Catering to used car buyers-parts

[Fringe Ryder <fringe@fringeweb.com>]

Not necessarily.  The U.S. stock market has returned over 11% over the last
90 years, on AVERAGE.  1990s European inflation has been much higher.  For
sake of avoiding debates, we'll go with the very conservative 11% number.

Many of the cars on this list are more than a decade old (which means
1987).  In one decade, an unused part will almost triple in cost due to
that 11% inflation. (It will go up to 284%.)  The 15-yr old urQs will
almost quintuple!

On top of that, Audi doesn't -know- how many parts to produce.  You're
asking them to take a very expensive gamble, take a lot of money out of
capital, and lose the earning benefits of it to provide for a potential
market that may not materialize.  If demand goes over, you want them to
restart the line - which is no easy nor inexpensive feat!

Audi parts may be out of line, but it may actually be CHEAPER for a shop
set up to do small quantities of parts now to produce them than for you to
buy an inflation-adjusted part that was produced when your car was.

Regards

Joel Skousen wrote:
>I think it important to remember that any car manufacturer has the
>advantage in producing OEM parts.  They have already paid to gear up for
>production.  To stock their used parts line, all they have to do is run
>their manufacturing line at the time of original production for so many
>extra months and warehouse the extra inventory.  Even if they stock
>parts by restarting production lines now and then (which I doubt), they
>still have all the tooling and don't have to start from scratch. This
>applies to their "out-sourcing" suppliers too.  So when after market
>producers can beat Audi's price by 1/2 to 1/10, you know Audi is making
>a hell of a profit on their parts.