<rant>

Aftermarket Upgrades are insanely expensive! Why? Because people will pay double to triple the fair price.

If you do your homework you will find parts on Ebay that sell for half what you spend retail, from the same vendor. This tells me they mark up thier prices 100-200%. I believe they should make a profit, but I should not have to mortgage my house to modify my Mustang.

If we refuse to buy at inflated rates they will have to lower thier prices. This should be a hobby affordable for the middle class, not for the rich few.

I do applaude the shops that keep it affordable, I hope they prosper. As for the Roush's and Saleen's of the world, you sell overpriced crap and I will not give you my business.


</rant>

 

It has always cost money to play. I have to agree that Saleen and Roush overprice their tuner crap. I dont buy auto stuff on Ebay if I can avoid it but there are some good deals out there if you look.

 

I agree with you. The Roush and Saleen parts are over priced.

 

It really boils down to supply and demand! We S197'ers are demanding that we mod our cars, the companies see this and mark the price up to what we will pay.
IF you think that is crazy go and look at what parts for Sn95's and Foxes cost wayyyyy lower in cost.
I have a 1991 Firebird I'm redoing right now, if you wanna see cheap prices look into those. LCA's which is really close in design to the S197 model are only $60...

 

bro, they have to eat and pay bills too. if you don't like it, then buy the **** on e-Bay.

it's really that simple.

 

Thank you very much SonicBlue And, what kind of customer service do you get from eBay? - Little if any.

 

Haha you think parts for this car are expensive? Try modding a corvette or even an exotic.

 

I agree that some of the prices that we are being charged for parts are ludicrous. Funny thing is I posted about buying OBX long tubes on Ebay and got basically guilted to oblivion, and boned on about buying cheap crap off ebay...until the headers arrived, and WERE SWEET! It was at this point that people started taking some notice. I have noticed that there is also allot of snobbery about parts out there too.

I have made allot of modifications to my GT and always made an informed and intelligient decision when buying parts. That is why I love this board.

There are some crazy prices out there on some of these parts, and really no way to justify that outlandish price. But there is a sucker born every minute, and a fool and his money are soon parted. This is what makes the world go around. Supply and demand. Capitalism.

I have weeded through and bought most of my mods for about half of what most people are paying. Are my headers American Racing? No. Are my cams Competition Cams? No. Is my intake C&L? No.

Is my car fast as hell? Yes sir, and getting faster all the time.

There is nothing wrong with charging an arm and a leg if you can get away with it. I am more amazed at the guilting and snobbery that I see than with the price gouging. I don't really think the vendors are to blame for that. I think the manufacturers are the ones that are laughing all the way to the bank.

 

Whooeeee! Yet you have a Shelby hood and Agent 47 stuff... talk about supporting price gouging...

(sorry, I couldn't resist! )

 

I got my agent 47 ish for $250
and the shelby hood ( I will never buy anything shelby ever again btw) was paid for by the insurance company. Touche!

 

Strange thread. You can't blame a vendor for what he carries. BUT, you can be sure they will be there if you have a problem with your choice of product from them. If you have to have name brand, then be prepared to pay whatever the market will bear, plain and simple. You can get, quality parts, both show & go, without the big names attached. Just do your homework, as noted earlier. Small manufactures need the pricing for all their R & D they put into it, and it is usually well worth it. But those are unique parts., and stand separate from the mass of things out there. There is another thread about dead pedals. New mfg out there offering one for $30. More affordable, and actually looks useable vs the big name, big price versions. Again you have to do your research. Name brand is not alway's the best choice. Unless of course you care what the Jone's think.

 

Most online retailers mark up the price 100% from the manufactuer, so say a part cost the retailer $50.00 they will sell it for $100.00. This is common afaik, a friend of mine was sales manager for an online auto parts store.

Alot of the stuff is high because business are trying to recoup R&D costs, but mostly it's just marked up because people are willing to burn a hole in their credit cards. Roush louvers for example, $160.00 for bare plastic, moulded into a louver, thats pretty rediculous IMO.

Some things are decently priced, for example some of silver horse stuff is affordable, but for the most part we are going to have to wait awhile for prices to drop on most items. A supercharger with all the fixins' is like $1500 for older cars but $5000.00 for our cars, that seems crazy to me.

Anyway, with that said, I choose to not buy anything. Sure I'd love to buy a ton of crap for my car, but no way am I going to max out the credit cards to do so.

Guess the moral of the story is, if your not willing to pay, no goodies for you. Not like we can go on a consumer strike.

Think of it this way, you'll have one of the most unique Mustangs in this body style around, since 99% of the ones I see running around have tons of add on's and sticker stripes. Having a stock looking car is super rare!

 

true!

 

I have NO Idea where you came up with that one. I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt thats not the case here or any other parts place I have worked. And, as a manufacturer of parts also - I can tell you that people that purchase parts from us (online retailers) dont mark them up 100% - not even close to that.

That may be true for consumables like groceries and things like that - but I dont believe its true across the board by any chance.

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Well,rants are good to get of our systems,lol.I just want to inject that there are some things i would buy if the prices were just a bit lower,but end up not buying at all.I think good service is overplayed if the prices are obvious out of wack with other vendors and they have a good reputation as well.There have been a good number of sites i have looked at for all of 2 minutes never to return because of PRICE.That is NOT aimed at anyone,just a statement from joe consumer.

I think ebay has become an option some feel pushed to.

 

Sonic,

Thats what I love to see, a little passion about something.

I do admit I did go a bit strong on my comments, to get the debate rolling. I salute the guys out there keeping it affordable. Silver Horse has alot of really good parts that seem very resonable. Alot of places could learn from their example. I have a problem with companies that charge $200+ for unfinished plastic. I know you have to make a living, but how much money do you need?

I have found alot of good quality stuff on Ebay for good prices. If someone has a problem because I bought something off Ebay, or bought a non brand name product, that's their problem. I do this for me, not impress everybody with the names on the parts I bought.

Parts I bought on Ebay:
MAC Straight Shot Intake $79.00 (Normaly $179-$199)
Yellow Fog Light Bulbs $2.00 (Normaly $16-$45)
GT500 Spoiler Painted $130.00 (Looks Fantastic! Fits Great! Normaly $250-$350)
AXXES Ipod adapter and XM Radio $235 (only saved $20 on that)

I do apologize to anybody at Roush that saw this. I looked around and their performance parts are fairly resonable. So I may have been wrong about them. Sorry.......

 

That's not a GT500 spoiler. It's a blown ABS plastic, sort of, replica of the fiberglass Ford GT500 spoiler. The difference is in the details.

 

Sorry....GT500 style spoiler. I still saved $$$$$$, and it looks cool.

 

I also do not appreciate vendors that slap a high price tag on an untested product.

 

What gets my goat is the shipping costs. I understand it costs $$$ to get from here to there but free shipping gets my $$$ almost all the time. Also I dislike the free shipping but we got to charge you for Handling costs (Summitt Racing).
Also I tryed Summit Racings Price Matcher, I would have saved $50 on a A/F Wideband Gauge but only if I used a CC, no cash or checks, only orders over the phone, no web orders.
Make it to hard to buy and I'll walk away every time.