Okay, now the huge prices make sense. Not only is the shop painting each car several times, they have to inspect every body panel and fix many of them because they came from the factory with a bunch of minor flaws (and even a Monet would to look cr*ppy on newsprint). Also, we’re a few steps past the point of diminishing returns for quality vs. cost.
So, any more thoughts on why people prefer a hardtail bike over softtail? Is it really just the look (what they call “the vibe” on the show) as jz78817 says?
Paul Teutul Senior once explained to a client why they used either hardtail or softtail: if the client actually wanted to use the bike to ride on, they preferred using softtail. If the bike to be built was mostly for show, they used a hardtail because they could do far more to make it look cool.
it’s worth noting that all Harley-Davidson bikes have rear suspension these days. The “Softail” just packages the rear springs so it doesn’t look like it does.
It really is just wanting the old school vibe, sheer romance (in the truest sense of the word). Wanting to ride a hardtail is like wanting to dine by candlelight on your anniversary - there’s no rational advantage and plenty of downsides, but a mixture nostalgia and aesthetics lead people to do it. And only put up with it infrequently.
While labor hours are a big part of the picture, let’s also include rarity and supply vs. demand. Some cars are in such low supply and high demand that even completely unrestored examples (in rough shape, with no labor hours sunk into them) go for megabucks. Other models that are far less interesting to collectors are basically worth their scrap metal value in the same condition.
People always say this, I don’t get it. Ferrari flirted with bankruptcy most of their history, with Enzo bought out before he died. Porsche wasn’t solvent until the Boxster came out in 1998, about 50 years after they started business. Bentley was bought by Roll-Royce in the 40s, and Rolls-Royce themselves flirted with bankruptcy for almost 40 years before finally succumbing to BMW and VW, despite selling the most expensive cars in the world for much of their history. Lamborghini, Maserati, Bugatti, Aston Martin, Jaguar - there is no high-end sport or luxury car maker that could write their own ticket as far as pricing, ever. Prices have followed costs always, often too closely for the company to survive.
Indeed, if you knew how Ferrari rules/manipulates their market and customers, you’d know that if they could make a car for $100k and sell it for a million, they would. This is a company that sells some models by invitation only, and blacklists their own customers for behavior they don’t like. They’re the only company I know of that blacklists journalists who give them negative reviews (I think only Chris Harris is still in that doghouse).
The closest is Porsche, whose record per car profits are the result of quietly becoming a mass car maker (the revamped manufacturing after consulting with Toyota in the 90s) while maintaining the cachet of an exotic car company, leveraged with platform sharing with VW.
If Ferrari is so hard up for cash, why do they spend so much on Formula 1? I know sponsors cover some of that cost, but I doubt they cover all of it.
Funny note , I used to wonder why car mags spent so much time on cars that almost nobody can buy , like Ferraris. Then I realized the car mags are just like Playboy, Maxim , etc. The average guy is never going to buy those cars, and they are never going to get those girls! It’s just fantasy .
prestige, and the erroneous perception that F1 tech ends up in their road cars.
yep. it’s even funnier to watch people fight over which $250,000 car is better even though the people arguing will probably never even sit in one of those cars, never mind own one.
Huh? Porsche was in the black almost continuously from the mid-70s through the recession of the early 90s, and were profitable again shortly after Wendelin Wiedeking started running the company in 1993.
Check out a custom car show sometime and examine all the handiwork. Engines, chassis, wheels, axels… framework… Custom finishes, chrome, parts, pipes, upholstery, carpeting, tints, lighting, sound systems, ice cream makers, etc etc. Those cars are amazing.
Much more of a rollercoaster ride. They held onto the 356 too long, the 911 was barely selling from the late 70s until the 993 brought back interest; the 944 kept them alive during the 80s but Porsche was still using 1970s or older platforms for everything in the early 90s (911, 928, 944-based 968). Like Rolls-Royce/Bentley at the same time, they could afford to develop a modern chassis, so quality was surpassed by mass-market car makers.
Weideking was responsible for the turnaround, but the only thing keeping Porsche alive before that is almost no one outside the family owned stock in the company. The 986/996 platform-sharing revamp was pure genius, and though he initially made the cars too cheap-looking inside (and then there were the engine problems), pretty much everyone buying a 996 was paying an extra 20k for a Boxster.
At least in years past, Ferrari was proud to be a racing car company that happens to make road cars. Most carmakers are road car companies that dabble in racing.
It’s just fantasy .