I don’t understand…

[Nick K]

I was thinking about this other day, every single car, truck, or SUV on the road can be performance modified. All sorts of companies make performance devices for autos. Cat backs, suspension, intakes, sparkplugs. The thing that gets me is why they don’t go with better designs. For an example flowmasters 2.25 muffler bumps up torque by 23 pounds and makes 15 horse power, now why didn’t ford think about this before it went to the assembly plants. Or same with spark plugs, other brands and designs run a lot more efficient and increase throttle response. Most performance devices cost less and make much better performance. Could any one explain why they do this?

 

[mattadams]

Nick, because those aftermarket specialty products cost more to produce and 9 out of 10 vehicle buyers wouldn't think of adding them, and therefore wouldn't be able to justify the extra expense. That's why the mustang cobra is $10,000 more then the mustang, because they've done lots of the souping up already. The average car buyer though doesn't need high performance exhaust or computer chips or spark plug wires, so the cheapest is the best.
Unfortanetly the low bidder usually wins in the automotive world and that's why auto quality isn't nearly as good as it once was... in many peoples opinions anyways

 

[Nick K]

are you saying it's more expensive to make a flow-master then a regular ford muffler??

 

[mattadams]

yes... I'd guess the stock ford muffler costs Ford MAYBE $10-12, if that.

 

[mrboyle]

Like Matt said its a matter of cost vs. profit.
Besides if all cars, trucks and suv's came with Flowmaster's, K&N filters, etc. etc.. wouldn't we find something else to do to modify (personalize it)?
Another factor is that most people buy their cars as transportation, not as anything else. They want it to be cheep, reliable and comfrotable.

 

[leenjen]

yeah, my mom likes her explorer quiet. my friend likes his loud exhaust. and i like my quiet exhaust with my loud stereo system.

 

[Mike 92 XLT]

Yeah, people always say, "if it only costs $4 for such-and-such an improvement, why don't car companies do it?" Well, multiply that $4 by the amount of cars it will be going into, and suddenly, that's a lot of lost profit. Ford's made what, around 1 million Explorers? If they had put a $4 improvement into each of them, that's $4 million they would've lost. Ugh, look what studying business has done to me .

peace

Mike

 

[tbomb]

look at it this way, even if the car companies pushed more power out of their designs, there would still be people like us trying to get even more out of it.

 

[Blaine Cooper]

I believe that most people don't buy cars based on performance, but on color..."Uh, I think I'll take the red one."