I was curious what the Manufacturing cost is on a Gallardo. If the sticker is $160k. What is the markup from Manufacture to Retail? is the actual production cost is 40-50k? Does anyone know or care to elaborate?
No idea, but we can certainly estimate: Base cost: $160K (according to you) According to this article (http://www.economist.com/surveys/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3127302), profit margins for manufacturers are around 5%. However, this figures refers to high volume, low price cars, as opposed to low volume and high price that the Gallardo represents. Therefore, let us assume a liberal figure of 15% for Lamborghini. Dealers take anywhere from 5% on up, according to some guy I spoke with while purchasing my car. This could be bull, but let's assume 10% for each Gallardo sold goes to the dealer, but it's likely more than that. I'm probably not counting other stuff that's in there, but according to our estimates: The dealer buys the $160K car at around $140-145. It costs Lamborghini ~$120K to make a Gallardo and sells it for $140-145 to the dealer, who resells it at $160K. In my uninformed opinion, Lamborghini probably makes more than just $20K per car, so each car probably costs them $75-100K. But what do I know? Anyone here in the biz? Edit: don't forget R&D, which they have to recoup in the form of a markup to turn a profit.
it strictly depends on many,many factors.here are the most important. 1)chassis 2)engine 3)tranny/drivetrain 4)body 5)interior components 6)worker's wages/country of origin 7)testing 8)tooling 1)the chassis was derived from the 2003/4 audi A8;which is ALMOST a mass market product. 2)the engine is a rework of the 4.2l audi v8;now with an additional 2 cyl. helps keep price manageable.developements are always cheaper than scratch- built. 3)tranny/drivetrain adapted from existing audis. 4)bodies are manufactered by audi;pioneers in alu panels and c.fibre 5)interior components taken from audi models. 6)italian workers well paid;tax-breaks from italian gov. help keep costs down. 7)hot,wet,snow weather testing along with crash tests. 8)a lot of commonality with audis also keep tooling costs down;as in the Bentley CGT. all in all;i'd say that the gallardo costs significantly less to produce than a f430;but you pay extra for the ammount of technowizardry in the car like 4wheel drive!this also helps fill up the coffers for model developement.
The above makes a lot of sense - the relatively low cost of producing a G compared with its sales price enables the M to exist - as I understand it the one effectively subsidizes the other
Research and development? I would like that would be huge cost for a cutting edge vehicle produced by a tiny company like Lambo.
a lot of the R&D is taken care of by audi.lambo has entry to all of audi's tech departments,i.e wind-tunnels;data,materals and processess;etc. along with the already TUV/ISO approved audi parts,this leads to substantial cost savings. one good thing about audi ownership is that it's almost a one-way relationship. audi rarely bugs lambo whilst lambo is free to use audi tech. in other words,it's a win-win situation for us enthusiasts!
I'm not schooled in this but my gut would say 1/2 of retail (~$80k) to manufacture. Of course, marketing, legal, distribution, etc. probably tack a lot on top of that and I'd think Henry would be about right with $110-120k out of the factory to a dealer.
What makes you think one won't morph into the other? Every other car maker has done it. The only difference being the badge, maybe a grill/rear end change. If anything it takes enthusiasm away not knowing what the hell your driving.
audi is fiercely protective of lamborghini's niche-market place. the only poser right now is the similar r8/9(to the gallardo.) time will tell!
I don't think it costs Lambo 110-120k to build a G car. I look at a car like the VW Pheaton..V12 all leather, bigger car all around, and built in its own factory (state of the art) white glove treatment..the works. Dealer sells it for under 100k. The Lambo uses no where near the amount of materials the Pheaton does (although carbon fiber is expensive, the amount used in the Lambo is not enough to push it above the 100k mark in manufacturing costs), and I think the facility the build the pheaton in is far supperior to the Lambo factory. The Lambo uses alot of parts bin peices, whichs cuts costs even further. The car is expensive to buy only because of the name on the hood. When Audi comes out with there version of the G and it sells for under 100k, that will be the best indicator of what a G is really worth. I'll bet a G, is out the factory door for about 60k-80k.
There is also the issue of just how profitable these cars are. The Veyron, for example, was sold for "only" 1 million, but each car cost about 5 million (pounds, I believe) in development. That means they're losing money on every single car. The Phaeton is pretty much an A8 with other crap, so a lot of the development is already done. The question is, how profitable is the Gallardo vs. the Phaeton?
Using the Veyron as an example is not really fair. That car was never meant to be a full on production machine, but rather a showcase car, and a interest builder for the new line of Bugatti products. It was also a test bed for new technologies for VAG to show what can be done. The Gallardo is lambo's bread and butter car at the momment. This car was designed to be a car for which Lambo could turn a good profit on from the begining. That is why they went with an existing platform and peiced, the engine and the interior from the mother companies parts bin. That cut the development costs by a huge margine by eliminating the need to start from scratch and removed alot of the tooling costs. The G is a wonderful machine with stellar performance, but it is indeed a car designed with profit in mind, and in a way, capitalising on the Lamborghini name, which any good business would do when profit is the key.
Like you said, the G is a car that is exploiting the Lamborghini name in a lesser car, as opposed to the flagship Murcielago. And even though Lambo is probably making good money off it, as I said above, I think far too many people are not counting R&D and other factors into the production cost. If you're just counting raw materials, that's not really fair, either. My point is, we don't know exactly how profitable the car is, because even though they sell more of it than the Murcie, they cost much less. I'm not sure that they make more than 30% net.
It depends on what exactly you mean by "production cost"...Each car manufacturer has a factory to run, rent, rates, marketing, r&d, designers etc etc. The price of the cars (and everything we buy) is therefore completely different to the actual nuts and bolts material cost of build and components. You also need to consider what price the market will stand. As someone mentioned above, a Gallardo is a lot cheaper to build than an F430 yet they sit in the same market position and hence have a similair price. A friend of mine who used to work for BMW said that the cheapest cars on the road cost about £2000 to make and the most expensive about £15000 (in pure material and construction terms). If you think about it a BMW 318 dosn't contain THAT much more material than an M3, but look at the price difference!
