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I remember reading a magazine article about Detroit's less successful products written by some kind of forensic accountant type. It was in someone's office - damn - wish I'd made a copy of it. I'm doing this from a sometimes very foggy memory.
He used other examples as well, but when talking about the SSR, he took into account GM's development costs, the cost of tooling to stamp the fenders, ASC's development costs, etc,. Using the original projections of 75000 units to amortize the costs, and taking into account the factory rebates and financing costs of holding inventory, he was estimating the 24000 unit production at a cost per unit in excess of $100000. That figure was tempered by the fact the SSR used so many components from other products, and those development costs were not taken into account. Engine, chassis, transmission, etc were all considered as freebies.
Also had a long chat with a hot rod builder friend who does some beautiful work. He felt if he was building an SSR from scratch, and tried to duplicate the engineering of the top and trunk on a one-off basis, he couldn't do it for 250K
At current prices for low mileage used, this truck is an incredible bargain.
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Ray
No longer One of the "Blues Brothers"
Final Production Silver on Black/chrome/6-speed #23387
Signature #23
Signature #12 - The Gibson Guitar truck 
Last edited by Flassh : 05-05-2007 at 12:15 PM.
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