Excellent biz Q.
Purchased through P2F when its produced in X-qty. The mark up will be minimal for the folks who contributed $ to this project to cover our expense and effort. It is not our desire to have a huge mark up(knowing this is the only source for the VR rack) otherwise no one can afford it and what would be the point asking folks to contribute that even we can't afford? but by the same token, folks need to understand it is a high precision part and the vendor behind this is a top notch Tier-1 doing what they can with a 30yr old rack w/o any drawing. Thus the higher the number, the lower per donation is needed to lower the risk for all early supporters. We have been very transparent of the MVO invoice and we will continue to do so to be fair to those who donated have the right to know and its their project as well not just P2F.
You can have a rough idea of the ~$2k/ea. quote for ~qty of 100 JUST for the rack and pinion and that would be the cheapest way to go but opens to too many variables that is impossible to control. MVO knows at 100 people, we probably can not afford a complete new rack and they are right. and If a proto(or 2) is made, it will be made from a cheaper materiel for validation purpose only, not for long term use so P2F will not be the only car that has this VR rack like someone has suggested. This is not a scam but a tricky project to manage and please those who have $ involved but its worth the trouble JMO.
So far, besides time, $-wise, P2F had made up the difference of $1100 for phase 1 to balance the invoice to keep MVO happy and willing to move on. We can't keep repeating this pattern.
For the late adopters, the price will be higher. The math works better in one big number than 2 smaller numbers so we hope there won't be any late adopters for LHD. For the RHD folks, MVO wants a RHD oem manual rack to go thru Phase 1 to confirm it is indeed a mirror image because it was not the case on other cars in the past. This is part of the hassle of reverse engineering w/o drawings.
P2F runs a very tight operation while keeping the overhead to a minimal, in 2yrs of doing this, it has been fun and worked well. How can we stay in biz? this is not our only gig and we are hungry for better product 1st and let the money come 2nd. We are the middle man in this case but not with the typical middle man mark up. Prime is a very small family.
