RE: Ecoboost Formula Ford coming?

[DonkeyApple]

Boydie88 said:

More efficient tooling would be designed that would reduce the time to manufacture them.

But they will be outsourcing the production, so as soon as this site is over capacity then they have to invest in building more plant and hiring more people so the unit cost will suddenly massively increase.

Building more doesn't mean they can be built cheaper, there are 'waves' in production levels where costs increase and decrease.

[Boydie88]

kambites said:

Boydie88 said:

More efficient tooling would be designed that would reduce the time to manufacture them.

I don't think they'd ever reach the kind of volumes to ever make it worth significantly mechanising the build process, so I don't think it'd make all that much difference - it's certainly not going to reduce the cost of manufacture by 40%!

I'd think they could sell at least 500 worldwide if priced nicely enough.

Those sort of numbers would usually allow for mechanising some of the process.

However the chassis is made now, the prices will be heavily dictated by the starting price for the tooling. The more that are made, the less of the starting price needs to be recovered from each chassis.

[chuntington101]

DonkeyApple said:

Boydie88 said:

More efficient tooling would be designed that would reduce the time to manufacture them.

But they will be outsourcing the production, so as soon as this site is over capacity then they have to invest in building more plant and hiring more people so the unit cost will suddenly massively increase.

Building more doesn't mean they can be built cheaper, there are 'waves' in production levels where costs increase and decrease.

you guys are missing the point by a fooking mile here! the chassis shop is probably already VERY good at making race Chassis out of tubular steel and welding these bits together! Unless you plan on automating the weldind process using robots (hahahahahahaha on a chasis like this and for the volume) then what else are you going to do to make the production progess faster? Feed the welders speed in the morning? LOL

Its not a production car is a race car with lights!

Chris.

[k-ink]

I wonder how fast this would be with a Focus RS engine tuned to 400bhp?

[kambites]

Boydie88 said:

I'd think they could sell at least 500 worldwide if priced nicely enough.

I'm sure they could at 30k, but I just don't believe they could produce 500 of them for less than about 40k each. They might be able to produce 5000 of them for 30k each, but they'd never sell that many.

The only way I could see for them to make the rolling chassis significantly more efficiently would be to use robotic welders (not viable for 500 of them) or automate the carbon fibre production (which is bloody hard to do probably in any numbers).

[Boydie88]

kambites said:

Boydie88 said:

I'd think they could sell at least 500 worldwide if priced nicely enough.

I'm sure they could at 30k, but I just don't believe they could produce 500 of them for less than about 40k each. They might be able to produce 5000 of them for 30k each, but they'd never sell that many.

We'll see. I just hope at least 50 of them do end up on the road.

But if they are close to the Mono price, why would you buy one?

[kambites]

Boydie88 said:

But if they are close to the Mono price, why would you buy one?

I probably wouldn't, but 50k is nowhere near the price of the Mono. Looking at BAC's website, you wont get much change from twice that.

[Ahonen]

chuntington101 said:

you guys are missing the point by a fooking mile here! the chassis shop is probably already VERY good at making race Chassis out of tubular steel and welding these bits together! Unless you plan on automating the weldind process using robots (hahahahahahaha on a chasis like this and for the volume) then what else are you going to do to make the production progess faster? Feed the welders speed in the morning? LOL

Its not a production car is a race car with lights!

Chris.

Exactly.

It was built by Mygale, a company with many years experience of making racing cars. Yet despite various people mentioning this fact there are still those idiots who seem to think it was built by Ford.

[Mark Benson]

Ahonen said:

chuntington101 said:

you guys are missing the point by a fooking mile here! the chassis shop is probably already VERY good at making race Chassis out of tubular steel and welding these bits together! Unless you plan on automating the weldind process using robots (hahahahahahaha on a chasis like this and for the volume) then what else are you going to do to make the production progess faster? Feed the welders speed in the morning? LOL

Its not a production car is a race car with lights!

Chris.

Exactly.

It was built by Mygale, a company with many years experience of making racing cars. Yet despite various people mentioning this fact there are still those idiots who seem to think it was built by Ford.

As above, economies of scale don't apply here, they're made by Mygale, by hand and the only Ford component in the race car is the engine.

http://www.mygale.fr/en/?page=products&id=8

[chevronb37]

kambites said:

chevronb37 said:

Am I right in thinking Mygale are currently the only manufacturer producing an Ecoboost FFord chassis? Slightly odd front suspension arrangement.

Is it odd? Looks like a standard push-rod double wishbone setup to me; except that the steering arm appears to be going to the top of the upright rather than the bottom, I suppose.

My apologies, it's just the dominant team - Jamun - who have employed a mono-shock arrangement for the Ecoboost car, must as they did for the old Duratec chassis.

To be honest, I'm not really sold on the whole race car for the road thing. My Exige is about as mental as I could be bothered with, but there's no denying it'd be fairly dramatic.

[kambites]

The one in the picture might be mono-shock I suppose, we can't actually see the damper/spring unit(s) in those pictures.

[DonkeyApple]

chuntington101 said:

you guys are missing the point by a fooking mile here! the chassis shop is probably already VERY good at making race Chassis out of tubular steel and welding these bits together! Unless you plan on automating the weldind process using robots (hahahahahahaha on a chasis like this and for the volume) then what else are you going to do to make the production progess faster? Feed the welders speed in the morning? LOL

Its not a production car is a race car with lights!

Chris.

I'm not sure I've missed anything.

Unless the current producer has spare capacity then it will cost the investment in set up to build more. That cost will be amortised against units.

A very labour intensive product will struggle to reach the volume point at which profit margins increase.

However, I think this is all moot as I believe this to be a PR stunt with no intent to build. If they were to build it would be because they have big capacity due to low sales of race cars, hence a very, very low prod number mooted.

[LeoZwalf]

Unfortunately I do not find myself in the market for a brand new car but if I was, I'd be very strongly considering a 1.0 Ecoboost equipped Ford. It really seems like a cracking engine.

However, the author of this story may well wish to remember Betteridge's Law when writing his headlines. Applying that law, the answer to the question in his headline is... "No."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of...

[nightSpirit]

I'd buy one...although as many have said it won't cheap, cars we actually want never are

[phast]

i'd buy one

[Red snapper]

After a wet trackday monday 8th october at Brandshatch,I watched one of the little beauties being ushered into a pitlane garage where it was being noise tested,sounded very sweet and civilised for such a potent little car.It was accompanied by some burly mustangs with FMC prefixs on the plates.

[Gary C]

Very small personal transport is the future. Want one now !

[chuntington101]

DonkeyApple said:

I'm not sure I've missed anything.

Unless the current producer has spare capacity then it will cost the investment in set up to build more. That cost will be amortised against units.

A very labour intensive product will struggle to reach the volume point at which profit margins increase.

However, I think this is all moot as I believe this to be a PR stunt with no intent to build. If they were to build it would be because they have big capacity due to low sales of race cars, hence a very, very low prod number mooted.

Totally agree on it being a marketing thing. Ford have been VERY clever about this engine. Not sure of that many sub 150bhp engines that would get this much press or converage on PH! clearly Ford are trying to push all the right buttons with this one.

Chris.

[zebedee]

Red snapper said:

After a wet trackday monday 8th october at Brandshatch,I watched one of the little beauties being ushered into a pitlane garage where it was being noise tested,sounded very sweet and civilised for such a potent little car.It was accompanied by some burly mustangs with FMC prefixs on the plates.

Was it this car, with this engine though, or a Formula Ford car, with a different engine?

[Gary C]

chuntington101 said:

DonkeyApple said:

I'm not sure I've missed anything.

Unless the current producer has spare capacity then it will cost the investment in set up to build more. That cost will be amortised against units.

A very labour intensive product will struggle to reach the volume point at which profit margins increase.

However, I think this is all moot as I believe this to be a PR stunt with no intent to build. If they were to build it would be because they have big capacity due to low sales of race cars, hence a very, very low prod number mooted.

Totally agree on it being a marketing thing. Ford have been VERY clever about this engine. Not sure of that many sub 150bhp engines that would get this much press or converage on PH! clearly Ford are trying to push all the right buttons with this one.

Chris.

Very true. Trying to make a small 3 cylinder sound sexy must be an uphill struggle in some markets and this will surely help a lot.