themadscientist wrote:So, essentially, buy something you don't want on the slim possibility the carmaker will make something you do like as a reward for "taking one for the team?" F that. Make what I want or get NONE of my money.
I asked for years for an affordable simple fun RWD car. Nissan put a Z in front of me with no turbos and said "take it or leave it." Toybaru said, "you like this?"
I said "here's my money."
I AM THE %$*&#@! CUSTOMER!
You please me and I reward you with business. You ignore me I ignore you. That's entirely your fault.
I think you missed my point, and I didn't articulate well.
Here is the thing: it costs $1-6 Billion dollars to develop a new car (based on IHS), which is dramatically more than it used to be. A very low volume halo car is actually much less expensive to develop than a mass market car, as you don't have to engineer out costs and it falls into multiple low-volume loopholes (GTR's aren't crash tested in the US). But to have affordable RWD, you need economies of scale. Modern safety standards alone make things amazingly expensive--a glove box lid costs millions to develop between design, deformation simulations, impact testing, etc. And an S13 platform will not meet modern safety standards.
If you look at the FRS/BRZ, they are now selling a few hundred a month, less than half what they were when it was first reported they were not living up to sales projections. 100k total sales over all model years may be realistic-- and the platform doesn't lend itself well to other vehicles. If Toyota/Subaru did it on the cheap, let's optimistically estimate $2 Billion for development... or $20k per car. And that's just development. In addition, you have marketing costs that failed to connect with new car buyers, underutilized production lines, lack of scale in parts purchasing, etc... Toyota/Subaru is likely losing money on each car outside of development costs.
If you pay $25k for a car, $2500 goes to dealer and transport, and the automaker spent $45k to produce it (which may well be the case, net, when everything is tallied up)... they tend to not feel as grateful for you covering half of their cost.
So, taking all that into account, it isn't just your money. Even when profitable, cars are not a high-margin category. Sometimes your money isn't a reward, it is just partially covering a massive loss on the part of the automaker.
So, if I am an automaker and I see the money Toyota/Subaru would undoubtedly be losing if I applied estimated costs to their sales numbers, I would be unlikely to want to make that money-losing investment. If I wanted a halo vehicle for marketing purposes, I could do a supercar for a fraction of the net costs... Or, I could take a compact car, spend a fraction as much to make it taller and call it a crossover, charge a premium for that, produce millions of them at low costs and make massive profits.
It is just kind of the reality of the cost to develop/sell a new car today and the market for affordable sports cars. There are a lot of people out there who would love to have options, but not enough new car buyers in the segment to make those options financially viable. Because the BRZ/FRS have failed to live up to the sales volumes needed to avoid massive losses, few other automakers will be willing to take on a similar proposition.
So please, keep buying the car. And convince your friends to. If enough people band together and the market becomes viable for multiple players to participate, more automakers will join in.