370Z on Concave from 360 Forged

DannyGT

rawr

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Performance GTM Stage 1 SC, GTM Res.Test Pipes, Invidia Gemini Exhaust, GTM HD Oil Cooler
Wheels & Suspension AME Tracer TM02's 19x9.5F 19x10.5R w/ 265x35F & 305x30R, Hotchkis Sways, BC (BR) Racing Coilovers (Car Sold)

FuszNissan

Danny...I think you scared him off

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Mods: Too Many to list!
LouFuszNissan
ZDAYZ 2012

Zerafian

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.

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TRD0524

I would spend my money elsewhere.

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

Togo

armensti

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.

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?



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.

OMGWTFBBQ

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..

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armensti

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.

dyezak

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.

shabarivas

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

dyezak

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).

tstrick9

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

OMGWTFBBQ

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?

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nogoodname

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

dyezak

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: