- Hey, you're pretty cool.
So am I,
and that's why we're both frustrated
that car companies refuse to sell us a cool car.
You know, that subcompact diesel manual
slick top wagon with rear wheel drive
and heated cloth sports seats.
Yes, no, there's a good reason
this stuff doesn't exist.
Even if that reason is deeply uncool.
You would never believe the amount of money
car companies spend to get stuff
through crash and safety regulations.
Look at that cute little Lotus behind me.
It's adorable, but Lotus spent something like $50 million,
getting the Elise through American legislative requirements,
and this is by the way on a car that was already engineered
and passed all other worldwide regulations and crash test,
and which received a US government exemption
on side impact and smart airbag requirements.
$50 million is a lot of money,
especially for a car that's sold in such small numbers.
It's not like that was a Toyota Camry,
which would sell 2 million units over its life cycle,
across which all of the development costs can be spread.
I know.
Lotus sold just 6,325 Elises and Exiges here.
Divide 50 million by 6,325, and you get $7,905 per car.
That means 20% of the Elises's
original $39,985 window sticker
went to cover the costs of engineering it,
just so it could be sold at US dealerships.
Product planners literally fight over things
that cost a couple of pennies per car.
Things like replacing red turn signals with amber ones,
which have been proven to actually save real human lives
and your car still ain't got them because they cost pennies.
So $8,000 is an astronomical sum of money per car.
The average powertrain only costs manufacturers
something like 3,000.
Of course, there's an easy way to avoid some of these costs.
You engineer all this stuff in from the get go,
design one car that meets all worldwide standards,
but that would require car executives
that weren't dropped on their heads.
Look, this happens all the time.
The Lotus's only real competitor,
the Alfa Romeo 4C, somehow wasn't designed
to meet US crash and safety regulations.
So when someone with actual brainwaves noticed.
they had to re-engineer the entire car.
At least they then had the money
to fix those awful Euro headlights,
which were put into production
because Alfa ran out of money
during the car's original development.
Why?
Because whoever was in charge
clearly had been dropped on his hea,
and without an overhead air airbag,
which is probably the next requirement
that'll cost $15 million to develop,
but since every one of those 15 million cars sold in America
will need an overhead airbag,
the development will cost $1 per car.
Unlike say the per car costs of developing
a Hellcat powered, manual transmission rear drive minivan,
because six of us want one,
including me and I don't have the money to pay for it,
and so they'd probably cost $10 million a piece,
and this is why we can't have nice things,
because the cool stuff only makes financial sense,
if millions of people want it
and millions of people wanting something
makes it decidedly uncool.
Trust me, I know this from personal experience,
why I'm so cool.
You're not an idiot.
You know how this stuff works,
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