pitstops

you know as a consumer i am glad there are cheaper alternatives. these Japanese parts cost way too much...

A mugen cf hardtop in Japan sells for $4900.
http://www.mugen-power.com/street/s2000/part/aero.html

kingmotorsports a mugen distributor sells it for $5950
http://www.kingmotorsports.com/category.aspx?cat=8

bulletproof sells it for $5650
http://bulletproofautomotive.com/cat...tail.php?ID=44

I am sure in japan if you go through a mugen distributor you can get the hardtop at a cheaper price. I am thinking $4400, 10% off retail....nobody in the usa pays full retail for parts, we dont pay retail for a hks exhaust so there is no reason to pay full retail for a japanese part in japan. We actually pay 20% off retail for an hks exhaust.

Of course if we get the hardtop here in the usa, then we have to pay for the shipping and customs fee but i think its unfair how we have to pay full japanese retail plus shipping and customs fee.

E-autosports

Many times it is deffinently unfair for the consumer to be paying full pop and then some on parts which of course in Japan would be less expensive. The problem is in the shipping, customs, and other charges, as well as the time and effort vendors take to actually bring the product into the US. However, going through an authorized us distributor would deffinently drop a lot of the costs. The reason why a lot of products are so hard to get is because there are no official us distributors because there is not a high enough demand for one. This in turn causes problems because grey marketers fill in the gap, bring in items themselves instead of going through a distributor, and end up charging consumers a lot less than actual vendors due, thus nullifying the need for a vendor to actually want to carry that product, making the product harder and more unlikely for them to bring in because it would end up losing them money.

Chris_Lum

[QUOTE=zbrewha863,Sep 17 2007, 02:32 PM]

Second, the exhaust is not identical because (a) I really doubt your muffler shop has an engineer that can make a Helmholtz resonator like Amuse has on their exhaust and (b) your exhaust is stainless, not titanium.

LostMotion

You're practically daring me to put my stock header on and head to Church this weekend.

LostMotion

You are looking at only shipping cost and not the cost of capital to import and carry the item in inventory, the cost of real estate here is the US and the cost of labor (not including profit) to make it all happen. Plus, all that above activity needs some profit to justify the effort. The problem gets compounded by having 15 shops selling XYZ parts so that no economy of scale can be produced.

Now King does have that scale and I think their prices on Mugen parts may be a little out wack, but maybe they would rather sell one hardtop and make $1000 profit than sell three and make a $1000 profit. I wouldn't blame them given the costs of moving and storing the part.

Johnny Sack

try it. i made 227 to the tires on a mustang with the stock header in place, it actually does a helluva job. IF i ever ditched it, itd be for one of Johns headers.

zbrewha863

You are right, titanium can be bent -- it is just a very bad idea for exhausts, unless you use thick titanium, which the Amuse doesn't do because they like to keep it light and use high-quality titanium, rather than Greddy who uses low-quality titanium. When you're talking about material that costs upwards of $15/lb to make, let alone purchase to use in the exhausts, you can easily see how the price jumps. Say an Amuse dual is 20lbs ... 20lbs of the highest-quality titanium is going to cost them upwards of $900 (if you don't include liquid metal and such) just to purchase the raw material.

It is absolutely retarded to say "I'm not impressed with Amuse" and then say "I've never actually seen one of their products in person." You can't judge something that you have absolutely no experience in -- and you never know what that member did to the exhaust to make it do that. I have seen 3 Amuse exhausts in person (like, held them in my hand), and several more at shows (100s online) and I have never seen one that looks less than top notch -- anyone who has experience will tell you the same. On top of that, what I said was that they have the best welds, something you apparently have not seen and did not even address ... ?

Chris_Lum

[QUOTE=zbrewha863,Sep 17 2007, 07:10 PM] You are right, titanium can be bent -- it is just a very bad idea for exhausts, unless you use thick titanium, which the Amuse doesn't do because they like to keep it light and use high-quality titanium, rather than Greddy who uses low-quality titanium.

Ouhei

Really? I thought it was much further than that...

moogleii

Pardon my ignorance, but why is the orange peel effect not a sign of quality? It just reminds me of factory clear coat.