hooleyboy

I have a stock Cobra H/E and its in my garage for a reason.. The AMG one is better.

The prices on aftermarket parts have come down for sure. partly because Members like Myself, Jake (loungn14) are now sponsors and want to offer good stuff at a fair price. I cant speak for Eurocharged. But I would assume both Eurocharged and MBH/Dyno-comp both have to pay an hourly wage to our fabricators and welding/fab skills is not the most common thing to come by.

A set of headers that have been jigged up take about 8 hours to make. Then the cost or Stainless is about $65 and up for just one Ubend or good 304SS. and you need alot of them. Then If you have to have the flanges cut. You have tooling cost + material. I cant recall what the total cost is for a set of headers in material alone but we (MBH/DC) have well over $1000 in them just in metal alone.

Now I could send my set of headers over seas and have them duped for much much less, but then I got to order like 200 of them. Plus the Stainless in China is not nearly as good as in the US.

The production numbers for a C32 in 2004 was like 214 units. You might sell 4-10 sets of headers to for this model year. If I recall the C55 has under 2000 units ever made. How many sets of headers do you thing you are going to sell to C55 owners if under 2000 cars are made?

So now if I went over seas to have my C55 headers made and I had to buy 200 units.. do you think I could sell all of them even if they are offered at $900. There is no way. I might move 10-20 sets at best. Now I got a huge stock pile of headers I cant move no matter how low the price goes. Even If they are sold at a loss I couldn't move 200 sets of C55 headers.

IMO from what I see the gouging is almost worked itself out of the MB community. Even Renntech's CF airbox cost a but load to make. They have full time engineers on staff, working rapid prototyping machines in house. There Rapid prototyping machine cost in the ball park of 30K. Then they got to pay their engineer to design it. Then there is the cost of good carbon fiber thats stuff not cheap.

I personally would rather have something available than nothing at all.

On another note: Did you know it costs about $50 an hour to operate an AWD Dyno. Then people wonder why a hour dyno time is like $100.

CynCarvin32

Well said. People try to do the cheap tuning options for MB's and many dont last more than a few months. Once you factor in your overhead and apply that to a fairly small volume you quickly see pretty high unit costs.

Its simple day 2 econ 101 class here. Economies of Scale.

These people are not out getting rich sitting in the Virgin Islands sipping drinks with little umbrellas. It's a hard job with a pretty small profit margin. Most do it out of a passion and love not for over a lust for cash and profit.

bobgodd

All this chatter and only one vendor has stepped up to answer... And he only went into the business because he was tired of being gouged.

Nice.

FraKctured

Read "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.

That is all.

220S

Although that's not at all what he said.

He was pointing out the high costs of doing business (materials, labor) and the ECONOMIES OF SCALE..... which is what everybody is pretty much saying. How many times does it have to be repeated(?)

Full Throttle

What an interesting point.

Here is another example You can buy a whole 996T 660whp turbo system installed for $12,000 or a hand full or a hand full of basic bolt on parts for a E55-CLS55 from Renntech or evosport
http://www.boostlogic.com/index.php?...tid=1:features

I absolutely love our cars. Of all the performance cars i have owned from Supras to CTS-V's from Cobras to EVO's i love my CLS55 the absolute most. I feel it does what it does with more elegance and grace than anything i have ever owned. However regardless of the reasoning, I will not pay these outragous prices for many times low qualty low grade performance parts. I guess i will keep my baby stock and pick up another Supra or a 996T and mod that

madgoat

There is a happy medium I believe. I think we are getting there slowly. I am seeing more people that have or had high hp 03-04 Cobras on here. I know I still go to the same shops I used to and they are very interested on getting into the the MB market due to the mods being similar. Pulley, Exchanger, Headers, Tune. I know my headers for my GTO/Cobra were about $1400.

c32AMG-DTM

And Kleemann's M113 304SS midlength headers are $1,495... so there you go; not everything is "MB-taxed" to death.

BTW - not being argumentative, but the shops being "very interested" into getting into the MB tuning scene... that may taper off once they crunch the numbers. As mentioned by Jake, Mike, 220S, et. al. it really is pretty simple economics. One other aspect that can't be stressed enough is the relatively high cost to enter the market; barriers to entry exist for this niche market that simply don't (or are much lower) for the domestic and japanese tuning markets. The advent of e-commerce has opened that up a bit... shops like Code 3 Performance and LET/Eurocharged likely wouldn't exist (or on a much smaller, regional scale) in the pre-internet era. E-commerce and the internet now allows those firms to setup shop virtually overnight, and sell to every corner of the globe... giving them more of a fighting chance to make it in the biz vs. the established players like Renntech, Kleemann, Carlsson, Brabus, et. al. Which should increase competition, bring new innovative products to market, and drive down (to some degree) pricing. At least, that's the theory...

Full Throttle

A GTO/Cobra long tube header and y-pipe/x-pipe system is around $1400. The Kleeman short unequal length header alone is $1495. A comparable header to the kleeman header for a non MB V8 us under $400. I agree with you Carlsson stuff is awesome if all products had the Carlsson craftsmanship i would have zero problem paying the pricing we are seeing in this community. Our parts are not even on par with domestic offerings that cost a fraction of what we are paying. For me it just does not make sense to mod this car art this time. I will be just as satisfied blowing your doors off in a Supra, Cobra or 996T as i would in my CLS. So i will keep my baby stock and grab another Supra Cobra or 996T to play with. I just love this car to much to put the crappy parts im seeing in this community on it.

CWW

WTF man????

I just noticed your updated siggy. Holy $h!t!!!! Are you starting a goddamned dealership? You're gonna have to build your own parking garage at ur house...

CWW

Hey everybody, I just got a sneak peek of Vic's new garage...

Nait Sirhc

Lotta ******* hatchbacks, yuck!

c32AMG-DTM

Respectfully disagree - Kleemann's headers aren't a shorty design, they're a midlength header that deletes the primary cats and include SS downpipes with the SS headers. You're saying you can find comparable V8 midlength headers and downpipes, in full 304 stainless, for under $400? Material costs alone should exceed that value... so, apologies, but I'm having a hard time believing this claim. BTW, most MB headers are unequal length... and, given your modding background, I'm sure you realize it doesn't make much (if any) difference for a F/I engined car at this performance level...

Carlsson is indeed awesome - amazing styling, quality craftmanship, and heart-attack price point. I'm sure you can find a Carlsson dealer that will sell you products for your 55; problem solved? As a fan of many marques, if you go down the road of picking up a Supra, 996TT, etc., I hope you post pictures (or at least links) of the build.

BTW - given your concerns about vendors' products and pricing, I find it to be a bit unusual that you're rolling on products from one of the worst offenders of alleged fraud and mismanagement this board has seen in the duration of my membership.