[V8] Speaking of options...
Jeremy Ward
jward at mti-interactive.com
Fri Mar 18 12:06:02 EST 2005
I had a conversation with a friend at the local Audi dealership on this
very topic. (He has been with the company during the best and the worst
years...)
I asked him why cars on the www.audi.de website are so configurable,
whereas the US site (www.audi.com) was so much more limited. Over there
you can put any motor in any car, with any transmission, in any color,
and any level of comfort features. And here? Not so much...
He said that with the motors specifically, they have to spend millions
of dollars on EPA tests per each model / motor combination. This is why
generally they offer 2 different motors per model, and only 1 in the
cars that don't have as high of volume on (e.g. A8). Remember when they
offered a 3.7l fwd V8 in the D2 A8? How many of those puppies did they
sell? I'll bet not enough to pay for the EPA tests for *that*
particular combination!
Transmissions... Why didn't they offer the 6spd in the S8 in the US?
(I saw one in Neckarsulm, btw) They would have to stock yet another
transmission + transmission components in all of their US parts
warehouses, develop training material in English, and get all of the US
techs trained up on a combination that they might see once in their
careers...
As for the interiors, each color of each fabric type must be tested for
flammability, smoke, etc. And again, much more parts to stock in the
warehouses.
And then there's logistics... If you lived in Germany and wanted to buy
an Audi, you would probably know what you were looking for and order it
on the website; check any box you want! A month later, you would
probably hop on the ICE train and head down to Ingolstadt to pick it up
(how cool would that be?!?)
Here, they have to order the cars, wait 3 months to have them built and
shipped over through the Panama Canal into San Diego where they are then
sent up our direction. That's about how long Eliot's Golf took, right?
How impatient was he to finally get his cool new toy that he had put
money down on?
This is why they tend to place their orders based on averages. I think
he said that 40% of Audis sold are silver. Add to this the different
color interiors, engine choices, and transmission types... You can't
please everyone, so aim to please the masses and you will make the
majority of people happy. He told me that in the NW everyone orders
their Audis with Quattro and Xenon, so although these are options, the
majority of their lot cars have them.
Compare this to the V8 when it came out in 1990; the only choices you
had were exterior color, interior color, and whether or not you wanted
sport seats. They only sold 3,868 of them between model years
1990-1994, with the vast majority in 1990. I don't think my friends in
AZ or TX have ever used their front and rear seat heaters, but they have
them just in case! Much easier for Audi to send over this low-number
car with a standard set of options (which was fairly well loaded, btw)
than to get crazy on what a very small selection of an already very
small market segment might want... It got so bad that in 1994 when Audi
sold only 77 V8 units (thank you recession and 60 Minutes!), they only
brought over 4 colors (Pearl, Black, Dark Green, Dark Grey).
I would love a door S3, but how many people in the US would buy one when
you can get a similar (kind of) Golf for a bit less money? Probably not
enough sales to pay for the EPA tests, eh?
Cheers,
- Jeremy
http://198.107.18.114/v8q/
-----Original Message-----
From: AUDI-NW-owner at u.washington.edu
[mailto:AUDI-NW-owner at u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of eliot
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 4:42 PM
To: northwest audi enthusiasts
Subject: Re: new yedda is here
well if they sell enough of the fluffy model that would
pave the way for hotter models right? i don't think they
even have the hot models on sale in europe yet...
RS4 is coming.. autoweek says $70K.. madness. well i take
that back given the way the euro to dollar exchange rate
is going.. they lost $1b last year due in large part to
exchange rate woes.
but a bare bones high end car for a low price will never
happen because options always cost less to produce than
to sell.. i.e. the profit margin on a fully loaded car is
always much higher than the profit margin on a bare bones car.
and if you sell a stripped down $30K audi a joe blow idiot would
be screaming about how a kia or hyundai has feature xyz while
costing half of the audi. the extra crap is there to cushion
the shock of paying for an expensive piece of engineering since
consumers mostly think that the significant bits i.e. body, chassis,
engines are all more or less equivalent and price differences are
due mostly to leather seats and sat-nav garbage.
the price of options is more realistically reflected when you
are buying used...
eliot
Scott Stiles wrote:
> It's not really the A3 styling that I don't like, it's a combination
of:
> - they felt that they needed to inflate the A3 to sell it here
> (sportback)
> - option set, at least initially, seems very comfort and style
oriented
> (dare I say they're trying to appeal to the fairer gender?), rather
than
> performance:
> - full length glass sunroof
> - no Quattro
>
> I'd love to see a sportier option package on the A3 that consists of
the
> 2.0t, a 6spd (or DSG), Quattro, and sports suspension. Ideally this
> option package would be available without a bunch of other crap. This
> would result in a very attractive package, IMO. Otherwise, I'd love to
> see a 5door mk5 GTI, but I hear they aren't bringing that over either
:(
>
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