has given the impression that turbo'ing and tuning a 2zz has never been done before and everything has been done from scratch and any r&d that has been done is exclusive to the federal lotus elise and ONLY the federal elise. thats the impression i get. well, the 2zz is NOT low volume, and the elise is NOT the only car your hawking your product to.
also, the r&d u did and the labor for making a quality manifold is the same kind of work you have done for the EVO. manifolds are expensive, the better ones are hand made one at a time. i KNOW this. u fabricated parts, u molded parts, u measured, u tested, and on and on. i guess they sold 100k EVO's last year? no....its a pretty low volume car. but again, its not the only 2.0 dsm engine, and when the evo came out there were many tuners ready to go....i can count 10 good evo tuners off the top of my head. with many more evo tuners out there, i guess u probably will sell as many elise kits as u have evo kits...low volume vs. high volume here??
lets take another relatively low volume production car that i have first hand knowledge of....the mustang cobra.
how many '99 cobras did they make? 3200?? while the car was still under factory warranty u could get a complete supercharger kit from vortech for around 4k dollars. anyone who is familiar with these cars knows that kit WILL NOT fit a mustang gt, nor will it fit any other cobra EXCEPT a '99 mustang cobra..
am i to believe vortech didnt test the kit? that they did shoddy craftsmanship? and i think we'll agree fabricating a s/c kit is a little harder because u have to get ur pullies all lined up just so, etc..

what do the cars have in common???? well the EVO's generally use a garrets aftermarket stainless steel dual ballbearing turbo. in fact many cars use that aftermarket turbo. vortech uses the same supercharger in the cobra as they do for many other cars too. injectors, fuel pumps, etc are all stuff that is bought from performance shops. the difference is the piping, the intercooler size, the boost, and the tuning to some degree. the difference is mostly in piping and sizing.

some people are under the impression you have started from scratch with this turbo kit, and im just pointing out that making a turbo kit for the elise is not as "exclusive" as you lead people to believe. your using a garrets ss/dbb turbo right? the 2zz has been around. tuners know what works for it and what doesnt, generally speaking. what IS special is the fabricating u have done. and it looks good.

i dont have a problem with your price, thats not my point here. charge what u want, the market will tell you if its fair.
my problem is dont try to tell me how exclusive or special the 2zz engine is.
you know who david buschur is, brett? u know what he tells everyone?
"i dont tune cars, i tune engines..." our 2zz is the same 2zz in the toyota. get over it folks, its the truth.
you have been all over the celica boards with this kit....and then u come back here and tell us how low volume it is, and the 2zz is so exclusive...who ya crappin???....ALL these custom kits are low volume, gimme a break.....charge what ya want, thats up to u, but dont piss on me and tell me its rain.

I concur; this kit is over priced for what it is. The point about volume and the more you sell the cheaper you can sell it for works both ways. To demonstrate, how many here would buy this kit for $1 million? Not many huh? Now, how many would buy it for a penny? More takers on the penny price. I'm not suggesting you sell it for a penny, however the cheaper the price the more you will sell.

Eventually competition will force fed to sell at a more reasonable price or to cease production of this kit.

[etypeiii]

Remember the old adage - "sell at a loss and make it up in volume!"

I don't know what FF's development costs were. But to me, the counter arguments about how cheap the kit "should" be are not convincing at all. Cherry picking prices of parts that are cheaper isn't enough for me. Let's see the total package.

Actually, I think developing a supercharger, especially for a car with plenty of room under the hood, is much easier than a turbo kit. Far less plumbing. Less need for electronic controls (aka boost control.) Did Vortec know that the 99 Cobra would only be put out for 1 year? And even if the kit will only fit one year, how much re-engineering would it take to fit another year? I'd be fairly certain that if Vortec had known their R & D investment would only apply to 1 year of the Cobra, they would have never "ponied" up.

I'd be more convinced with this example if Vortec had tooled up for the 99 Cobra, say, last year. I guess if they put it out after they knew the car was a dead end, that would be a telling point in favor of the "lo-cost" position.

To compare apples to apples, let's find turbo kits, and people making them for small production volume cars.

As far as volume - there will probably, if Lotus is wildly successful, about 8-10,000 of the current Elises sold in the U.S over the current model's lifespan. I actually think this is really optimistic.

There will be at best 2200 of them sold this 1st year. How many of those people are going to buy a turbo kit, even at $4000? More, but enough?

The Evo world is way bigger. There have to be at least 20,000 or more of them sold in the U.S., and more every year. 6000 the 1st year alone. And I would submit the demographic of the purchasers of those cars shows they are more likely to mod them than Elise owners. Market penetration I would guess is significantly higher.

Finally, being a turbocharged car already, you have even an higher percentage of market penetration because people are more likely to upgrade their cars in stages rather than buying the whole shebang at once. This increases your potential sales market. Who's going to buy an bespoke Elise turbo exhaust manifold by itself?




DLY

[evomind]

just for reference sake, the 2001 cobra supercharger kit is also exclusive to 2001. of course the hardware is the same, but most of the brackets etc are different. fabrication issues....another low volume car...
also, 2003 was the first year the EVO was in the U.S. market.....i didnt think they sold 6k units the first year, but for the sake of argument lets say they did....thats still HARDLY high volume....and consider you had many more tuners fabricating for it that means less to go around. but again, the ENGINE was NOT new....
any quality turbo kit will require r&d, testing, fitting, fabrication, and tuning. the 2zz is not special in that regard, nor is it exclusive to the elise. all the turbo kits that are out there from reputable shops have roughly the same tasks faced to them...
thats all im saying, none of this is my "opinion," but facts as i have observed and experienced first hand.

[lbonham]

also for reference...

Cobra production
1999 -- 8095
2001 -- 7251
2003 - 13776

[evomind]

im not sure what the source of ur figures are, but i wont dispute that....it wont take away from my point at all.....1999 and 2001 cobras according to ur numbers, are still NOT high volume cars....

this is good.....enigma says...
>>>>If you own a Lotus, Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, or Benz the fact that the parts for your car are more expensive than a Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or Honda is just part of the deal you make when you buy it. If you don't think those cars are worth the premium then don't buy one...

have u looked in the engine compartment of the elise lately enigma?? last time i checked mine it was a TOYOTA!!!!

back to the cobras....im sure thats a lot less cobras produced ....wait..lets keep this real....a lot less ford 4.6 liter 32 valve head configuration than 2zz's produced to date....

fact, or my opinion?

heres my opinion....i dont really care what anyone charges for anything...just dont tell me how "special" or "exotic" the 2zz is just because u yank it out of the toyota matrix and stuff it in the trunk of a lotus...

toodles....

[Derek]

If Lotus makes their SC kit available for the Liz as a dealer installed option and the warranty stays intact then that will be the path I take. I think most here (not all) that are entertaining a FI upgrade would also prefer to get the official Lotus upgrade and keep their warranty. For a third party upgrade to be attractive to the average owner, it would have to come in at a very competitive (lower) price.

Clearly the Lotus product has been well engineered and while I'm sure the Forcedfed product is good, my money will go with the Lotus product if it gets here (Are you reading this Lotus?). I like the lower cam change-over, the power output seems more reasonable for this engine and the power delivery will better suit the car. Only time will tell if the Forcefed product is reliable, but given the track record of other high power products for this engine I have my doubts as to its potential longevity.