Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/07/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I was chief engineer at Lola from 1997 to 2002. I can ASSURE you that the manufacturing cost of a Champ car is about $400,000, less if there is a formula change and twice as many cars need building. The big costs US motor racing are the salaries and the owner's jet, not the cars (a top team would run 7 cars by the way plus spares). The demise of CART had to do with politics not costs. IRL is politically successful even though the cars, due to the tech rules, are awful, and more expensive by the time all the necessary "kits" are added to the base car. It is very sad CART was a great series of racing but the political power lay elsewhere and at least 2 very powerful people moved to squash it. cheers Frank On 13 Jul, 2004, at 22:08, David Mason wrote: > On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:44:24 +0100, Frank Dernie > <frank.dernie@btinternet.com> wrote: > >> To put this in perspective a good quality road car production cost is >> about $4000, a Champ car (Indy car) about $400,000 and a Formula 1 >> (World Championship) car about $25,000,000. There is a considerable >> technological difference but the main reasons for these vast >> difference >> in costs are the quantity of units over which engineering and tooling >> costs are amortised. > > > $400,000 for a champ car!?! No freakin' way!! If that were the case > there'd be a lot more owners and they never would have dumped all > manufacturers to use only two. Being an engineer (and I am one too) in > NO WAY gives you a sense of how much something costs. If you were a > price-point marketing professional maybe... engineers never know this > is why they are usually in the "early adopters" group of purchasers. > > > Dave > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >