Costs to build 'a TVR'
Discussion
This is going to be a long post, so bear with it. But it does contain the necessary clues to answer:
1) How much might it cost to build a road legal Tuscan racer
2) Why isn’t there a Griff/Chimaera/S/whatever equivalent for the new millennium with say a yank V8, pitched at say £35K
3) Why didn’t TVR make money on the cars
4) Why have Marcos just gone t!ts-up
I went through some of my receipts with the Tuscan build and it made sobering reading. I had said before in previous posts that I never knew how TVR made any money on the cars priced the way they were, and this just confirmed it. I have also always been sceptical of anyone’s ability to commercially hand-build an ‘entry level’ V8 car in the sub £40K bracket with anywhere near quality components.
Based on my build therefore, I have come up with a set of costs that I think are indicative of building a V8-powered TVR-style car using quality components. Although I do have receipts for [most of] the major elements of spend on my car, this isn’t just a list of my costs. I’ve used my costs as a guide, but adjusted the costs to disregard items where I think I overspent unnecessarily, and I’ve added in costs for items I think I managed to get particularly goods deals on! Most importantly, I started with a Tuscan racer rolling chassis and body. But rather than base the costs on a second-hand ‘donor’, I’ve come up with prices that I think would be reasonable if the components were available new (and many of them are). In reality, once I’d come up with a ‘new-cost-equivalent’ for the components I started out with and retained, the costs were almost identical to the costs of a second hand Tuscan less engine, plus the materials and costs to ‘refurbish as new’.
It would be very easy to find ‘error’ in any one of my costs presented. Virtually every item could be acquired more cheaply, but equally, virtually every item could be 'upgraded' further with more money spent. Take ‘instruments’ for example, where I’ve budgeted £1000. Clearly you could put in a Smiths speedo, rev-counter, oil pressure and temperature gauges for under £300. Just over £600 would buy you a SPA tacho/speedo and digital gauges, while £995 buys you the cheapest Stack dash for road use. My car’s actually got a Pi System 2 data logger and a Spa brake bias gauge that would cost over £2300 new. So, that’s the spirit I’ve put the costs together on – decent kit, no corners cut, but by no means the most expensive....and in many cases the budgeted figures are way under what I actually paid for items.
Chassis
Lets start with the chassis. I know I started with a used chassis, but if you were building this from a kit of new parts, I think the figures below are reasonable. They certainly are in the bounds on similar tubular kit car chassis and parts.
Basic chassis £3000
Wishbones £650
Uprights £600
Balljoints £150
Rose joints £700
Hubs £500
Steering rack & column £700
Roll cage £400
That lot comes to £6700.
Body
Again I’ve worked on the basis of buying new mouldings, and taken costs from kit-car equivalents.
Major mouldings £5000
Hinges, locks. Clips, Dzus, door handles etc £600
Windscreen £220
Windscreen fitting £40
Mirrors £150
And this comes to £6010.
Suspension and Brakes
You could, of course, decimate my costs by budgeting on a set of Avos or similar on each corner. But actually, the budget shown wouldn’t quite stretch to the Penske units on my car...but nevertheless a good estimate for decent quality kit. Ditto brakes – you could save by sticking on Wilwoods or similar, but I’m working on mid-range AP Racing (or similar). And of course you could spend more with 6-pot callipers up front, carbon disks etc. But for a reasonable budget I’d say:
Shock aborbers/springs £3000
Brake lines £200
Brake calipers, disks & pads £2000
Handbrake lever, calipers, cables £200
So this comes to £5400.
Engine, ignition, fuelling, exhaust etc
Another area with a wide range of prices depending on what you want. My car has a new-build small block Chevrolet, stroked to 383cu.in. (so 6.3 litres), forged crank, decent rods, bumpy cam etc., and with quite a lot of labour on the heads. Based on an elderly iron block, it means there’s no complications (or costs) with emissions gear. Mine has been dyno’d not too far short of 500bhp, and makes 485ft/lb. You could pick up a crate motor for a few thousand pounds that might make 250Bhp, and you could undoubtedly spend £10K+ for monster horsepower. But on my middle-of-the-road figures, I’d budget:
New-build Small Block Chevy 373 @ 500BHP £6000
To complete - Carb, starter, alternator, distributor, air cleaner, plug leads, pulleys, belts etc £800
Mounts £60
Coolant hoses, pipes, hose clamps etc £350
Headers £600
Exhaust £400
Radiator £400
Header tank £150
Cooling fans £250
Fuel tank & pump £400
Oh, and that’s assuming poly mounts, silicone hoses, decent tubular headers, an alloy radiator etc. You could, of course, make a dent in these figures with rubber mounts, rubber hoses, stock headers, steel rad etc. But my total here is £9410.
Transmission
I went for a TKO600 gearbox, Mcleod multi-plate race clutch & hydraulic throw-out bearing etc. Nicely priced in the ‘States right now with the dollar rate, but once you add shipping, duty, VAT etc....
Gearbox, lever, mounts etc £1500
Clutch, hydraulic release, bellhousing £1300
Propshaft £150
Differential & Mounts £1200
Drive shafts £700
So a total of £4850.
Controls & Interior Fittings
I couldn’t believe the cost of a new Tilton pedal box...but there we are! Oh, and I’ve priced in a fire extinguisher too – a good idea after Plato’s recent experience.
Pedal box+master cyls £600
Steering wheel £135
Throttle pedal & cable £120
Seats plus mounts £500
Harnesses £225
Fire extinguisher £300
So a total of £1880.
Electrical
Instrument costs were discussed above. Yes, I did need twin race batteries to crank over the big motor – the same cost could have been spent on a larger single battery but 2 smaller ones are easier to package into the car. You could save with some lead acid ones...but... And, the wiring budget is the cables, connectors, fittings, relays etc;, it isn’t for a completed loom – that was a DIY job. And you could spend loads more if you went down the discharge headlamp route.
Instruments £1000
Wipers, motor & washers £200
Batteries £200
Wiring, switches, fuses, relays, kill switch, anderson jack £500
Lights & indicators £250
So, a figure of £2150 for the sparky stuff.
Paint and Trim
I used TVR Purple Pearl; there are obviously cheaper paints around! But then again, it was way under the price of a reflex colour. And it wasn’t just the chassis that got powder coated, but the wishbones and all of the other bits and pieces of bracketery. The interior trim was the costs to get the dash covered in alcontara, and get trim panels made up for the transmission tunnel and doors. There are also a couple of carpets in the footwells. The trimmer only made the [minimial] panels up to my patterns; I glued them in. So this is way under the amount of trim a ‘normal’ road car would need.
Powder coating £1000
Paint inc primer & lacquer etc £2000
Heat mat etc £500
Door seals, trim strips etc £100
Interior trim (minimal) £500
Roll bar padding £50
And that comes to £4150.
Wheels and Tyres
Nothing too fancy here, so:
Wheels, studs & nuts £1000
Tyres £800
And a total of £1800
Miscellaneous
This is an area with a huge difference to my build. I had to make significant parts of the body from scratch, plus do lots of modifications and so I ran up hundreds (if not four-figures-worth) of pounds on fibreglass mat, carbon mat, resin, filler etc. And I should have bought shares in Sikaflex. But, for this budget model this has been replaced with the idea that we’re budgeting in new body panels that will fit.
Fasteners £200
Filler, Glues, adhiesives etc £500
Consumables, oil, etc £100
OK? Still with me. Lets summarise all this as:
Chassis £6700
Body £6010
Suspension & Brakes £5400
Engine, ignition, fuelling, exhaust etc £9410
Transmission £4850
Controls & Interior Fittings £1880
Electical £2150
Paint & Trim £4150
Wheels & Tyres £1800
Miscellaneous £800
And...wait for it...that all comes to £43,150. Ex VAT.
So, if I was going to build another roadgoing Tuscan (or similar) with new decent spec parts I’d be budgeting £43K just for the parts alone. And as normal customer, I’d get hit with the VAT, so in reality that’s a £50,700 hole in my pocket. Sure, there isn’t really a single item that I could not have reduced the cost on, but by how much, and to what extent would it compromise the finished article? Compromise it with a 4 cylinder engine, smaller/cheaper body & chassis, Ford brakes & steering, use coloured gel-coat not paint etc and you’ve get it down to sub £20K probably. But you’ve also got a Westfield and not a TVR/Marcos. And, my costs don’t include the normal ‘road car’ sophistication of cancelling indicators, seats that slide, side windows that wind up and down, central locking, roof – folding or otherwise, heater, air conditioning etc etc.
So I can easily account for £50K’s worth of parts alone to arrive at a very basic road car – albeit a fairly rapid one! But in truth these are the figures (or close to it) I gather the lads building Ultimas and GD T70s end up with. Even as a kit car, the idea of a £35K Griff for the 21st century is a non-starter.
And then there’s labour. I really have no idea how many hours I took. Way to many for sure, but I didn’t count. But I’d estimate at least 2000 hours, but then I did spend months on the body work. But I also ended up paying £5K in labour to get the thing painted. But I see from some of the Ultima and Cobra sites, build times in the region of 400 hours are fairly common.
Lets go in to the 'virtual business' of building these things then. Here I’m into the zone of real speculation, but maybe we get the build time down to 250 hours and pay someone £20 per hour (ignoring erni etc), so there’s £5K. And lets reduce my paint costs to £2.5K.
Now, as a business we’re going to get the a raw materials at trade prices, and of course we’re going to get the VAT back. No idea of what margins might be had, but lets say we get 30% on my £43,150 materials costs, so my raw material costs are £30,205. Add in my [real finger-in-the-air] labour of £7.5K, plus another £1K for all the messing about with registration etc. In round figures we’re at £38.5K. But, we need a margin...not just for profit but for our heat, light & power, rent, insurances, admin staff, R&D, warranty etc etc. I’d be looking to be making at least 50%, so we’ve hit a retail of £57.75K. Oh, then there’s the dreaded VAT. £67,800 in total then; thank you.
So if my fag-packet-maths virtual car company has minimalist V8 road cars having to be pitched for the best part of £70K, how many are we going to sell? And if these cars (like TVRs and Marcoses) also have windows, full trim, air conditioning, central locking etc etc., how can we add in all that for £70K or less, and still turn a margin?
a) We cut the quality of the components
b) We work on tight margins
c) We cut everything that might eat into our margins, (so for TVR, perhaps customer service, marketing and paying suppliers?
d) And in truth, we just can’t do it....
I just end with my sad conclusion that if you want a moderately priced high performance car, it’ll have come off a production line – stamped out like bean cans along with countless other identical siblings. If you want hand-built and quality components, then it’s not, unfortunately, going to be anywhere near £50K, let alone £35K.
1) How much might it cost to build a road legal Tuscan racer
2) Why isn’t there a Griff/Chimaera/S/whatever equivalent for the new millennium with say a yank V8, pitched at say £35K
3) Why didn’t TVR make money on the cars
4) Why have Marcos just gone t!ts-up
I went through some of my receipts with the Tuscan build and it made sobering reading. I had said before in previous posts that I never knew how TVR made any money on the cars priced the way they were, and this just confirmed it. I have also always been sceptical of anyone’s ability to commercially hand-build an ‘entry level’ V8 car in the sub £40K bracket with anywhere near quality components.
Based on my build therefore, I have come up with a set of costs that I think are indicative of building a V8-powered TVR-style car using quality components. Although I do have receipts for [most of] the major elements of spend on my car, this isn’t just a list of my costs. I’ve used my costs as a guide, but adjusted the costs to disregard items where I think I overspent unnecessarily, and I’ve added in costs for items I think I managed to get particularly goods deals on! Most importantly, I started with a Tuscan racer rolling chassis and body. But rather than base the costs on a second-hand ‘donor’, I’ve come up with prices that I think would be reasonable if the components were available new (and many of them are). In reality, once I’d come up with a ‘new-cost-equivalent’ for the components I started out with and retained, the costs were almost identical to the costs of a second hand Tuscan less engine, plus the materials and costs to ‘refurbish as new’.
It would be very easy to find ‘error’ in any one of my costs presented. Virtually every item could be acquired more cheaply, but equally, virtually every item could be 'upgraded' further with more money spent. Take ‘instruments’ for example, where I’ve budgeted £1000. Clearly you could put in a Smiths speedo, rev-counter, oil pressure and temperature gauges for under £300. Just over £600 would buy you a SPA tacho/speedo and digital gauges, while £995 buys you the cheapest Stack dash for road use. My car’s actually got a Pi System 2 data logger and a Spa brake bias gauge that would cost over £2300 new. So, that’s the spirit I’ve put the costs together on – decent kit, no corners cut, but by no means the most expensive....and in many cases the budgeted figures are way under what I actually paid for items.
Chassis
Lets start with the chassis. I know I started with a used chassis, but if you were building this from a kit of new parts, I think the figures below are reasonable. They certainly are in the bounds on similar tubular kit car chassis and parts.
Basic chassis £3000
Wishbones £650
Uprights £600
Balljoints £150
Rose joints £700
Hubs £500
Steering rack & column £700
Roll cage £400
That lot comes to £6700.
Body
Again I’ve worked on the basis of buying new mouldings, and taken costs from kit-car equivalents.
Major mouldings £5000
Hinges, locks. Clips, Dzus, door handles etc £600
Windscreen £220
Windscreen fitting £40
Mirrors £150
And this comes to £6010.
Suspension and Brakes
You could, of course, decimate my costs by budgeting on a set of Avos or similar on each corner. But actually, the budget shown wouldn’t quite stretch to the Penske units on my car...but nevertheless a good estimate for decent quality kit. Ditto brakes – you could save by sticking on Wilwoods or similar, but I’m working on mid-range AP Racing (or similar). And of course you could spend more with 6-pot callipers up front, carbon disks etc. But for a reasonable budget I’d say:
Shock aborbers/springs £3000
Brake lines £200
Brake calipers, disks & pads £2000
Handbrake lever, calipers, cables £200
So this comes to £5400.
Engine, ignition, fuelling, exhaust etc
Another area with a wide range of prices depending on what you want. My car has a new-build small block Chevrolet, stroked to 383cu.in. (so 6.3 litres), forged crank, decent rods, bumpy cam etc., and with quite a lot of labour on the heads. Based on an elderly iron block, it means there’s no complications (or costs) with emissions gear. Mine has been dyno’d not too far short of 500bhp, and makes 485ft/lb. You could pick up a crate motor for a few thousand pounds that might make 250Bhp, and you could undoubtedly spend £10K+ for monster horsepower. But on my middle-of-the-road figures, I’d budget:
New-build Small Block Chevy 373 @ 500BHP £6000
To complete - Carb, starter, alternator, distributor, air cleaner, plug leads, pulleys, belts etc £800
Mounts £60
Coolant hoses, pipes, hose clamps etc £350
Headers £600
Exhaust £400
Radiator £400
Header tank £150
Cooling fans £250
Fuel tank & pump £400
Oh, and that’s assuming poly mounts, silicone hoses, decent tubular headers, an alloy radiator etc. You could, of course, make a dent in these figures with rubber mounts, rubber hoses, stock headers, steel rad etc. But my total here is £9410.
Transmission
I went for a TKO600 gearbox, Mcleod multi-plate race clutch & hydraulic throw-out bearing etc. Nicely priced in the ‘States right now with the dollar rate, but once you add shipping, duty, VAT etc....
Gearbox, lever, mounts etc £1500
Clutch, hydraulic release, bellhousing £1300
Propshaft £150
Differential & Mounts £1200
Drive shafts £700
So a total of £4850.
Controls & Interior Fittings
I couldn’t believe the cost of a new Tilton pedal box...but there we are! Oh, and I’ve priced in a fire extinguisher too – a good idea after Plato’s recent experience.
Pedal box+master cyls £600
Steering wheel £135
Throttle pedal & cable £120
Seats plus mounts £500
Harnesses £225
Fire extinguisher £300
So a total of £1880.
Electrical
Instrument costs were discussed above. Yes, I did need twin race batteries to crank over the big motor – the same cost could have been spent on a larger single battery but 2 smaller ones are easier to package into the car. You could save with some lead acid ones...but... And, the wiring budget is the cables, connectors, fittings, relays etc;, it isn’t for a completed loom – that was a DIY job. And you could spend loads more if you went down the discharge headlamp route.
Instruments £1000
Wipers, motor & washers £200
Batteries £200
Wiring, switches, fuses, relays, kill switch, anderson jack £500
Lights & indicators £250
So, a figure of £2150 for the sparky stuff.
Paint and Trim
I used TVR Purple Pearl; there are obviously cheaper paints around! But then again, it was way under the price of a reflex colour. And it wasn’t just the chassis that got powder coated, but the wishbones and all of the other bits and pieces of bracketery. The interior trim was the costs to get the dash covered in alcontara, and get trim panels made up for the transmission tunnel and doors. There are also a couple of carpets in the footwells. The trimmer only made the [minimial] panels up to my patterns; I glued them in. So this is way under the amount of trim a ‘normal’ road car would need.
Powder coating £1000
Paint inc primer & lacquer etc £2000
Heat mat etc £500
Door seals, trim strips etc £100
Interior trim (minimal) £500
Roll bar padding £50
And that comes to £4150.
Wheels and Tyres
Nothing too fancy here, so:
Wheels, studs & nuts £1000
Tyres £800
And a total of £1800
Miscellaneous
This is an area with a huge difference to my build. I had to make significant parts of the body from scratch, plus do lots of modifications and so I ran up hundreds (if not four-figures-worth) of pounds on fibreglass mat, carbon mat, resin, filler etc. And I should have bought shares in Sikaflex. But, for this budget model this has been replaced with the idea that we’re budgeting in new body panels that will fit.
Fasteners £200
Filler, Glues, adhiesives etc £500
Consumables, oil, etc £100
OK? Still with me. Lets summarise all this as:
Chassis £6700
Body £6010
Suspension & Brakes £5400
Engine, ignition, fuelling, exhaust etc £9410
Transmission £4850
Controls & Interior Fittings £1880
Electical £2150
Paint & Trim £4150
Wheels & Tyres £1800
Miscellaneous £800
And...wait for it...that all comes to £43,150. Ex VAT.
So, if I was going to build another roadgoing Tuscan (or similar) with new decent spec parts I’d be budgeting £43K just for the parts alone. And as normal customer, I’d get hit with the VAT, so in reality that’s a £50,700 hole in my pocket. Sure, there isn’t really a single item that I could not have reduced the cost on, but by how much, and to what extent would it compromise the finished article? Compromise it with a 4 cylinder engine, smaller/cheaper body & chassis, Ford brakes & steering, use coloured gel-coat not paint etc and you’ve get it down to sub £20K probably. But you’ve also got a Westfield and not a TVR/Marcos. And, my costs don’t include the normal ‘road car’ sophistication of cancelling indicators, seats that slide, side windows that wind up and down, central locking, roof – folding or otherwise, heater, air conditioning etc etc.
So I can easily account for £50K’s worth of parts alone to arrive at a very basic road car – albeit a fairly rapid one! But in truth these are the figures (or close to it) I gather the lads building Ultimas and GD T70s end up with. Even as a kit car, the idea of a £35K Griff for the 21st century is a non-starter.
And then there’s labour. I really have no idea how many hours I took. Way to many for sure, but I didn’t count. But I’d estimate at least 2000 hours, but then I did spend months on the body work. But I also ended up paying £5K in labour to get the thing painted. But I see from some of the Ultima and Cobra sites, build times in the region of 400 hours are fairly common.
Lets go in to the 'virtual business' of building these things then. Here I’m into the zone of real speculation, but maybe we get the build time down to 250 hours and pay someone £20 per hour (ignoring erni etc), so there’s £5K. And lets reduce my paint costs to £2.5K.
Now, as a business we’re going to get the a raw materials at trade prices, and of course we’re going to get the VAT back. No idea of what margins might be had, but lets say we get 30% on my £43,150 materials costs, so my raw material costs are £30,205. Add in my [real finger-in-the-air] labour of £7.5K, plus another £1K for all the messing about with registration etc. In round figures we’re at £38.5K. But, we need a margin...not just for profit but for our heat, light & power, rent, insurances, admin staff, R&D, warranty etc etc. I’d be looking to be making at least 50%, so we’ve hit a retail of £57.75K. Oh, then there’s the dreaded VAT. £67,800 in total then; thank you.
So if my fag-packet-maths virtual car company has minimalist V8 road cars having to be pitched for the best part of £70K, how many are we going to sell? And if these cars (like TVRs and Marcoses) also have windows, full trim, air conditioning, central locking etc etc., how can we add in all that for £70K or less, and still turn a margin?
a) We cut the quality of the components
b) We work on tight margins
c) We cut everything that might eat into our margins, (so for TVR, perhaps customer service, marketing and paying suppliers?
d) And in truth, we just can’t do it....
I just end with my sad conclusion that if you want a moderately priced high performance car, it’ll have come off a production line – stamped out like bean cans along with countless other identical siblings. If you want hand-built and quality components, then it’s not, unfortunately, going to be anywhere near £50K, let alone £35K.
Quinny said:
Very interesting.
Not sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
Like I said, everything I've quoted could be had cheaper, or more expensively.Not sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
But note that a bare Ultima chassis is £2929, and a GD T70 chassis is £2595. And the Tuscan chassis is 100% CDS tubing, while these others (and TVR road cars) use seamed tube I undestand....
Quinny said:
Very interesting.
Not sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
I think TVROLET's just about rightNot sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
When I had a new chassis fitted to mine,by the factory,in 2004 - they were charging £3000 for the chassis plus £4500 for 90hrs labour - just to give you an idea
mack
Interesting, going through a similar process myself at the moment.
Starting with a spare tuscan challenge chassis, by the time I've got a rolling chassis with wheels on it there'll be no change out of 8 grand, and thats just the parts cost plus using some existing and 2nd hand parts, and im pretty good at scrounging good prices on things..
Going through all my other calculations, and being donated a bodyshell that I'll need to modify to fit, just to build a race car not a road car I cant see how I can do it for less than 30k. Believe me thats cheap...
for example there are 22 rose joints in a tuscan and depending on quality they cost between 25 and 100 pounds each..
A quick break down on one complete corner of the rear suspension
Upright -250
bearing carrier - 40
Hub - 90
Bearing - 50
drive flange -100
drive shaft -225
wishbones -200
6* 1/2x1/2 rose joints -300 ( mid high is quality 50 each)
1* 1/5*5/8 rose Joint - 50
rose joint adjusters - 30
damper & spring -250 ( easy to spend over 1000 per corner on dampers though)
Caliper -300
disk and bell -200
wheel nuts and studs - 30
wheel -200
tyre -200
suspension bolts - 20
spacers - 50
misc bolts - 30
brake hoses - 30
brake pads - 50
grease - 5
That little lot comes to 2300 +vat using all new parts
so if you were a manufacturer I still think you'd be looking at at leas 1500+vat.
G
Starting with a spare tuscan challenge chassis, by the time I've got a rolling chassis with wheels on it there'll be no change out of 8 grand, and thats just the parts cost plus using some existing and 2nd hand parts, and im pretty good at scrounging good prices on things..
Going through all my other calculations, and being donated a bodyshell that I'll need to modify to fit, just to build a race car not a road car I cant see how I can do it for less than 30k. Believe me thats cheap...
for example there are 22 rose joints in a tuscan and depending on quality they cost between 25 and 100 pounds each..
A quick break down on one complete corner of the rear suspension
Upright -250
bearing carrier - 40
Hub - 90
Bearing - 50
drive flange -100
drive shaft -225
wishbones -200
6* 1/2x1/2 rose joints -300 ( mid high is quality 50 each)
1* 1/5*5/8 rose Joint - 50
rose joint adjusters - 30
damper & spring -250 ( easy to spend over 1000 per corner on dampers though)
Caliper -300
disk and bell -200
wheel nuts and studs - 30
wheel -200
tyre -200
suspension bolts - 20
spacers - 50
misc bolts - 30
brake hoses - 30
brake pads - 50
grease - 5
That little lot comes to 2300 +vat using all new parts
so if you were a manufacturer I still think you'd be looking at at leas 1500+vat.G
Quinny said:
Very interesting.
Not sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
then factor in the cost of the machinery, the building, heat, light, pension plans, admin staff, insurance, Development and design,NI payments etc etc and not forgetting a little profit looks mighty close to 3k....Not sure how you get to £3k for a basic chassis??
At the end of the day it's just steel tube welded together.
I would estimate cost of steel to be around £300 to £400
Then it needs to be cut to size with correct angles etc, 2 men 1 day Say £350
Then welded in a jig 2 men to days £700
Then Powder coated or painted etc. another £350
Connumables Gas , wire etc £50
That's less than £2k
Just sounds a bit more realistic to me than £3k thats all
Edited by Graham on Friday 12th October 15:17
tvrolet said:
But note that a bare Ultima chassis is £2929, and a GD T70 chassis is £2595. And the Tuscan chassis is 100% CDS tubing, while these others (and TVR road cars) use seamed tube I undestand....
Are the prices you've quoted for total cost to the customer for each part, as your comment above suggests ?. If so, then these will include a healthy mark-up and a manufacturer would expect to be able to buy in these components at trade prices.S5TVR said:
Are the prices you've quoted for total cost to the customer for each part, as your comment above suggests ?. If so, then these will include a healthy mark-up and a manufacturer would expect to be able to buy in these components at trade prices.
I know. My costings were first presented for a 'customer build', akin so someone building the car as as a kit car of components bought at retail prices, as these are the prices I paid in general. However, I later speculate what the markup in these prices might be to come back to the price a manufacturer might pay as a trade price, and it's this lower figure I've used to come up with a guess at how much a 'manufactured' car might cost.So not quiet sure how some of your sums add up..
Take the chassis for example ..
You say £3000 but if you bough one off the shelf then sure the cost is £3000 but if you were to manufacture it then the cost would probably be :
1 man week to build in on a Jig plus the cost of the raw materials plus the rental on the floor space.
I'd take a guess that is a lot less that £3000.
Take the chassis for example ..
You say £3000 but if you bough one off the shelf then sure the cost is £3000 but if you were to manufacture it then the cost would probably be :
1 man week to build in on a Jig plus the cost of the raw materials plus the rental on the floor space.
I'd take a guess that is a lot less that £3000.
tvrolet said:
This is going to be a long post, so bear with it. But it does contain the necessary clues to answer:
1) How much might it cost to build a road legal Tuscan racer
2) Why isn’t there a Griff/Chimaera/S/whatever equivalent for the new millennium with say a yank V8, pitched at say £35K
3) Why didn’t TVR make money on the cars
4) Why have Marcos just gone t!ts-up
Brilliant posting, and I agree with every word.1) How much might it cost to build a road legal Tuscan racer
2) Why isn’t there a Griff/Chimaera/S/whatever equivalent for the new millennium with say a yank V8, pitched at say £35K
3) Why didn’t TVR make money on the cars
4) Why have Marcos just gone t!ts-up
If anyone needs further proof, just look how much it costs to build an Ultima. If you had to add build costs (labour, factory, taxes, yada, yada, yada) and profit, they'd easily be £80-£100K depending on spec.
Good bit of work. I wish it could be made compulsory reading for the dipsticks on here who swear blind you could build and market some sort of 21st century Griff for £25k, using little more than a crated engine and presumably some sticky-back plastic (showing my age there)
If it were possible to build and sell a performance motor car for that sort of cash, pay everyone's wages and your bills, and still make a profit, then everyone would be doing it.
Shame more people don't live in the real world.
If it were possible to build and sell a performance motor car for that sort of cash, pay everyone's wages and your bills, and still make a profit, then everyone would be doing it.
Shame more people don't live in the real world.
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