3/10/2005

Race Cars

In the article Racing to the Dealership:How Motorsports Affect Our Cars it talks about how lots of cars are designed by looking at race cars. Sports cars are a major industry in the U.S. Every car manufacturer has a sports car that they sell. In this article it talks about when designing a car they look at the suspension, the power and make up the engines, the overall design of the car. Which I think this is great because you can use these race cars to market and sell your much simpler car. If one kind of brand is doing well on the race track then that will help your sells. Another thing that manufacturers are doing is bring back the "name" of some popular muscle cars that they discontinued. For some car enthusiast this great and they will buy it just for the name alone.

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

I think they've kind of always done this, but perhaps they are doing it more now that NASCAR is so popular.

It's actually rather similar to how PCs have evolved - the big manufacturers don't make much money (think Gateway), but the niche suppliers of trendy parts make monopoliy profits until their invention is commoditized (think Iomega).