Manufacturing Cost of a DeLorean

[Dangermouse]

I'm not sure that I have ever seen this, but does anyone know the actual DMCL ex-works manufacturing cost of a car?

I know they were supposed to sell for $12000 and that retail price gradually rose to $25000 so I would assume that the manufacturing costs would be >$12k

I am just thinking of fixed costs like actual purchased parts and number of man hours per car, rather than variable costs like power, overheads, financing etc.

[WelmoedJ]

After so long a time, I guess only guys like Nick Sutton would be able to provide an estimate or something more accurately.
I haven't the foggiest...


BTW: I noticed the change in avatar: A spitting image, Dermot? :)

[Dangermouse]

I have put a link in Nicks book thread, so hopefully he will chime in soon.

The only comment I could find in his book was a reference to 4343 cars being shipped with a "value" of 17,500GBP each. I assume by 'value', he means sales value.

OT: It is actually a spitting alpaca that I met on vacation recently on one of your islands. My family claim that there is a strong resemblance

[LEVY]

I have put a link in Nicks book thread, so hopefully he will chime in soon.

The only comment I could find in his book was a reference to 4343 cars being shipped with a "value" of 17,500GBP each. I assume by 'value', he means sales value.

OT: It is actually a spitting alpaca that I met on vacation recently on one of your islands. My family claim that there is a strong resemblance

I might have some documentation regarding costs, I'll check this weekend to see what I find.


LEVY

[pezzonovante88]

I wonder what the dealer cost/invoice was....

[WelmoedJ]

I wonder what the dealer cost/invoice was....

Guessing: at the time the dealer margin was by far better than it is now.
I'm not sure what the dealer margin is these days, but in those days they had a good time.

Car dealer, chime in?

[nick sutton]

This looks like another labour of love. Yes I have a lot of data on the cost of the car some material that I retained from my time at DMC other material has been supplied by other. Where this is the case I'll accredit the person supplying the data.

One of the problems of the material cost (also labour cost) is that inflation was rampant in 198/1980 this also affected the exchange rate of the DM and French franc. So the material costs moved a lot over two/three years.

I'll have a dig around and see what I can find.

Nick

[ALEXAKOS]

By "the cost" do you mean what is left for profit out of the 25k? Or just material value to make the D?

Well, since all expenditures contribute to the cost, including the building of the facility, labor, UK loan interest etc I am afraid the cost but have left minimal profit.
Every single new release of a new model would have increased that margin of profit and dropped the cost figure. By the debts left behind it the DMC must have cost 50K!!:spank:

[Dangermouse]

Personally, I was asking about the actual fixed costs of material (all of the 2700 parts) and labo(u)r hours (actual craftsman manhours) in whatever way DMCL recorded that.

I think "overheads" like loads, electricity, financing, is a separate catagory, but if Nick has an amount per car for that, that would certainly be interesting.

[nick sutton]

[QUOTE=Dangermouse;99794]Personally, I was asking about the actual fixed costs of material (all of the 2700 parts) and labo(u)r hours (actual craftsman manhours) in whatever way DMCL recorded that.



This is available at a point in time. And more - I think? As I said I'll dig around.

What I do know is that the standard cost for labour hours per car was 50 hours - the first cars according to my calculation - including training time - lost time due to faulty bodies etc was close to 500 hours per car.
I need a little time to give you something more accurate.
Nick

[nick sutton]

I'm searching the remains of my records for cost data 18363and came across some of the parts history cards used in Coventry to track the cost and engineering changes of parts - this is the original front end fascia card. I'm still searching for more detailed data.

[ALEXAKOS]

Not to mention parts cost. They ordered parts for 30.000 vehicles right? So their per item cost was lower than it would have been if ordered for just the less than 9000 produced.

By the automotive production rule of thumb, aprox 30% goes to the labour of a car and 12%-15% to the materials used.
Again these are figures of a car's street price from modern car plant production.
Then a 45% is for the company and depending of the deal, dealers play between 8%-10% piece of the pie.
So playing with those figures:
$3000 = Material cost
$7500 = Labour

But for those times, I am sure Nick could give us a bit more specific values on what went where in the DMC production.

[ALEXAKOS]

I'm searching the remains of my records for cost data 18363and came across some of the parts history cards used in Coventry to track the cost and engineering changes of parts - this is the original front end fascia card. I'm still searching for more detailed data.

I see on that card that the price was the same on both orders. But the existence of such history cards could mean that they did not have a fixed price for the total of the parts per manufacturer?? Then the prices vary. That is a lot of finance digging to do there Nick. And if J.Z.D. was cooking with his expenditures to cover other costs then the figure may come out totally distorted.

[pezzonovante88]

Guessing: at the time the dealer margin was by far better than it is now.
I'm not sure what the dealer margin is these days, but in those days they had a good time.

Car dealer, chime in?

Yeah, I'm in the car business and there sure isn't the same kind of margin they had in the old days!

[ALEXAKOS]

If I can recall, DMC required dealers to chip as well! Becoming their dealer you had to buy DMC shares.
Here is the video Brochure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hjgr6ifmdM

[David T]

With so many variables, materiel costs, labor, advertising, the varying # of units produced per man-hour, shipping, all of the repairs and parts needed to be done at the QAC centers, amortizing the huge expense of the factory and the financing, it would be very difficult to calculate the true cost over 30 years ago! One quick and "dirty" way would be to know what the mark-up was and remove that from the selling price to the dealer. That is the # DMC figured the cost to build the car was. It may not be the actual cost but the calculated cost.
David Teitelbaum

[john 05141]

500 hours per car??? wow!
That would mean 1 person would work on it for 62 working days.
How much working hours does it take to build a medium size car nowadays with all the robots?

Jan

[nick sutton]

500 hours was for the first cars only - I believe the standard cost was 50 hours but I'm checking
Nick