How much would a car cost if you made it from parts?

Factual Questions
21
      • The numbers may not be exact, but the concept isn’t wrong; remember that the place that sells you the whole car is also the place that sells all the pieces, too. The manufacturers can place a premium markup on the individual pieces because they know most people won’t be able to easily obtain the same pieces anywhere else -except from theft, which is why most auto theft concerns very common big-selling cars: thiefs want the models they can sell the parts from easiest. High-priced cars get stolen too- but generally speaking, the higher the price, the more likely the car is to be sold in one piece. Regular cars get parted out.
        ~
        Car companies like high parts prices: the few people who buy legitimate parts pay a hefty premium, and the high prices encourage car theft, which ultimately results in more car sales. It’s a beautiful world we live in…
        ~
  • If you wanted to legally compete with the manufacturer for parts sales, you’d have to buy up a lot of cars (to offer any sort of variety or supply), take them apart and store them while waiting for customers to buy them, all of which costs you money to do. To top it all off, most cars depreciate with time, so it’s less and less financially justifiable to pay for expensive parts, and you wouldn’t technically be selling a “new” part but a used part, further driving your offered price down even lower. Ever been to a junkyard?
  • Alternately, you could start stealing cars. (mine is an '82 rust bucket, so it’s safe for me to advise this…) - MC
22

I worked for a while for a Dodge dealership in the parts department, delivering parts. It was one of the best summer jobs that I ever had, just driving around in the sunshine, listening to the radio, it was very enjoyable.

Anyway, as a part of my job I had to take the parts delivery every day and put it into the stock room (bad part of job.) Every part came with a packing slip and these sometimes had on them the costs at the different levels: cost to Chrysler Canada, cost to our dealership, wholesale cost we charge to garages, retail cost for people walking in off of the street. These slips were not supposed to be on the parts (usually only the cost for the wholesale and retail), but occasionally they were.

From looking at these slips it was interesting to see the price differences. The most extreme of which that I saw was a strap for a fuel tank on a Jeep, that cost the guy off of the street 14 dollars, cost Chrysler Canada all of 9 cents.
Why so much markup? Likely to account for shipping, packaging and storage of these cheap parts, much more expensive than the actual piece.

For more expensive parts: transmission, engines and such the markup isn’t so bad (maybe 10-20%), so IMHO what would keep you from building a car from parts is all the little stuff, like that fuel tank strap. And just how many little brackets and widgets are in a car? lots.

23

You guys seem to be ignoring kit cars, which basically fulfill what the original poster was asking about. Kit cars come in a variety of forms, ranging from where you buy the entire car in pieces and just assemble it, to kits that fit on top of the frames of other existing cars. With a little creativity, you can take an engine from car X, put it on a frame from car Y, and add a kit to make it look like car Z, all for about $15k to $25k (comperable to the cost of a new car).

24

Nah. I don’t think that has anything to do with what the OP was asking.

They are kinda neat though.

25

Boyd Coddington built a '32 Ford roadster for Hot Rod Magazine completely from mail-order parts for $10-$15k. I’ll look it up later tonight.