I'm selling my HPF Drag M3 BEFORE MFEST

Originally Posted by STORMER

..... What?!

Regardless of the business end it still was a showcase machine, all the effort and licensing blah blah just to drop it now?

No support from me

Stormer, he is still keeping the Track car.

THAT is the real "showcase machine" for the HPF S54 offerings.

IMO, the Drag car went too far off the S54 Platform reservation at least 18 months ago.

Myself and others for years complained about the ridiculously overpriced kits and components. Now a better turbo kit is coming to market that's when you'll see HPF turbo kit prices drop. For me and maybe others it won't make a difference I won't go the HPF route. I will say the customer service at HPF is amazing but at the end of the day cost and product quality wins. Chris has done amazing things for the M3 community...sorry HPF fan boys your day is coming to a close.

Originally Posted by iwantto

Myself and others for years complained about the ridiculously overpriced kits and components. Now a better turbo kit is coming to market that's when you'll see HPF turbo kit prices drop. For me and maybe others it won't make a difference I won't go the HPF route. I will say the customer service at HPF is amazing but at the end of the day cost and product quality wins. Chris has done amazing things for the M3 community...sorry HPF fan boys your day is coming to a close.

Thanks for the compliments. We're definitely not leaving the M3 market, that's for sure. This week alone we finished 2 more M3's and 2 Supras and still have 4 more M3's in the shop getting work done. You haven't seen me on the forums much because I'm a computer programmer and have been working on our web-site solid since November. I'll keep you guys posted with the sale of the drag M3. The new owner will get quite the experience.

Chris.

Sell it and reinvest in your business, Smart move !!

Originally Posted by iwantto

Myself and others for years complained about the ridiculously overpriced kits and components. Now a better turbo kit is coming to market that's when you'll see HPF turbo kit prices drop. For me and maybe others it won't make a difference I won't go the HPF route. I will say the customer service at HPF is amazing but at the end of the day cost and product quality wins. Chris has done amazing things for the M3 community...sorry HPF fan boys your day is coming to a close.

Comments like this annoy me.. fan of HPF or not.. the kits are not overpriced. JP put a great deal of time engineering every component of that kit.. each piece looks like it belongs there and is well done.. rapid prototyping, cad designing, production runs, etc.. all very costly.

Others will make kits that cost less because they're hand made, or don't have custom cad designed brackets/etc.. and they may very well likely run just as well but anyone who would want to make a kit that competes with HPF's fit/finish is going to wind up having to charge the same amount, if not more (being the big rush of those purchasing turbo kits for e46 m3's has already occurred).

Lets say HPF makes $5k on each stage 1 sold.. if they were to cut the prices from (what is it $14k?) to say $11k .. they would need to sell FIVE TIMES AS MANY KITS (or like 750 kits) to make the same amount they made selling 150 kits at $14k. (I'm speaking rather 'general' here, but you get the idea).

I think they priced their kits pretty well all things considered. Yes, as you get up into the stage 3+'s it starts getting ridiculous, and I'm sure they make way more than $5k on those kits.. but how many do they sell? Maybe 10% or so are Stage 3+?

Remember, these cars NEW were $50k+ .. spending another $15k to make double the power isn't to shabby..

But then again you can pick up an E46 M3 for less than a new Jetta so I guess the customer base has changed.

Originally Posted by MarcusLSB

Comments like this annoy me.. fan of HPF or not.. the kits are not overpriced. JP put a great deal of time engineering every component of that kit.. each piece looks like it belongs there and is well done.. rapid prototyping, cad designing, production runs, etc.. all very costly.

Others will make kits that cost less because they're hand made, or don't have custom cad designed brackets/etc.. and they may very well likely run just as well but anyone who would want to make a kit that competes with HPF's fit/finish is going to wind up having to charge the same amount, if not more (being the big rush of those purchasing turbo kits for e46 m3's has already occurred).

Lets say HPF makes $5k on each stage 1 sold.. if they were to cut the prices from (what is it $14k?) to say $11k .. they would need to sell FIVE TIMES AS MANY KITS (or like 750 kits) to make the same amount they made selling 150 kits at $14k. (I'm speaking rather 'general' here, but you get the idea).

I think they priced their kits pretty well all things considered. Yes, as you get up into the stage 3+'s it starts getting ridiculous, and I'm sure they make way more than $5k on those kits.. but how many do they sell? Maybe 10% or so are Stage 3+?

Remember, these cars NEW were $50k+ .. spending another $15k to make double the power isn't to shabby..

But then again you can pick up an E46 M3 for less than a new Jetta so I guess the customer base has changed.

+1

The M3 is a niche market; you don't have nearly as many M3s around as you do Civics, Camrys or the like. That means your economies of scale can't depend on the wider market base. And even if the customer base has changed, the E46 M3 is a discontinued line and will only tend to get harder to find. A specialty item like this turbo kit is always going to be a an item that demands a price premium because of it's differentiation.

If you look at a more common platform like an S4, Evo or WRX, kits are likely to be much less expensive... depending on what you are looking at doing of course.

Originally Posted by FragNasty

+1

The M3 is a niche market; you don't have nearly as many M3s around as you do Civics, Camrys or the like. That means your economies of scale can't depend on the wider market base. And even if the customer base has changed, the E46 M3 is a discontinued line and will only tend to get harder to find. A specialty item like this turbo kit is always going to be a an item that demands a price premium because of it's differentiation.

If you look at a more common platform like an S4, Evo or WRX, kits are likely to be much less expensive... depending on what you are looking at doing of course.

Exactly, and most kits aren't of the same caliber as the HPF kit. Someone who hand builds each component makes less per kit, but has less initial costs.. those like HPF who engineered in cad most of the parts have high setup fee's for machining, and production.. often wiping the profits out of the first 10+ kits.. and worse they can't really mass produce the parts to keep the setup/machining costs down.. likely ordering parts in batches of 10 or 20 as opposed to making a risky assumption that they'll sell say 100 kits and ordering 100 manifolds, etc and then sitting on hundreds of thousands of inventory until it sells out, only to widen the profit margin by a few points.

I may not be a fan of Chris or how my situation went down but truth is building a kit to the caliber of the HPF kit is no easy task, and its risky. When Chris built the first HPF Turbo kit Active Autowerks had already been building turbo bmw kits (years prior) and stopped doing it because of the complexities and costs. Chris was taking a very big risk.. it clearly paid off.. but hindsight is 20/20.

Originally Posted by MarcusLSB

Comments like this annoy me.. fan of HPF or not.. the kits are not overpriced. JP put a great deal of time engineering every component of that kit.. each piece looks like it belongs there and is well done.. rapid prototyping, cad designing, production runs, etc.. all very costly.

Others will make kits that cost less because they're hand made, or don't have custom cad designed brackets/etc.. and they may very well likely run just as well but anyone who would want to make a kit that competes with HPF's fit/finish is going to wind up having to charge the same amount, if not more (being the big rush of those purchasing turbo kits for e46 m3's has already occurred).

Lets say HPF makes $5k on each stage 1 sold.. if they were to cut the prices from (what is it $14k?) to say $11k .. they would need to sell FIVE TIMES AS MANY KITS (or like 750 kits) to make the same amount they made selling 150 kits at $14k. (I'm speaking rather 'general' here, but you get the idea).

I think they priced their kits pretty well all things considered. Yes, as you get up into the stage 3+'s it starts getting ridiculous, and I'm sure they make way more than $5k on those kits.. but how many do they sell? Maybe 10% or so are Stage 3+?

Remember, these cars NEW were $50k+ .. spending another $15k to make double the power isn't to shabby..

But then again you can pick up an E46 M3 for less than a new Jetta so I guess the customer base has changed.

^^^^^^^ well said marcus ^^^^^^^

I too agree

Originally Posted by MarcusLSB

Exactly, and most kits aren't of the same caliber as the HPF kit. Someone who hand builds each component makes less per kit, but has less initial costs.. those like HPF who engineered in cad most of the parts have high setup fee's for machining, and production.. often wiping the profits out of the first 10+ kits.. and worse they can't really mass produce the parts to keep the setup/machining costs down.. likely ordering parts in batches of 10 or 20 as opposed to making a risky assumption that they'll sell say 100 kits and ordering 100 manifolds, etc and then sitting on hundreds of thousands of inventory until it sells out, only to widen the profit margin by a few points.

I may not be a fan of Chris or how my situation went down but truth is building a kit to the caliber of the HPF kit is no easy task, and its risky. When Chris built the first HPF Turbo kit Active Autowerks had already been building turbo bmw kits (years prior) and stopped doing it because of the complexities and costs. Chris was taking a very big risk.. it clearly paid off.. but hindsight is 20/20.

Kits for the e36 m3 costs about half compared to the e46. As the average owner become younger, i believe the demand for affordable performance upgrades is going to be there!

That prices will drop as the competition rise is only natural. How the quality will be for the less expensive options, only time will tell!

HPF have great customer service, high quality parts, and following their development is very thrilling! Thumbsup Chris!

Chris,

Good luck with the sale.

If our laws would allow import of second hand cars, I would have bought it the minute I read it. We cant import 2nd hand cars

Hope the next owner will raise the E46 M3 bar.