What are the chances of a C8 FE and C8 ME revealing together?
02-04-2019, 08:34 AM
#341
Pro
Boy, reading this thread, I wonder how some folks actually earned enough money to buy a Corvette.
There is a HUGE difference between "Cost" and "Price". Any engineer understands cost, and any marketer understands "Price" and the two have no mathematical relationship.
For example, the actual "Cost" of a ZR1 vs a Z06 is probably $8-10K of performance parts... ehhh, $450 brake rotors vs $250 on a "base" car, maybe $500 extra for headers vs a Z06. $1,500 for fancy-schmancy wheels... $1K for some bolt-on CF spoilers. A re-programmed Chip, and some badges.
But there are 2,000 dudes who will pay a $70K premium to have the biggest dick in the bar.
Marketing. I'll gladly take credit for loading $50K of free margin on the car.
There is a HUGE difference between "Cost" and "Price". Any engineer understands cost, and any marketer understands "Price" and the two have no mathematical relationship.
For example, the actual "Cost" of a ZR1 vs a Z06 is probably $8-10K of performance parts... ehhh, $450 brake rotors vs $250 on a "base" car, maybe $500 extra for headers vs a Z06. $1,500 for fancy-schmancy wheels... $1K for some bolt-on CF spoilers. A re-programmed Chip, and some badges.
But there are 2,000 dudes who will pay a $70K premium to have the biggest dick in the bar.
Marketing. I'll gladly take credit for loading $50K of free margin on the car.
02-04-2019, 08:40 AM
#342
That has nothing to do with what JCP was talking about.
Yes, that's beyond obvious, but it is a constant across all models manufactured by the same company. He was talking about cost differences between variants of the C7 to illustrate a point about why its more cost-effective and profitable for a manufacturer, as well as better for the consumer to base many differently priced models on a single platform with many common parts. The expensive models have a higher profit margin, but that's because its lower cost to manufacture is made possible by the volume production of so many lower priced versions.
Yes, that's beyond obvious, but it is a constant across all models manufactured by the same company. He was talking about cost differences between variants of the C7 to illustrate a point about why its more cost-effective and profitable for a manufacturer, as well as better for the consumer to base many differently priced models on a single platform with many common parts. The expensive models have a higher profit margin, but that's because its lower cost to manufacture is made possible by the volume production of so many lower priced versions.
Last edited by Foosh; 02-04-2019 at 08:46 AM.
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02-04-2019, 08:43 AM
#343
Pro
That has nothing to do with what JCP was talking about.
Yes, that's beyond obvious, but it is a constant across all models manufactured by the same company. He was talking about cost differences between variants of the C7 to illustrate a point about why its more cost-effective and profitable for a manufacturer, as well as better for the consumer to base many differently priced models on a single platform with many common parts.
Yes, that's beyond obvious, but it is a constant across all models manufactured by the same company. He was talking about cost differences between variants of the C7 to illustrate a point about why its more cost-effective and profitable for a manufacturer, as well as better for the consumer to base many differently priced models on a single platform with many common parts.
02-04-2019, 08:51 AM
#344
Race Director
Well he is not the only one to think that is a Dual Rear Brake system, I knew I read this somewhere. I believe it is a parking brake similar to some Wilwood systems, maybe this is where he got the information from. Ya know that Google is the end all be all. Lol
Originally Posted by gmauthority
Mid-Engine Corvette Brakes To Feature Dual Rear-Wheel Calipers (By lex Luft)
It appears that the upcoming mid-engine Corvette will feature extremely high-performance brakes, as the latest spy shots show a dual rear caliper brake design.
About Dual Caliper Brakes
The benefits of having two sets of calipers are fairly straight forward, and boil down to three primary advantages:
Double the pistons means greater strength to clamp down on the rotors.
Double the brake pads means twice the contact area of the pads with the rotors (known by engineers as the total swept surface area).
Twice the calipers and brakes means that the hardware has to work half as hard when stopping the car, thereby allowing them to cool off twice as fast and eliminating brake fade during instances of continuous hard braking, such as racing on a track or handling course.
No matter how you spin it, the end result is superior stopping power — and good brakes on a supercar, like the mid-engine Corvette is shaping up to be, is just as important (if not more important) as acceleration, handling and other commonly-measured attributes.
Attachment 260066
Mid-Engine Corvette Dual Caliper Rear Brake Design - Spy Shots
And in the case of the mid-engine Corvette, the weight distribution changes significantly when compared to prior Corvette iterations, placing more of the car’s weight toward the rear wheels. We imagine that this change, in turn, increases the importance of stopping the rear wheels.
But it’s not all marks in the positive column: more calipers and pads comes more weight and mass — the sworn enemies of performance. So it will be interesting to see how Corvette engineers may have been able to mitigate this potential downside.
Parking Brake Theory
One theory surrounding the dual rear caliper setup on the mid-engine Corvette is that the additional set of rear calipers will serve as the electric parking brake for the upcoming sports car.
Typical electric parking brakes lock a vehicle’s axle into place in some fashion, either by clamping the axle or inserting a pin that prevents it from moving. In the case of the mid-engine Corvette, a significant portion of the car’s mid-ship will be taken up by the powertrain. Though electric parking brakehardware is rather compact, a possibility does exist that the engine and transmission placement would limit the space available for a parking brake to lock the axle into place. So the circumstance may have led engineers to move the electric parking brake to the rear rotors via a dedicated set of calipers.
With that said, we do not believe that the function of the second set of braking hardware on the rear wheels is for electric parking brake, due to the calipers being way too big to be for the parking brake. However, a scenario in which the second set of calipers is used for additional stopping power while doing double-duty as parking brake clamps might be spot on.
Mid-Engine Corvette Rear Wheel and Brake with Dual Calipers - Spy Shots - May 2018
The dual caliper rear brake design is not all too common in the industry today, even among super cars, hyper cars or other high-performance exotics. However, double calipers are used on some high-performance motorcycles as well as on rear-engine dragsters — where they are prized for their ability to resist brake fade, especially after continuous runs.
But perhaps the most prominent use of the dual rear caliper design in the automotive world is the Porsche 956 — a 1980s-era prototype-style race car built for the the FIA World Sportscar Championship. In 1983, the 956 famously completed the 20.832 km (12.93 mi) circuit of the famed Nürburgring Nordschleife in 6:11.13 while qualifying for the 1000 km Sports Car race at the hands of Stefan Bellof. The performance set an all-time record, which the car and Bellof still hold to this day.
All that out of the way, at this point why even visit this thread? Clearly ya think Skank is full of it and dropping in to get a dig on him when not even responding to him doing the same is petty don't ya think?
PC
Originally Posted by gmauthority
Mid-Engine Corvette Brakes To Feature Dual Rear-Wheel Calipers (By lex Luft)
It appears that the upcoming mid-engine Corvette will feature extremely high-performance brakes, as the latest spy shots show a dual rear caliper brake design.
About Dual Caliper Brakes
The benefits of having two sets of calipers are fairly straight forward, and boil down to three primary advantages:
Double the pistons means greater strength to clamp down on the rotors.
Double the brake pads means twice the contact area of the pads with the rotors (known by engineers as the total swept surface area).
Twice the calipers and brakes means that the hardware has to work half as hard when stopping the car, thereby allowing them to cool off twice as fast and eliminating brake fade during instances of continuous hard braking, such as racing on a track or handling course.
No matter how you spin it, the end result is superior stopping power — and good brakes on a supercar, like the mid-engine Corvette is shaping up to be, is just as important (if not more important) as acceleration, handling and other commonly-measured attributes.
Attachment 260066
Mid-Engine Corvette Dual Caliper Rear Brake Design - Spy Shots
And in the case of the mid-engine Corvette, the weight distribution changes significantly when compared to prior Corvette iterations, placing more of the car’s weight toward the rear wheels. We imagine that this change, in turn, increases the importance of stopping the rear wheels.
But it’s not all marks in the positive column: more calipers and pads comes more weight and mass — the sworn enemies of performance. So it will be interesting to see how Corvette engineers may have been able to mitigate this potential downside.
Parking Brake Theory
One theory surrounding the dual rear caliper setup on the mid-engine Corvette is that the additional set of rear calipers will serve as the electric parking brake for the upcoming sports car.
Typical electric parking brakes lock a vehicle’s axle into place in some fashion, either by clamping the axle or inserting a pin that prevents it from moving. In the case of the mid-engine Corvette, a significant portion of the car’s mid-ship will be taken up by the powertrain. Though electric parking brakehardware is rather compact, a possibility does exist that the engine and transmission placement would limit the space available for a parking brake to lock the axle into place. So the circumstance may have led engineers to move the electric parking brake to the rear rotors via a dedicated set of calipers.
With that said, we do not believe that the function of the second set of braking hardware on the rear wheels is for electric parking brake, due to the calipers being way too big to be for the parking brake. However, a scenario in which the second set of calipers is used for additional stopping power while doing double-duty as parking brake clamps might be spot on.
Mid-Engine Corvette Rear Wheel and Brake with Dual Calipers - Spy Shots - May 2018
The dual caliper rear brake design is not all too common in the industry today, even among super cars, hyper cars or other high-performance exotics. However, double calipers are used on some high-performance motorcycles as well as on rear-engine dragsters — where they are prized for their ability to resist brake fade, especially after continuous runs.
But perhaps the most prominent use of the dual rear caliper design in the automotive world is the Porsche 956 — a 1980s-era prototype-style race car built for the the FIA World Sportscar Championship. In 1983, the 956 famously completed the 20.832 km (12.93 mi) circuit of the famed Nürburgring Nordschleife in 6:11.13 while qualifying for the 1000 km Sports Car race at the hands of Stefan Bellof. The performance set an all-time record, which the car and Bellof still hold to this day.
All that out of the way, at this point why even visit this thread? Clearly ya think Skank is full of it and dropping in to get a dig on him when not even responding to him doing the same is petty don't ya think?
PC
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jefnvk (02-04-2019)
02-04-2019, 08:53 AM
#345
Nope, I think it's likely pretty close to the profit margin on a ZR1. The PC&B and infrastructure costs are the same on a base C7 and a ZR1, which means your point was irrelevant.
Last edited by Foosh; 02-04-2019 at 08:56 AM.
02-04-2019, 08:56 AM
#346
Pro
02-04-2019, 09:46 AM
#347
02-04-2019, 10:24 AM
#348
E-Ray, 3LZ, ZER, LIFT
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However there are indirect costs that do not go away. These include folks on the receiving dock who check product in, QA folks, maintenance folks, etc. etc. These indirect costs often can't be changed in direct proportion to volume output. Materials like those used for maintenance, propane for fork lifts, cleaning supplies, (yep even toilet paper- the crap adds up!
) etc. etc that aren't directly tied to the product volume. The plant has to pay the utility bills, outside grounds upkeep, cleaning windows, etc, etc if they make 15,000 or 30,000 cars. Note some indirect costs, such as those you mentioned in another post relative to heath care as well as proprty taxes may be put in a general overhead category depending on the company.We had a two part cost accounting system, so we knew the Variable Costs and Fully Burdened cost for all items (that was our terminology, there are others.). We had ~12 IE's at one time trying to keep up with updating costs and defining costs for new products (was often complaining they were not defining costs quick enough for new products we were introducing!) This is an example I had to remind our "phone doctors" who assisted customers with product repair, why we could not sell a replacement transformer for an old welder for what they thought was a "reasonable price" (as they had access to the costs for all part numbers and everyone is a pricing expert when they don't understand all the facts!
) The IE's did not have time to deal with updating costs for spare parts so if we had been making 200 transformers at a time when the product was in production, the set up time to produce that transformer was spread over 200 units and applied to the product. Sure the plant could make one transformer (and we did for old product to keep customers like CAT happy) and what looked like a great profit to the "phone doctor" at 4 times the old cost in the system could be losing money as the set up time could cost 5 times the old unit cost attributed to that transformer!When we sold the business to the largest company our industry from Sweden, they added another cost! They called in the "Calculated Capital Cost." That is the replacement cost of machinery used to make the product! One Board member who was on a number of large Swedish company Boards, had an interesting point in that regard. If you are not buying the latest technology equipment to improve productively, your competitor may be and you'll be at a cost disadvantage in the future. (Knowing all costs is useful but my departments job was to price the product and often the competitors price was the governing factor of what we could charge!
)I know some don't understand, as you didn't accept when I mentioned what Tadge said regarding the C7 needing higher volume to make a profit when the C7 was introduced or it would be the end of the Vette! I sited an interview where Tadge said it had to double (from what was about 15,000/year for a number of prior years.) BUT ~20,000 Vettes/year could be a break even point and below that they lose money!
Last edited by JerryU; 02-04-2019 at 11:21 AM.
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jefnvk (02-04-2019)
02-04-2019, 12:47 PM
#349
Pro
I openly said I did not understand all of this. I was reminding jcp911 that there were tons of hidden costs in every car. You make my point for me above but I still wonder where the real break even point is.
02-04-2019, 01:04 PM
#350
See linked article below, which is from early 2013, after a year in which GM only sold approximately 14K Corvettes. It quotes Mark Reuss as saying it's profitable at that volume. After GM was "rescued" by the US gov, government auditors also concluded that Corvette Division was the most, and one of the few, profitable products at GM.
March '13 GM Authority "Corvette Profitable"
March '13 GM Authority "Corvette Profitable"
02-04-2019, 01:18 PM
#351
Melting Slicks
Another example I like to give: when I bought a new V6 Mustang back in 2012, it was actually cheaper to buy the V6 car AND the same 5.0 in crate format that came in the V8, than it was to just buy the V8 car (obviously excluding the labor and accessory costs of transplanting it that wouldn't apply to a manufacturer, just the cost of the car and a second engine).
Last edited by jefnvk; 02-04-2019 at 01:18 PM.
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Boiler_81 (02-04-2019)
02-04-2019, 02:08 PM
#353
There's no need to conjure up a mythical vehicle to explain the BGA expansion. GM moved their Performance Build Center from Wixom to BGA so all the hand built engines will be done at BGA. There is also the new paint shop which takes massive space to properly cure the paint.
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2018/09/...y-plant-video/
At 15:10 they show the new assembly schematic.
The expansion at Bowling Green facility was approximately 450K sqft
The Wixom Performance Build Center was only 100K sqft and brought in-house in 2013 to at the time build the C6 dry sump LS3 and LS7
as well as the LS9 engines and now builds the C7 supercharged LT4 and LT5 engines as well as the Cadillac Blackwing LTA engine.
They also brought in house the aluminum frame manufacturing for the C7 into what is called the new body shop
And we always hear about the new 1M sqft paint booth that replaced the old 250K sqft paint booth for the second half of the 2018 model year.
Then there is the new much more flexible manufacturing/assembly process that that came on for the second half of the 2018 model run.
There is also added things like the dry scrubber waste water treatment equipment.
That is a whole lot of money to spend on a what up to now is basically a new way of building an existing FE C7 for what amounts to a couple model years or so. All of this points to what it apparently wiil take to build the new ME C8 and all of its possibly future variations. Just wondering if the new assembly process is truly flexible enough and has enough capacity to support both say an FE C7 based continuation vehicle as well as the new ME C8 and wondering if so, will possibly one of these "mythical" vehicles may or may not be sold under the Chevrolet banner.
Last edited by JHrinsin; 02-04-2019 at 02:57 PM.
02-04-2019, 03:07 PM
#354
So, they're both correct?!
02-04-2019, 03:18 PM
#355
E-Ray, 3LZ, ZER, LIFT
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See linked article below, which is from early 2013, after a year in which GM only sold approximately 14K Corvettes. It quotes Mark Reuss as saying it's profitable at that volume. After GM was "rescued" by the US gov, government auditors also concluded that Corvette Division was the most, and one of the few, profitable products at GM.
March '13 GM Authority "Corvette Profitable"
March '13 GM Authority "Corvette Profitable"
Quoting: "if we can double where we are today [in sales], we'll be okay. We can pay back our investment, turn a profit, and then the Corvette can continue to exist.''
In the Road & Track articles he's promoting the newly introduced but not yet available C7!
Last edited by JerryU; 02-04-2019 at 03:26 PM.
02-04-2019, 03:33 PM
#356
Who knows. Mark Reuss says one thing, and Tadge Juechter appears to say something different within a matter of weeks.
On the other hand, the statements may not be entirely inconsistent. I think Reuss was talking about C6 still being profitable in 2012 after early strong sales from 05-08 recouped the development costs. Jeuchter could have been referring to the level they wanted the C7 to sell at early to do the same for the C7.
On the other hand, the statements may not be entirely inconsistent. I think Reuss was talking about C6 still being profitable in 2012 after early strong sales from 05-08 recouped the development costs. Jeuchter could have been referring to the level they wanted the C7 to sell at early to do the same for the C7.
Last edited by Foosh; 02-04-2019 at 03:36 PM.
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02-04-2019, 03:38 PM
#357
E-Ray, 3LZ, ZER, LIFT
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^^^
:Iagree: Wonder if they know themselves! Large corporation cost accounting gets complicated and can give answers that fit the need of the day!
:Iagree: Wonder if they know themselves! Large corporation cost accounting gets complicated and can give answers that fit the need of the day!
Last edited by JerryU; 02-04-2019 at 03:39 PM.
02-04-2019, 03:41 PM
#358
True that. In my days as a senior VP at a major corporation, it was not at all uncommon for the CEO to say one thing, the COO to spin it differently, and the CFO to add a 3rd twist.
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JerryU (02-04-2019)
02-04-2019, 03:53 PM
#359
Drifting
This is true, the marginal materials and labor cost on higher trim vehicles is not near the price delta. Higher trimmed vehicles are much more profitable than base vehicles.
If you want a real life example as to how much more margin there is on a higher trim level car than a base, look at discounts for the various employee/family/supplier pricing tiers. Buy a base car, there is scant little of a discount taken off. Buy an optioned out variant, you can easily save five digits. Fact is, money is made on options. The marginal cost does not rise as fast as the marketability of the vehicle when you start upgrading.
Another example I like to give: when I bought a new V6 Mustang back in 2012, it was actually cheaper to buy the V6 car AND the same 5.0 in crate format that came in the V8, than it was to just buy the V8 car (obviously excluding the labor and accessory costs of transplanting it that wouldn't apply to a manufacturer, just the cost of the car and a second engine).
Another example I like to give: when I bought a new V6 Mustang back in 2012, it was actually cheaper to buy the V6 car AND the same 5.0 in crate format that came in the V8, than it was to just buy the V8 car (obviously excluding the labor and accessory costs of transplanting it that wouldn't apply to a manufacturer, just the cost of the car and a second engine).
02-04-2019, 03:56 PM
#360
Tadge needs to stick with tech, and stay out of the financials. Since he's not worth quoting with verifiable accuracy.
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Last edited by Skid Row Joe; 02-04-2019 at 03:56 PM.