I hear all the arguments about how hard it is to get lights manufactured/approved/dealer prices, blah blah blah.
This is the real issue: one headlight = $1400. TWO = darn close to $3k. Can anyone please tell me why two headlights are worth 10% of the entire new MSRP of the vehicle? I can guarantee you GM doesn't spend 10% of its build budget of each truck on headlights.
There's a big difference in effort and cost in supplying parts and supplying a complete car. Less so with a car that's still running down the assembly line, but as soon as the new model comes out and that headlight becomes old news, life gets difficult.
I mean, not $1400 difficult. But you certainly can't expect to pay the cost of a fine-tuned production line running full tilt with no inventory or distribution costs.
Woody said:ncjay said:An enterprising person could see a business opportunity here.
Seriously. With a single work bay and a big storage unit, you could buy a car, remove the headlights and sell the rest to a junkyard.
And now you're starting to figure out how junkyards make their money 
BTW, when we were doing salvage Miatas, we rarely got good headlights. Pretty much every accident was head-on, and those that didn't take out the lights in the accident often had pre-existing damage.
Robbie said:I hear all the arguments about how hard it is to get lights manufactured/approved/dealer prices, blah blah blah.
This is the real issue: one headlight = $1400. TWO = darn close to $3k. Can anyone please tell me why two headlights are worth 10% of the entire new MSRP of the vehicle? I can guarantee you GM doesn't spend 10% of its build budget of each truck on headlights.
The OEM's supplier sells the lights to GM for profit. GM sells them to dealer's parts department for profit. Dealers sell them to customers for profit. There are probably millions of dollars worth of design time, testing time, certification costs, materials, shipping, etc in a set of headlights and everybody in that chain wants to get paid for their efforts. Certainly GM prices their vehicles to account for all of that, but the Silverado has to compete on price with the F-150, Ram, Tundra, etc so costs are kept reasonably in check. There is no competition for a headlight for a specific year/model though, so prices can climb. Once you've bought the vehicle, parts costs can be whatever the OEM wants until the aftermarket eventually ponies up the money to reproduce/certify their own lights. The current booming stock market is a result of lots of people/corporations making healthy profits and those don't come from selling things just above cost. Welcome to the thriving economy.
The dealer wants $1400.
The GM parts online guys want $850.
The car-parts online junkyard guys want $900-$950 for used.
Im going to ask my insurance lady what she thinks
Datsun310Guy said:The dealer wants $1400.
The GM parts online guys want $850.
The car-parts online junkyard guys want $900-$950 for used.
Im going to ask my insurance lady what she thinks
Sounds like a comp claim for hitting a bird....
Yea I had looked into replacing the lights on the speed 6 but decided I'll give polishing them a try first
Are the lenses of a headlight zero deductible because of "glass coverage"? If so.....
Sometimes I wonder if car companies only bother selling parts because they'd get sued or something if they didn't. I've seen "berkeley off" pricing on even more mundane stuff, like $7 Chrysler lug nuts, you know, the ones where the stamped chromed cap falls off the fifth time somebody puts an impact gun on it.
And we have a WINNER!
All manufacturers price these parts based on how much the insurance companies will pay because almost every one who buys a new car will have full coverage. Ever notice when cars get to a certain age most parts prices come down?
The only other time parts prices come down is when the manufacturer has to pay for the part either due to a "special policy" or recall. I remember a catalytic converter that was priced at $2900 untill the EPA said the manufacture had to recall them. The next week the parts was priced at $280
DimgDatsun310Guy said:
The dealer wants $1400.
The GM parts online guys want $850.
The car-parts online junkyard guys want $900-$950 for used.
Im going to ask my insurance lady what she thinks
slefain said:We had reproduction lenses at Year One that were sold as "off road use only" since they were not DOT approved. That lasted til we got busted and had to yank the whole line. DOT doesn't mess around with their lighting.
Which is ironic, because DOT standards are stupid and lame. Light up the road 10 feet in front of the car so that your distance vision is all screwed up, throw a bunch of light up high so that oncoming traffic is blinded.
I like this Volvo except for its headlights. They are very, very bad. They are extremely bright... at lighting up the road. Anything past about 20 yards is a mystery. I can't remember the last time I or anyone else ran into the road, why does it need to be lit up?
BrokenYugo said:Sometimes I wonder if car companies only bother selling parts because they'd get sued or something if they didn't. I've seen "berkeley off" pricing on even more mundane stuff, like $7 Chrysler lug nuts, you know, the ones where the stamped chromed cap falls off the fifth time somebody puts an impact gun on it.
Automakers are only required to stock parts for warranty reasons. Anything else is a bonus.
Wait until you call up Ford for a NPT fitting for a 15 year old truck and they want $150. They raise the list price on old stock every year until they obsolete it. In a way, this makes sense - parts have to pay for their storage space. At the same time, $150 for a NPT fitting?
Ford can be CHEAP for in-production parts though. I remember when the Mazdaspeed guys were all drooling over the Focus RS engine because the parts might interchange with the DISI engine, and the Focus RS con rods were like $35 each, cranks under $200, blocks also silly cheap, etc. (Of course, Ford changed some critical dimension, I think wristpin diameter)
Knurled. said:slefain said:We had reproduction lenses at Year One that were sold as "off road use only" since they were not DOT approved. That lasted til we got busted and had to yank the whole line. DOT doesn't mess around with their lighting.
Which is ironic, because DOT standards are stupid and lame. Light up the road 10 feet in front of the car so that your distance vision is all screwed up, throw a bunch of light up high so that oncoming traffic is blinded.
I like this Volvo except for its headlights. They are very, very bad. They are extremely bright... at lighting up the road. Anything past about 20 yards is a mystery. I can't remember the last time I or anyone else ran into the road, why does it need to be lit up?
The biggest thing currently pushing the headlight market would have to be IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), which is owned by the insurance companies. They recently started evaluating headlight systems. (within the last couple years)
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/headlight-evaluation
So they actually are pushing the market to make better headlights than some of the blinding stuff we have been seeing recently.
As far as shoving more expensive stuff on the car, thats all bling that the manufacturers decide to content their cars with. They could just as easily still use an old sealed beam and pass IIRC
I worked in the auto industry for 25 years. At the end of a model run we would try and get the OEMs to buy a large bunch of parts for spares. They don't want the inventory, but will occasionally order a small run of parts . Resurrecting old tooling, setting up production machinery, running samples for approval, interrupting your regular production runs, etc all adds up really quickly, and results in stupid pricing when they only order a hundred pieces, or less at a time. During regular production of a current model the parts plant will run off hundreds or thousands of pieces in a single shift, so the pricing at that point is surprisingly low. We even had to keep an inventory of the obsolete tooling, "properly stored", when none of it even belonged to us. Spares in the auto industry are a general PITA.
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