10 questions on Kit-Cars...
Discussion
1. roughly how many kit car companies are there in britain?
2. how big is the export demand for british kitcars?
3. what british kit-car makers produce the most cars or kits per year?
4. does britain compare favorably with making kitcars, as to other countries efforts, re volume, demand, quality etc?
5. are their kitcar makers in britain that produce cars in a production-line manner, as in maybe a little similar to volume makers?
6. if a reputable kitcar maker was given a ford focus to convert into a new-looking car - would the body frame limit them so much, that they'd be little difference between their effort an the original cars overall shape, or could they adapt the frame enough so that a new car profle could be achieved?
7. re- 2 legal querys, if a kitcar maker made a kitcar based on a bmw-3-series base, could bmw legally restrict or prosecute that maker for using their product as their car base, [as in to build anothers new bodyshell on top off, an then sell on for their profit as if they made 'all' of it]?
8. if a kitcar maker named a new car of theres as the 'Mondeo' - could ford prosecute them for using a current car model name of theirs?
9. if a kitcar company was assembling a car model for sales at say 100 a yr, but wanted to upgradge their assembly process to build 1000 a yr, how much would an investment cost them to scale-up to that level, in estimation?
10. how long would it take for a fully-finished car to be completed from a donated car platform, 'on average'?
+
bonus query - a friend has a garage doing panel work repairs etc, an asked me how much would it 'roughly' cost to build a setup to construct 100 cars p.a from donated platforms, re all costs included, so he knows whats involved beforehand?
- thanx :)
1 Lots
2 Not very
3 Caterham & Westfield
4 Yes
5 No
6 Yes (1st part of question) and no (second part of question).
7 No
8 Yes
9 Lots and lots. 100 cars a year is a small workshop unit and some sub-contracting. 1000 cars a year is comparable to TVR and would put you top of the league as a kit car manufacturer. 500 cars a year would be a very successful kit car company...someone like Westfield. Visit their factory (a large industrial unit at Kingswinford in the West Midlands), if you want to see how the market leader does it - they give a tour to prospective customers when you visit to test drive a car.
10 How long is a piece of string, on average? But donated car platforms are not usual. See question 6. 'Single donor' vehicles tend to be at the bottom end of the market and do not perform as well as kits which select the most appropriate components from a variety of sources. The only manufacturer I can think of which uses a complete 'platform' (ie. floorpan and running gear) is Banham....in which case very long bargepole required.
Bonus query: How long is that piece of string, again? If he needs to ask, then tell him to forget it; he's on to a loser.
>> Edited by Mutant Rat on Thursday 14th July 22:22
2 Not very
3 Caterham & Westfield
4 Yes
5 No
6 Yes (1st part of question) and no (second part of question).
7 No
8 Yes
9 Lots and lots. 100 cars a year is a small workshop unit and some sub-contracting. 1000 cars a year is comparable to TVR and would put you top of the league as a kit car manufacturer. 500 cars a year would be a very successful kit car company...someone like Westfield. Visit their factory (a large industrial unit at Kingswinford in the West Midlands), if you want to see how the market leader does it - they give a tour to prospective customers when you visit to test drive a car.
10 How long is a piece of string, on average? But donated car platforms are not usual. See question 6. 'Single donor' vehicles tend to be at the bottom end of the market and do not perform as well as kits which select the most appropriate components from a variety of sources. The only manufacturer I can think of which uses a complete 'platform' (ie. floorpan and running gear) is Banham....in which case very long bargepole required.
Bonus query: How long is that piece of string, again? If he needs to ask, then tell him to forget it; he's on to a loser.
>> Edited by Mutant Rat on Thursday 14th July 22:22
Accurate figures are notoriously difficult to get hold of, but rumour has it that Robin Hood's production has dropped off a bit.
Their own website says:
'During 1996 and 1997 sales of Robin Hoods peaked at over 500 kits per year...With the much publicised introduction of the Single Vehicle Approval test the public were not so keen to embark on a build, preferring to wait and see what was going to happen. Implementation dates were put off several times by the Government and the whole of the kit car industry suffered.'
I also think, partly thanks to the internet and forums like this one, that kit-car buyers are rather better informed these days.
Their own website says:
'During 1996 and 1997 sales of Robin Hoods peaked at over 500 kits per year...With the much publicised introduction of the Single Vehicle Approval test the public were not so keen to embark on a build, preferring to wait and see what was going to happen. Implementation dates were put off several times by the Government and the whole of the kit car industry suffered.'
I also think, partly thanks to the internet and forums like this one, that kit-car buyers are rather better informed these days.
vlc said:
6. if a reputable kitcar maker was given a ford focus to convert into a new-looking car - would the body frame limit them so much, that they'd be little difference between their effort an the original cars overall shape, or could they adapt the frame enough so that a new car profle could be achieved?
The above answer is only partly true. You are very restricted but big changes can still be made. Just think of the Golf platform. It's used under the Beetle, the Audi TT and the Golf itself. They look very different.
The real problem to the kit-car-company-as-coachbuilder is the shear excellence of modern cars. A special car that wobbled a bit and leeked a lot was OK when mass market cars weren't much better but today the slightest glich is a massive no-no. I realy doubt that any kit car maker could hope to make a realistic mass market offering.
On the other hand using more of a donor car and less of a kit is very much what Quantum and Banham have been doing. The original quantum used the complete suspension and drive train together with a lot of other bits from an Escort. Basically they provide a replacement fibreglass monocoque for the Escort. Banham kept even more. Their approach was to chop off the outer panels and graft on their own panels to turn, for example, Skoda Estelles into Porsche 550 replicas!
There is a great deal of scope to this approach if done properly but for some reason it doesn't seem to have caught on.
What have you got in mind?
cymtriks said:I'd have thought you, of all people Cymtriks, would see that you're very limited in what you can take from a donor vehicle - as soon as you start chopping a monocoque you're going to lose all the rigidity and strenght.
There is a great deal of scope to this approach if done properly but for some reason it doesn't seem to have caught on.
When people say that the TT uses the Golf platform, I'm pretty certain, although willing to be corrected, that this means drive train, suspension, wiring, brakes, etc. etc. The actuall monocoque itself will be completely unique.
Adapting that to the kit car industry, you're just looking at a single donor kit - all the running gear bolted to a new chassis and body.
cymtriks said:
6. if a reputable kitcar maker was given a ford focus to convert into a new-looking car - would the body frame limit them so much, that they'd be little difference between their effort an the original cars overall shape, or could they adapt the frame enough so that a new car profle could be achieved?
The above answer is only partly true. You are very restricted but big changes can still be made. Just think of the Golf platform. It's used under the Beetle, the Audi TT and the Golf itself. They look very different.
But your answer, in turn, is only partly true, Cymtrix.
VAG are masters of platform sharing and, as you say, the Golf is used as the basis for several cars...
Golf
Beetle
Seat Leon
Skoda Octavia (I think...)
Audi A3
Audi TT
...probably others I've forgotten.
BUT...what they are sharing is a floorpan and mechanicals. The upper part of the 'unibody' structure (eg. scuttle, door pillars, roof, etc,) vary. These parts of the structure still represent very major tooling costs that would be way beyond the reach of a kit-car production run of a few hundred units per year. You couldn't make a Golf look as different as, say, the Beetle or the TT without spending many millions on tooling up a production line for very sophisticated pressing and welding of the upper structure.
...unless you go down the Banham route...angle-grind off everything above floorpan level and break out the scaffolding tube and the MIG welder!
Lotus has done a lot of work (and holds patents) on a concept they call Versatile Vehicle Architecture (VVA), which takes platform-sharing to the next level, but it still won't be flexible/cheap enough for the sort of very limited/kit car production rates VLC is talking about.
Have a look here, if you are interested.
vlc said:
8. if a kitcar maker named a new car of theres as the 'Mondeo' - could ford prosecute them for using a current car model name of theirs?
I'm sure Ford would as they lost a court battle in the past over a name.
The Dutton Sierra had been in production for a couple of years when Ford told them to stop using the name Sierra as it was going to be on their Cortina replacement. Much publicity for Dutton ensued as Ford lost!
I ment either a mass produced floor pan / chassis with suitable reinforcing or a direct replacement, possibly a fiberglass monocoque, as underneath the original Quantum.
The loss in structural strength will always be apparent when you chop the roof off a tin top but with appropriate reinforcing you could restore the stiffness to an acceptable value. As I've pointed out in the past it isn't hard to improve on the majority of kit car chassis so a decent attempt at reinforcing a cut down Focus or whatever would probably be perfectly acceptable to the kit car market.
The biggest problem is styling the new body around a high front mounted engine though the Hyundai, Fiat and Toyota Celica coupes manage it.
There are other ways to use the vast resources of mass production as per the folowing idea:
Take the previous shape Celica. Add 4 inches infront of the A pillars to lengthen the bonet. Remove the "squared off" edges to the wheel arches to permit bigger wheel/tyre combinations. Change the rear lights for round ones as on Ferraris. Change the fronts to DB7 style rounds. Take off moulds. You now have a coupe body that takes standard window glass and has an engine bay that will fit a rwd layout. The lamp treatment and bonnet lengthening gets you around the copyright issues.
The loss in structural strength will always be apparent when you chop the roof off a tin top but with appropriate reinforcing you could restore the stiffness to an acceptable value. As I've pointed out in the past it isn't hard to improve on the majority of kit car chassis so a decent attempt at reinforcing a cut down Focus or whatever would probably be perfectly acceptable to the kit car market.
The biggest problem is styling the new body around a high front mounted engine though the Hyundai, Fiat and Toyota Celica coupes manage it.
There are other ways to use the vast resources of mass production as per the folowing idea:
Take the previous shape Celica. Add 4 inches infront of the A pillars to lengthen the bonet. Remove the "squared off" edges to the wheel arches to permit bigger wheel/tyre combinations. Change the rear lights for round ones as on Ferraris. Change the fronts to DB7 style rounds. Take off moulds. You now have a coupe body that takes standard window glass and has an engine bay that will fit a rwd layout. The lamp treatment and bonnet lengthening gets you around the copyright issues.
cymtriks said:
There are other ways to use the vast resources of mass production as per the folowing idea:
Take the previous shape Celica. Add 4 inches infront of the A pillars to lengthen the bonet. Remove the "squared off" edges to the wheel arches to permit bigger wheel/tyre combinations. Change the rear lights for round ones as on Ferraris. Change the fronts to DB7 style rounds. Take off moulds. You now have a coupe body that takes standard window glass and has an engine bay that will fit a rwd layout. The lamp treatment and bonnet lengthening gets you around the copyright issues.
That's still a Celica though isn't it, not a kit car. What you've just described is almost what he Chav boys are doing now with wide arches, spoilers and light clusters.
busa_rush said:
There are other ways to use the vast resources of mass production as per the folowing idea:
Take the previous shape Celica. Add 4 inches infront of the A pillars to lengthen the bonet. Remove the "squared off" edges to the wheel arches to permit bigger wheel/tyre combinations. Change the rear lights for round ones as on Ferraris. Change the fronts to DB7 style rounds. Take off moulds. You now have a coupe body that takes standard window glass and has an engine bay that will fit a rwd layout. The lamp treatment and bonnet lengthening gets you around the copyright issues.
That's still a Celica though isn't it, not a kit car. What you've just described is almost what he Chav boys are doing now with wide arches, spoilers and light clusters.
Do you deliberately misunderstand my posts?
With a longer bonnet, different front and rear lights, lowered and a small change to the wheel arches it would look different enough, just, to stand on it's own. This is a cheap way to get molds, not tart up a car. Put the resulting bodyshell on backbone style chassis and add a rwd drivetrain. You have a kit car answer to a 2+2 coupe.
If I suggested taking molds off a Cobra to get to bodyshell stage quickly would you still say it was just a chav kit?
Is Gordon Murray a chav for copying the body style of the fiat 500 on his Barchetta kit car?
Another idea is to take an MG-A bodyshell, recess the rear lights, make the front lights look a bit like the Cobra Daytona Coupe, remove the grill and change the bonnet to a long opening that extends from the front air vent to the windscreen so that the only shut lines are on the sides. Take off molds, bung on a chassis and add a Hemi.
Or is that chav too?
Would Sir like some blue neons and a bass speaker with his wide arches ? 
Bonus querry answer-
If you want to set up to produce 100+ cars on a donated platform then consider that a quality kit will cost tens of thousands per panel, at least according to some costs that have been bandied around on this forum in the past on this subject. It's not the cost of materials, that's trivial, it's the hundreds of hours of fine sanding and endless last modifications to get the right look. Remember your friend isn't doing this for the love of it in his garage as a hobby, he's taking time out of his business to do this so the time is an issue.
I heard figures of 250k to get the GTM Libra to market and another kit car maker spent 350k on a LMP type car. The awfull McLaren F1 replica that was posted on this site a while back alegedly cost over 100k and it wasn't finished. These projects obviously counted the time to make the bodyshell.
If you make your own car as a hobby then you're not counting your time and the whole thing becomes more affordable as long as you have a garage big enough to cope with making molds. Try looking at the Meerkat or LaBala car projects. Both of these were long term hobby projects.
I suppose the obvious thing to do is to do your prototype as a hobby, thus not counting the time, and then bringing that to market. Your prototype would need to be up to market standard though and all the jig and molds would need to be ready otherwise the time issue creeps in again.
If you want to set up to produce 100+ cars on a donated platform then consider that a quality kit will cost tens of thousands per panel, at least according to some costs that have been bandied around on this forum in the past on this subject. It's not the cost of materials, that's trivial, it's the hundreds of hours of fine sanding and endless last modifications to get the right look. Remember your friend isn't doing this for the love of it in his garage as a hobby, he's taking time out of his business to do this so the time is an issue.
I heard figures of 250k to get the GTM Libra to market and another kit car maker spent 350k on a LMP type car. The awfull McLaren F1 replica that was posted on this site a while back alegedly cost over 100k and it wasn't finished. These projects obviously counted the time to make the bodyshell.
If you make your own car as a hobby then you're not counting your time and the whole thing becomes more affordable as long as you have a garage big enough to cope with making molds. Try looking at the Meerkat or LaBala car projects. Both of these were long term hobby projects.
I suppose the obvious thing to do is to do your prototype as a hobby, thus not counting the time, and then bringing that to market. Your prototype would need to be up to market standard though and all the jig and molds would need to be ready otherwise the time issue creeps in again.
Personally I think Cymtrics idea is an interesting one.
Starting with an existing vehicle shell takes a lot of the pain out of the body moulds, you know the windows will fit to start with.
There is probably some middle ground here where you build around things like the roofline. I'd personally love to build something original, but the concept of spending a couple of years working on the plug is uninteresting to me.
Does anyone know what it costs to have a plug CNC'd? I know that's what the guy at DPCars did amd I'm wondering just how much that cost.
Starting with an existing vehicle shell takes a lot of the pain out of the body moulds, you know the windows will fit to start with.
There is probably some middle ground here where you build around things like the roofline. I'd personally love to build something original, but the concept of spending a couple of years working on the plug is uninteresting to me.
Does anyone know what it costs to have a plug CNC'd? I know that's what the guy at DPCars did amd I'm wondering just how much that cost.
You got it-
The whole idea is to get to the finished buck stage quickly but with many expensive bits such as window glass as standard mass production. Also large areas of bodywork are only slightly modified or untouched thus vastly reducing the buck making process.
The Beauford looks nothing like a mini but uses the bodyshell from the A pillar/windscreen backwards. I once pointed out to some onlookers at a show that this car was based on a mini and got a series of totally blank looks and head shaking from other visitors.
With an oval, DB7 style, frontlight treatment, a longer bonnet, a revised round lamp rear panel and the lips of the wheel arches changed the Celica idea would look different. The 2+2 coupe is one area that the kit car market has failed to make many inroads into. There are more customers who need four seats than just two so why not?
The MG-A idea, with Cobra daytona / Maserati coupe front light style, recessed round rear lights and the bonnet opening extended to be a full length opening from the front air intake lip to the windscreen would make a car a bit like a Cobra but with a Griffith front end. Put it on a backbone chassis and bung in a Hemi.
The whole idea is to get to the finished buck stage quickly but with many expensive bits such as window glass as standard mass production. Also large areas of bodywork are only slightly modified or untouched thus vastly reducing the buck making process.
The Beauford looks nothing like a mini but uses the bodyshell from the A pillar/windscreen backwards. I once pointed out to some onlookers at a show that this car was based on a mini and got a series of totally blank looks and head shaking from other visitors.
With an oval, DB7 style, frontlight treatment, a longer bonnet, a revised round lamp rear panel and the lips of the wheel arches changed the Celica idea would look different. The 2+2 coupe is one area that the kit car market has failed to make many inroads into. There are more customers who need four seats than just two so why not?
The MG-A idea, with Cobra daytona / Maserati coupe front light style, recessed round rear lights and the bonnet opening extended to be a full length opening from the front air intake lip to the windscreen would make a car a bit like a Cobra but with a Griffith front end. Put it on a backbone chassis and bung in a Hemi.
. if a kitcar maker named a new car of theres as the 'Mondeo' - could ford prosecute them for using a current car model name of theirs?
Ask Dutton (are they still around) what happened when Ford decided to spend billions on Advertising their new car, with a new name - Sierra. Dutton already were using the name. There was some out of court settlement.
Ask Dutton (are they still around) what happened when Ford decided to spend billions on Advertising their new car, with a new name - Sierra. Dutton already were using the name. There was some out of court settlement.
LexSport said:with regard to above, i learnt last year that was true, an should really be called the drivetrain.
There is a great deal of scope to this approach if done properly but for some reason it doesn't seem to have caught on.
When people say that the TT uses the Golf platform, I'm pretty certain, although willing to be corrected, that this means drive train, suspension, wiring, brakes, etc. etc. The actuall monocoque itself will be completely unique.
in which case, i found that Dana corp [of usa] makes a reliable 'rolling chassis' - an so wonder why uk kitcar makers dont import it to build on, for then they need not compromise on ridigty an profile etc - a good idea guys?
>> Edited by vlc on Tuesday 17th January 21:57
jacko lah said:
. if a kitcar maker named a new car of theres as the 'Mondeo' - could ford prosecute them for using a current car model name of theirs?
Ask Dutton (are they still around) what happened when Ford decided to spend billions on Advertising their new car, with a new name - Sierra. Dutton already were using the name. There was some out of court settlement.
It doesn't work quite the same way in both directions...
If Ford wants to use a name already adopted by a kit car manufacturer, they make them an offer they can't refuse - to Ford, it represents 0.00001% of their marketing budget; to the kit car manufacturer it is equivalent to their projected profit for the next ten years.
If a kit car manufacturer tries to use a name already registered by Ford, Ford sues them out of existence, then sues them for the cost of the legal action.
Obviously Banham are now out of the equasion and I believe Rallysport Replicas who bought the Banham stable have also gone the same way.
Still you could always buy one of these:
Uses the brilliant MX5 and is a direct replacement for the unbolted body only, leaving 95% of the original monocoque unmolested.
Doesnt need any chassis stiffening and not a scaffold pole in sight!
Sorry about the shameless plug but Im just about the only body only replacement company doing anything remotely retro if you discount the Porche Speedsters.
>> Edited by KITFREAK on Sunday 15th January 01:33
Still you could always buy one of these:
Uses the brilliant MX5 and is a direct replacement for the unbolted body only, leaving 95% of the original monocoque unmolested.
Doesnt need any chassis stiffening and not a scaffold pole in sight!
Sorry about the shameless plug but Im just about the only body only replacement company doing anything remotely retro if you discount the Porche Speedsters.
>> Edited by KITFREAK on Sunday 15th January 01:33
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