I believe since the concept car is said to be worth 2m...that's where the 1m to do-up an interior came from. Not saying I agree with it, just that I don't think it was pulled out of the air.

 

I don't think you can translate the cost to build a concept car in any way with the cost to do a production interior. The concept's parts were all basically hand made. I doubt any of it converts over...meaning everything had to be designed/prototyped/etc fresh for the production version.

I'd also say that $2m is way low too.

 

Oh the overall investment of the car is a lot higher than people would ever think. The cost to design, develop, and test a vehicle such as the Camaro is MUCH higher than you could ever estimate based on a one off concept.

 

Remember GM spent $1 BILLION on the 1988 full size truck redesign. That was 20 years ago.

The last Taurus (before the 500/Taurus) was like half a bil. I'd bet the Camaro exceeds $250 million in development costs by the time its all done. The idea that the interior is only $1m of that is absurd.

Remember Scott has told us before that just to do a totally new set of wheels for the 35th anniversary SS would have cost $1m.

I just think most folks don't really have a concept of how much this stuff costs to do. There's a reason cars are only redesigned every 5-7 years. There's also a reason no other single model (excluding corporate clones/cousins) on the market has two interiors to choose from. It is expensive. You either pass that along to the customer, and lose sales due to missing your price point, or you eat it and lose potential profit.

 

Quoted for emphasis. It's not about the number! It's just a way to show that it would be amortized against a lot of cars over a long period of time. The actual number had essentially nothing to do with the point!

And, again, you guys SUCK at playing "what if".

 

Amen to that. There's all kinds of testing needed nowadays, which drives up costs. One example - EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) testing. They have to test all the electronic components (in all configurations - to include all interiors) together, to make sure they don't cause spikes, noise, or other weird electrical problems for the car. Designing, testing and producing modern cars has become an incredibly complex business.

 

Again, you're being silly. It has EVERYTHING to do with the number if the number is too high to make business sense. Of course the cost would be spread out over a lot of cars. But its still a lot of money PER CAR.

 

And per car... means something quite a bit different for a niche car like the Camaro, vs. the huge sales volume of the pickup truck segment (vis-a-vis the Silverado example given earlier).

 

Fine. New scenario. Here are my assumptions:
* it costs 250 million to develop, test, set up tooling for, etc, for a new interior
* Camaro moves 100k units/year.
* it goes four years without major changes to the interior.
* one of the interiors is considered to be "better" than the other and is sold as an extra-cost option
* the optional interior accounts for 35% of sales

Doing the math, the optional interior would need to cost at least $1786 per car.

That's a pretty pricey option, but it's not entirely unreasonable as an option. The nicer 4LT leather interior in the C6 is an extra $3540, which is almost exactly double my predicted cost. Since the Corvette's base price is close to double Camaro's base price, it seems appropriate to me that its upscale interior option would scale similarly. Obviously it wouldn't be the luxo-leather interior of the Corvette.

FWIW I think 250 million is on the high side to develop an optional interior. I'm not even talking about the whole interior -- just the dash, center stack, and console. Maybe the door skins too.

 

Again quoted for emphasis...

It is not spread out over as long as you think it would be. "It's just a way to show that it would be amortized against a lot of cars over a long period of time" is completely incorrect. The costs would only be spread out over a 2-4 year period. Companies need to make the investment money back in the first 2-3 years for the most part so they can use the last year or so of the vehicle models to make any money. For example, the auto manufacturer that I am a product planner for strives to have all investment (return on investment as its termed) repaid in 2 years from model launch.

As far as vehicle investment... I can guarentee that GM has and is going to spend at lease $1B to develop the Camaro, probably quite a bit more. Dodge spend almost $2B to develop the new Ram if that helps any...

 

I am saying $250m for the WHOLE car, not the interior. Geeze that would be a really pricey interior.

 

Remember that the interior you refer to on a C6 is also a different intended buyer than a Camaro. Those guys don't flinch at buying a car that STARTS at $50k. Things that you can do and sell on such a vehicle are much different than a car w/ a starting price around $20k.

 

Actually that's probably not too far off. A good friend of mine that works w/ me now, that used to be at Chrysler said they averaged about $1B for each new car developed. That's is assuming an all new car though... not for minor changes etc.

 

I don't think it's all that far off. If a complete vehicle costs $1-2b to develop from concept to production, why wouldn't the complete interior take up at least a quarter of that?

Especially in a system where powertrain development is shared across a large selection of vehicles, and the powertrain platform is already fairly mature. My guess is that relatively little Camaro-specific powertrain development is required. I know it's more complex than this, but they can basically toss in an LS3 and a TR6060/6L80 and they're good to go. They most likely have to develop things from the transmission on back (driveshaft, rear end, axles, etc), but taking the engine/trans out of the equation probably helps a LOT.

If a $3500 interior is appropriate for someone who's willing to buy a $50,000 car, why isn't a $1750 interior appropriate for someone who's willing to buy a $25,000 car?

 

B/c an interior costing $1750 to DEVELOP plus piece costs etc. would be more like a $2000 COST interior. They would never sell it for COST. What's the point of the development. There would be additional mark up on top of that so the company can make money on the option package, and thus you end up w/ a $2500 or so interior...