Status on aluminum body tub?

[jn2630]

If you remember, a while back, somebody proposed an aluminum body tub. Does anyone know what the status is? Did it make it into the design stage yet?

 

[Scoop]

I could be wrong but I think the underwhelming response killed the project.

 

[va bronco]

yeah, it had too much negative pubicity that it must have been dropped.

 

[surfer-b]

i think they should go with it, it will sell

 

[SteveL]

I think it came down to $$. We'd all love to have one but at what price. I think they were going to be $8000 or more. That buys a pretty nice complete bronco in most areas.

 

[jn2630]

I guess we would just have to wait until it becomes impossible to find a nice tub for anyone to buy one for $8000

 

[SaddleUp]

It probably never will make it to the design stage. It is certain that some of them would sell but it is also almost just as certain that it would be too few to cover the design cost let alone be profitable. The problem as mentioned above would be the cost. At $8000 (If they would even be that cheap) someone could buy 2 or 3 fiberglass tubs so only those with a lot of money to spend would buy one. Perhaps 1 every couple of months. Figure design costs could easily reach 100k or more. If they make 4K on each one that would take at least 4 years just to recoup the design costs. The figures I used are just for example as I may be way off on all of them. If so then my guess is that they are too low. I.E. It may cost more like 250K to design the tub and build all of the molds or whatever that are needed. At any rate it boils down to having a large enough market to be profitable and it doesn't appear that the market would be big enough.