We all like to follow your example RCZ =)

How about some fly wheels for a non-baller?
:<
</3

360 Forged is pretty popular down here (South Florida) I was wondering why they stopped posting on FSS though.

The cars that they build their wheels for are WELL out of the 370Z's price range.

I'm talking Lambo's, 911's, Z06's, GTR's, M3's, M5's, and the like. A lot of high end cars where that price would be reasonable. They really shouldn't make any wheel lines specifically for the 370Z imo. Most people that own this car won't drop 9 Grand on wheels and tires.

A wheel is a wheel... just because you have a GTR /z06 / lambo - you should not HAVE to spend that kinda money... its just insane. I agree that most ppl who have those cars COULD afford the wheels but thats different...

I don't necessarily agree with the concept of paying more for your parts because the car they go on is more but thats life....

rawr

Danny...I think you scared him off

Multi and mesh are ridiculous...I love them..sadly 1 rim cost as much as my volks and tires almost LOL...I Suppose If I had a 370 and some money I would save for those in 20" as my first mod.

I would spend my money elsewhere.

When was the last time you saw a set of these wheels on a racecar?

:werd:

what are you guys talking about? 8 gz for rims is not that expensive. i mean the rims are build for a 29k car but it doesnt mean that we shouldnt pay 30% of the cars price to get a nice set of rims. lmaooooooooooo is this guy serious????? 2k per rirm? and i bet you guys anything that the rims are going to weight more then a pair of volks or even the stock sp rims we got.:roflpuke2:

if your going to charge 8k for rims here is a small list of things that they should come with

3lb a piece so thats 12 all together
the rim must be dirt proof
scratch proof
it must have a anti curb technology inside it
anti theft
must come with a 24/7/365 security guard with a gun license
and last but not least it has to have a pssy magnet that guarantees at least 5 chicks a day

if it has all the things stated above i would be more then happy to write you a check for 8k

BUT if it doesnt have any of the things posted above then would anyone and i mean anyone plz tell me why their worth 8k? :gtfo2:



do this companies think at all? honestly wtf is going on here? this is not a FERRARI. just cuz its the most bang for the buck doesnt mean that we should get screwed by the mods that go on the car. i mean cmon are you serious? charging 30% of the cars price just for rims? who does thinking for your company? do you guys just put numbers on pieces of paper and toss it in a hat and what ever comes out you go with that? are you guys in bankruptcy and trying to find ways to make quick money?

Ill give you a little hint charging 8k for rims on a 29k car is not the right way. :rolleyes:

What I don't get is why wheels for Ferraris and exotic cars cost so much more than wheels for say, a 370z, or even a Honda Civic.

Is there THAT much more R&D that goes into making a wheel for a $200k car compared to a $20k car? Or are companies just out there to make a quick buck by targeting a more elite niche? Maybe I'm missing something here..

ur not missing anything its just a get rich quick skim which does not work. there is nothing extra that goes on expensive rims. just the material sometimes but its still over priced.

Well, fitments for exotics are unique. You aren't going to get a set of wheels that fits a Lambo or Ferrari with a common bolt hole diameter, hub diameter, and offset. Take the Ferrari Enzo, it uses spindle mount wheels...only F1 and LeMans cars use those in any apreciable quantity. Porsche wheels however are a little more common, I believe they share bolt hole and hub diameter sizes with Audi and VW.

So if you are designing wheels for a Ferrari or a Lambo then you know right off the bat that your market is a very very small place. We will use Ferrari by itself to keep things simple, and compare it to the Honda Civic:

In 2008 only 6500 Ferrari's (ALL ferrari's, of which there are multiple different wheel fitments) were sold to the general public.

In 2008 roughly 400,000 Civic's were sold.

I found a statistic (true or not, but seems fair) that only 6% of the population modify their cars. So if we use a blanket 10% in our calculations we should be safe.

That gives us (the hypotheical wheel manufacturer) a possible 650 Ferrari's that would buy custom wheels, and 40,000 Civic's that will buy custom wheels. All the Civic's have the same fitting requirements (they all have the same bolt hole diameters, hub diameters and offset requirements). The 650 Ferrari's are split among 2 different fitments. So if we choose one car that takes us down to 375 cars.

Now we have to think, how much of the market can we capture. We know that not every single Ferrari owner is going to buy *our* wheels, we have competitors and some of the Ferrari owners are going to go with them. Let's say we are the best...so we get 50% of the market. That means we could capture 20,000 Civic's or 188 Ferrari's.

Now, do the different wheels actually cost more to develop? Nope. Same designers working for us putting in roughly the same ammount of time. But we get to spread the cost of re-couping that investment among 20,000 people for our new Civic wheel, and we have to re-coup that same investment from only 188 people who drive the Ferrari.

Now that they are developed they have to be made. If we are talking cast or forged we have to make molds. Again, that mold cost can be re-couped among 20,000 Civic owners but only 188 Ferrari owners. If you want to talk CNC then the CNC machine cost would be substituted for the mold cost.

Material cost will be the same.

So lets say we spent $250,000 in labor (engineer's aren't cheap) developing our new high tech wheel. And another $100,000 in manufacturering setup (molds or CNC machine). We have to re-coup $350,000.

But wait, the Civic uses 4 of the same wheels in most cases, where the Ferrari is going to need different front and rear wheels. So double the Ferrari development and manufacturering costs to $700,000.

Assuming it actually costs us $200/rim in materials (we are using some really high end stuff here right?), that's our base cost.

So, Civic = $350,000/20,000 = $17.5 per purchaser needs to be re-couped
That means we will need to re-coup $4.38 of our development cost per wheel. That means our civic wheel will cost $204.38 to produce.

So Ferrari = 350,000*2/188 = $3723.40 per purchaser that needs to be recouped or $930.85 per wheel. That puts our Ferrari wheels at $1130.85 right off the bat to produce.

Now go add in distribution, shipping, advertisement, warantee buffer, that have to be added up and distributed in the same mannor. You can see that even if we spend $500,000 for these services, the Civic's cost will only go up by about $6.25 where the Ferrari will go up $644.89.

Bam, we have a $1800 Ferrari wheel and a $210 Civic wheel. Now we are a business so we need profit to keep moving forward. So factor in 25% profit and that takes us up to $2250 for the Ferrari and $262 for the Civic.

This is assuming that we are the best wheel company that has ever walked the face of the earth and we are able to capture 50% of the market, if you adjust these figures to a more resonable market capture rate (12%) then the numbers fall in line.

Rims will cost a lot... weds dry carbon wheels are about 14k for a set - but they also weigh in at 6lbs per wheel

I just wanted to add that my post (even though it's crazy long) was very elementary and only an approximation. And it didn't account for amoritization of costs for the Civic wheel among other cars that have the same fitment thereby lowering the cost of the wheel even more. It didn't account for actual production costs (hey, even Chineese sweat shops pay their workers).

If you want you can run the same numbers for a 350z/370z as there are about 35,000 Z's sold on average each year since 2004 (2003 only had like 9,000 because it was the first year run).

If they sell some rims maybe that guy could take some english lessons.

Whoops. I picked a bad car to compare a Civic to. I meant something like, why are Z wheels so much more expensive than Civic wheels? What was going through my head was the idea that wheel manufacturers, say, think that a Civic owner would spend $2000 on a set of Volks for their $20k Civic. That is approximately 10% of their vehicle cost. Therefore, I assume the wheel manufacturers would guesstimate that they should price their 370z wheels for $3000 (10% of a Z's cost). Is there a legitimate reason for this price difference other than markup? I mean, everyone can clearly see there is a price difference. Where does this come from?

limited production, they are not a full blown mass production company.

Exactly, we aren't talking about Rays here. Volk has the entire Rays manufacturing facilities to help amoritize their costs. They do more than wheels (a lot more) and have the ability to spread the cost around a lot more. HRE, CCW, Fiske, etc, don't have that type of infrastructure to lean on. $2000 a wheel isn't bad when you start talking low volume true custom wheels. Call Fiske and ask them for the price of a set of their wheels for a 370z...I'll guess it'll be about $3500/wheel.

It's economy of scale and amoritization of costs across a larger customer base that allows Rays to sell Volks at such a low price.

All this is pretty basic and the specifics are lost to me because my last micro economics class in college was over 10y ago... But unlike armensti said in his last post in this thread, this is NOT a get quick rich plan:

Yes, it was an extreme compairison :owned:. However if you take Ferrari and throw them out the window (wait tell me which window so I can go get one for free :p) and use the 370z/350z as a compairison you can quickly get to the same conclusion:

350z/370z production is at 35,000/y for the past 5 years. Which means we have about 175,000 Z's on the road in our pool. At our 10% number of potential people who will modify their cars we are talking 17,000 Z's that will potentially purchase a set of wheels. Of those how many are going to purchase high end wheels and how many are going to go with mass produced Enki's or Konig's? I'd say about 25%, so we turn our focus to roughly 4,000 Z's. Out of those how many are looking for "Bling Bling $$" wheels opposed to "Race Oriented" wheels? I'd say half. Now we are looking at 2,000 Z's to sell our wheels to.

Now is where we think, "Hmm, how much of that market share can I get with my wheel?". Truely about 12-16% if you have a really top notch design. Let it be personal preference, intended use, brand loyalty, etc, there are a lot of reason's people may or may not go with your wheel.

BUT, one of the Z's saving graces is that it uses a fairly common bolt pattern and hub size, so you can add more potential customers into your pool, but it won't seep over that much (does the Supra share wheel fitments with the Z?).

Really it's just economy of scale and the fact that the Z really is a small section of a small market compaired to the Civic which is a very large section of a small market (400,000 Civic's produced a year is a lot). Think about it this way. Last figure I heard for the aftermarket car accessory market put this market section at a $1-1.5bil/y business. And that's not just wheels, that includes everything manufacturered for a car by a company that wasn't providing that part as a direct OEM replacement (fuzzy dice fall into this same market as $4,000/ea Fiske wheels).

Compaire that to Cigarettes, or Healthcare, or Housing Development (construction). Hell, I know people in the construction business that would laugh at the type of money that is to be made in the automotive aftermarket... Their companies make more in a month than entire companies like Stillen make in a year.

Unobtanium.

^^ lol!!

No, its actually a perfect blend of 60% adamantium (think wolverine) and 40% rapemium.

I haven't seen a rim that would make me want to mount on my "FUTURE" Z till right now.
6g's left to save b4 I have enough to pay in full. I. Might have to put 20k down n get these?

it would be a custom rim if i drew the rim on a piece of paper and they build it for me from scratch. their not doing anything special, a custom rim is a rim that is build specifacly for one person and its not mass produced. if i knew that no one else would have the same rim as me i would pay 2k a piece but this company is going to sell those rims to more then one person so to me its still a regular rim and the quality is not going to be any better then a volk rim, it might actually be less.



i dont know if its just me but for someone that has only 16 post your very interested in this thread. im guessing you work for the same company so what your really are doing is just trying to back him up or trying to make it look like it. i dont know why but im getting that feeling. no one with 16 post would spend their time writing an essay on why we should pay 2k per rim.

I wouldn't expect you would understand. Just like you not only didn't understand basic economics, and you didn't even try to think about it and put any effort into understanding it; you just started talking nonsense.

1. No, I don't work for this company
2. No, I don't have anything to gain by him selling a set of wheels
3. No, I'm not trying to convince you why you should pay 2k per rim

What I am trying to do Junior is eductate you, to help you understand. So why do I have only 16 posts....because I have a job where I travel for a living and work on average 16hr's a day. So why did I take the time out to post an essay about economics for a random web board? Because if you watch the news at all; this area of our lives is very important right now.

Too many people don't understand economics, and why a company charges $2,000 for a wheel, or $3 for a gallon of gasoline. Since this board is full of enthusiasts I figured I could use this question of "Why does a wheel cost so much for a Ferrari" and you would soak up the information like a sponge...and being smart people apply that to other parts of the world economy so you could also understand why even though Exxon is charging you $4/gal of gasoline and it used to be $1/gal just 6y ago, they aren't really raping you...they are just trying to survive.

The stance that companies rape their customers, and that people want something for nothing; food stamps, welfare, medicaid, WIC, medicare, etc etc... That's why the Country is going to crap right now...and THAT is why I am interested in this thread. Cause if you boil it down to it's essence, the vast majority of American's are ignorant like you and just don't know.

P.S. - If you are offended by being called ignorant then I rest my case cause the public education system didn't explain to you what it really means good enough.

Did anyone actually PM them for a price quote???

P.S.- you may want to spell educate correctly

^^ :bowrofl: :bowrofl:

dyezak - while your principles of econ can be called accurate, they, in no way apply to this thread or these wheels. When HRE, which are considered the tops in this somewhat 'custom wheel' arena are charging ~1400-1650 for P90s in similar sizes don't tell me these guys have produced something better. Also, UNLESS it was pure custom, which they aren't even close, theb I can see a price that high. They are approaching the price range for mag wheels which is just stupid considering they can't compare.

Oh and the 'make a living' comment for the oil companies....they were BREAKING records and chargibg us record high prices...sorry I will not sympathize with those companies. Propaganda!

tite rims. not so tite price. over 7k for a set of rims, on a car that on average costs about 35k? so i'm putting ~20% of the cars worth into wheels? hmmmm....

first of all you drive a crossfire and that tells a lot about you. second of all why are you still defending them? and third of all go join a crossfire forum and try to convince them to pay 2k per rim.

what your talking about has nothing to do with this thread so stop wasting time. no one in their right mind is going to spend that much money on rims. the companies are trying to survive so their charging 2k per wheel?

if a company is trying to survive they should make better quality products then their competitors for much less...NOT the other way around. that to me sounds like a get rich skim.

your calling me ignorant? well if someone thinks 2k per rim is to much and thats why his ignorant then YOU got a lot to learn junior.

maybe you should do some homework and compare their rims with their competitors and see if their actually worth 2k a piece

I know the wheel game VERY well, and no the insides of it too. BELIEVE ME guys, these wheels are not worth anything more then MAYBE 800 a wheel. I would say their is better for 800 out there. THey are no good, and they just look good.

it also depends on the weight of the rims. if they weight more then the stock sp wheels then their still not worth it

The weight is just as heavy as a stock wheel, or more depending on size. Its hard to judge as most sizes are always going to be different, but their materials arent any better then volk, jline, or dpe. SORRY

a lot of after market rims are actually heavier then our stock rims because our stock rims are so good that its hard to compete with them.

so i guess the realization of 8k for wheels (30% of what the car is worth) scared of TS?

lol i am waiting for him to post his response.

99% of work / volk / etc will be lighter than stock if you retain stock size... any time you get an aftermarket cast wheel it will be heavier...

That works if you're talking about 95% of OEM wheels, but it's a different story for the 370z sport wheels. The sport wheels are made by the same company that makes Volk Racing wheels (Rays Engineering). They're also forged aluminum, which cannot be said for a LOT of OEM wheels. In fact, if you look at most of the other OEM wheels (for a Japanese brand car at least), the wheels are cast aluminum made by Enkei.

It'll be hard trying to find an aftermarket wheel that weighs less than the sport package wheels. But then again, the weight difference should be negligible since the wheel width, contact patch, and tire width are going to be increased, or else, why bother with new wheels right?