Manufacturer Stingieness
Discussion
I think we have got a bit spec obsessed, some stuff is useful, some nice to have and some largely useless.
If you think stuff is bad now, go and buy a Ford in the seventies, check out the Popular and Popular Plus trim levels, even when you went through L and GL to Ghia, by and large it still had very little in the way of gadgets.
Was kind of stuff like A Clock, a Rev Counter ! slightly posher steel wheels, tined glass, chrome bits, vinyl roof, cloth instead of vinyl, LW/MW Radio, possibly a tape deck if you were lucky.
Nowadays, even a base Fiesta comes with aircon, electric windows, heated screen, DAB Radio, CD and Cruise Control.
Sometimes with spec its not about what we need, sometimes its having the posher model that others dont have I think. The Germans have nailed that with BMW for example calling stuff "Business" or "Professional" and subtle changes like the shape of the screen that make it easy to tell if you went for the higher option. Then you see people tying themselves in knots trying to get one in the right colour/age/mileage with all the options.
Heated seats, thats the one I always like to have though.
If you think stuff is bad now, go and buy a Ford in the seventies, check out the Popular and Popular Plus trim levels, even when you went through L and GL to Ghia, by and large it still had very little in the way of gadgets.
Was kind of stuff like A Clock, a Rev Counter ! slightly posher steel wheels, tined glass, chrome bits, vinyl roof, cloth instead of vinyl, LW/MW Radio, possibly a tape deck if you were lucky.
Nowadays, even a base Fiesta comes with aircon, electric windows, heated screen, DAB Radio, CD and Cruise Control.
Sometimes with spec its not about what we need, sometimes its having the posher model that others dont have I think. The Germans have nailed that with BMW for example calling stuff "Business" or "Professional" and subtle changes like the shape of the screen that make it easy to tell if you went for the higher option. Then you see people tying themselves in knots trying to get one in the right colour/age/mileage with all the options.
Heated seats, thats the one I always like to have though.
I purchased a new mini cooper S in 2004.
Didn't go mad with options - as others have said, the chilli pack was a must-have as it had all of the basic options one would expect in a car.
We went for full leather and a cd changer to supplement the tape-deck!
I think a base Cooper S was 14k and somehow with basic options it made its way to about 20k. I'm not sure I've ever spent another 42% of the base price of a car on options since.
Didn't go mad with options - as others have said, the chilli pack was a must-have as it had all of the basic options one would expect in a car.
We went for full leather and a cd changer to supplement the tape-deck!
I think a base Cooper S was 14k and somehow with basic options it made its way to about 20k. I'm not sure I've ever spent another 42% of the base price of a car on options since.
Cyder said:
The spinner of plates said:
CheesecakeRunner said:
Would like to remind everyone saying “it’s just software” that software is really expensive, complex and difficult to create and maintain. It doesn’t just appear from magic pixies in your car. It’s perfectly justifiable to charge for it, as it often costs more to create than the hardware it runs on or controls.
Agreed. If they don’t charge customers money for the benefits, they can’t pay the people who do the developKent, testing etc. It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
While the software *is* expensive to write that is both spread over the the entire range *and* over the lifespan of the cars production. Not to mention when you're talking about software enabled features that software is there regardless of if you've paid for the feature or not. So it still needs to be written and tested regardless of if you have the feature or not.
When you can buy an entire head unit with a touchscreen display from Sony which will do Car Play/Android Auto for less than the cost of enabling Car play/Android Auto as a software feature, yes that "feature" is overpriced.
Edited by Fastdruid on Tuesday 23 November 10:49
Dog Star said:
Masiv said:
Volvo XC40 Inscription Pro - Top of the range, but they wanted extra to have Android Carplay and adaptive cruise control.
It has normal cruise control though. F#ckin unbelievable.
Mercedes. It has normal cruise control though. F#ckin unbelievable.
My old (68 plate) E class had CarPlay. But it wasn’t enabled. But Merc wanted £355 or so to enable it. On a £50k car. Absolute disgrace.
Similarly adaptive cruise - the car come with cruise, it has the auto braking, auto parking cameras, warns you if you’re too close to the car in front. So all the adaptive stuff is in place.
Fastdruid said:
Cyder said:
The spinner of plates said:
CheesecakeRunner said:
Would like to remind everyone saying “it’s just software” that software is really expensive, complex and difficult to create and maintain. It doesn’t just appear from magic pixies in your car. It’s perfectly justifiable to charge for it, as it often costs more to create than the hardware it runs on or controls.
Agreed. If they don’t charge customers money for the benefits, they can’t pay the people who do the developKent, testing etc. It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
While the software *is* expensive to write that is both spread over the the entire range *and* over the lifespan of the cars production. Not to mention when you're talking about software enabled features that software is there regardless of if you've paid for the feature or not. So it still needs to be written and tested regardless of if you have the feature or not.
When you can buy an entire head unit with a touchscreen display from Sony which will do Car Play/Android Auto for less than the cost of enabling Car play/Android Auto as a software feature, yes that "feature" is overpriced.
Edited by Fastdruid on Tuesday 23 November 10:49
I've been in many discussions over the years to determine if we should add a feature as an option or not and it's not always as obvious as you may think.
If you are leasing it is much better to go a model up than to specify optional extras. Invariably the extras are amortised over the length of the lease whilst the higher spec model will retain some added value in the residual.
I bought one of the BMW Olympic models secondhand, it had been loaded with £10k of extras!
I bought one of the BMW Olympic models secondhand, it had been loaded with £10k of extras!
Van's are built to be cheaply repaired and maintained when doing 50k a year, so halogen lights are pretty standard.
Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
Cyder said:
All while the punter wants to pay £99 deposit and £99/month for 3 years PCP.
It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
Educate us. On average, how much does a manufacturer make in percentage terms when it sells a car to a dealer? It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
Gross profit appears to be around 15-20%, from what I can find on the internet.
https://lga-consultants.com/seven-global-car-maker...
J4CKO said:
I think we have got a bit spec obsessed, some stuff is useful, some nice to have and some largely useless.
If you think stuff is bad now, go and buy a Ford in the seventies, check out the Popular and Popular Plus trim levels, even when you went through L and GL to Ghia, by and large it still had very little in the way of gadgets.
Was kind of stuff like A Clock, a Rev Counter ! slightly posher steel wheels, tined glass, chrome bits, vinyl roof, cloth instead of vinyl, LW/MW Radio, possibly a tape deck if you were lucky.
Nowadays, even a base Fiesta comes with aircon, electric windows, heated screen, DAB Radio, CD and Cruise Control.
Sometimes with spec its not about what we need, sometimes its having the posher model that others dont have I think. The Germans have nailed that with BMW for example calling stuff "Business" or "Professional" and subtle changes like the shape of the screen that make it easy to tell if you went for the higher option. Then you see people tying themselves in knots trying to get one in the right colour/age/mileage with all the options.
Heated seats, thats the one I always like to have though.
Heated seats is the one thing I miss actually. My 130LE has an odd spec; I got electric seats and nav but no hearing function or cruise control (the latter was a cheap and easy retrofit though).If you think stuff is bad now, go and buy a Ford in the seventies, check out the Popular and Popular Plus trim levels, even when you went through L and GL to Ghia, by and large it still had very little in the way of gadgets.
Was kind of stuff like A Clock, a Rev Counter ! slightly posher steel wheels, tined glass, chrome bits, vinyl roof, cloth instead of vinyl, LW/MW Radio, possibly a tape deck if you were lucky.
Nowadays, even a base Fiesta comes with aircon, electric windows, heated screen, DAB Radio, CD and Cruise Control.
Sometimes with spec its not about what we need, sometimes its having the posher model that others dont have I think. The Germans have nailed that with BMW for example calling stuff "Business" or "Professional" and subtle changes like the shape of the screen that make it easy to tell if you went for the higher option. Then you see people tying themselves in knots trying to get one in the right colour/age/mileage with all the options.
Heated seats, thats the one I always like to have though.
Court_S said:
Heated seats is the one thing I miss actually. My 130LE has an odd spec; I got electric seats and nav but no hearing function or cruise control (the latter was a cheap and easy retrofit though).
The one that annoyed me was the Mazda 6 MPS we used to have, it was only ever one "spec" but in other countries it got heated seats while in the UK we got no heated seats and a sunroof instead. Used the sunroof about 3 times ever while would have used the heated seats pretty much daily!Decky_Q said:
Van's are built to be cheaply repaired and maintained when doing 50k a year, so halogen lights are pretty standard.
Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
The headlights on a van I can understand, the vast majority wouldn't really want to spec them to the point where it'd probably be pretty marginal in the cost/ benefit of even developing a xenon/ LED option.Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
Crunching a zenon/ LED unit whenever something got dinged in a yard would bump up repair costs by a hefty sum.
Decky_Q said:
Van's are built to be cheaply repaired and maintained when doing 50k a year, so halogen lights are pretty standard.
Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
That's a cracker, never knew that! Unbelievable.Real stinginess I found was with Alfa Romeo. The brera had a glass roof option, but it was cheaper to manufacture all the shells with a glass roof. If you didn't choose the glass option they covered it up with a full headling. Also cruise control was wired in and programmed to all versions but the lever to operate it was not fitted unless you paid for that option. So some owners cut roof linings and bought the buttons themselves.
Stanley knife, job jobbed?
I was really surprised at my Range Rover Sport and its complete lack of anything in standard trim. Mine was HSE Dynamic spec, one down from the highest 'Autobiography'. It didn't even come with metallic paint as standard, let alone basic cameras and parking aids that we've all become used to. It was doubly annoying as I leased it, so you effectively pay every penny of the cost of the options you put on it over the 2 or 3 years of the lease.
I've recently specc'd up a Macan GTS as a replacement and pretty much everything is an extra, even on this top of the range model. The options I wanted came to well over £10k, a bit annoying on an already expensive car.
My other half's Qashqai even came with 360 cameras as standard!
I've recently specc'd up a Macan GTS as a replacement and pretty much everything is an extra, even on this top of the range model. The options I wanted came to well over £10k, a bit annoying on an already expensive car.
My other half's Qashqai even came with 360 cameras as standard!
V8 Bob said:
If you are leasing it is much better to go a model up than to specify optional extras. Invariably the extras are amortised over the length of the lease whilst the higher spec model will retain some added value in the residual.
Yep. In my case, I actually ended up with a different vehicle, albeit with the same underpinnings. I originally wanted a Golf GTi Clubsport.....but once I had added the few options I wanted (basic winter pack & reverse cam), the monthly was £150 MORE than Cupra Formentor I actually ended up with....which also has electric leather seats, DCC, 19"s and a spare wheel all as standard....oh and an extra few ponies plus 4WD! spreadsheet monkey said:
Cyder said:
All while the punter wants to pay £99 deposit and £99/month for 3 years PCP.
It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
Educate us. On average, how much does a manufacturer make in percentage terms when it sells a car to a dealer? It's clear from threads like this that an awful lot of people seem to think OEM's have monstrous profit margins and should just dish features out for free.
Gross profit appears to be around 15-20%, from what I can find on the internet.
https://lga-consultants.com/seven-global-car-maker...
That only includes the cost of building the vehicle - it doesn't include the fixed operating costs, or the R&D costs, or any business taxes.
If you look at Ford making on average under £3k per car gross (and they make less than £1k per car in Europe whilst trying to recover, what, £1k per car development costs?), you can see why they might want to charge money for extras - it's the difference between breaking even and making a loss.
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