Low-volume cars don't make sense | Know it All with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 10

- 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, bu

t 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 mill

ion 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, like, subscribe, comment, and don't forget to check out the Hagerty Drivers Club.