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Originally Posted by Bimmer Pleaser
Serious question: anyone seeing any possible effects on other mid-engine cars pricing? I mean, a similar optioned Porsche (911 GTS?) costs about twice C8. What would be the reason to buy a Porsche other than a status symbol?
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Part of that is the inherently higher amount of engineering and R&D that has to go into making an inferior chassis as fast or faster. It simply costs more to make a porsche to make it competative with a mid-engined car. You need more HP, more suspension tricks (active sways, rear wheel steering, etc.) and all sorts of other things that cost a lot of money. It's not a crap car by any stretch, but all of this extra $$$ is buying you that tiny golf-club space between the front seats and the rear axle. The more that companies like Chevrolet and others up their sports-car game, the harder it gets for someone like Porsche to make something faster each time around. Then there are the materials, but I would wager that's not the biggest cost by far and I'd also wager they are not running some crazy profit margin, probably decent, but again, you spend a lot in R&D to make a rear-engine design go as fast or faster.