Quote:
Originally Posted by Origineelreclamebord
With all the gizmos of nowadays you can backtrack the design completely from the finished product. Ok, the NIB RC10 is by far the cheapest piece in the equation, but they do have something to work from 
And even if it's not 100% true to the original but say 95%, it's good enough for enthusiasts to buy it en masse. Only setback is that parts might not fit the original and thus you have a smaller market to sell your spares to. That said having a slightly off car shouldn't hurt sales of a re-re too much. |
Is it possible to reverse engineer/design a car from the ground up? Of course it is.
Is it worth the expense for the resultant limited sales that might result? Who's to say, but I seriously doubt it.
Seems I was reading somewhere that the RC10 was the highest produced car of all time, with estimates being somewhere between 350,000 and half a million (apparently nobody's really sure) - and with tons and tons of nib parts still being available, and cars in like new condition still popping up, let alone all the runners and shelfqueens still in circulation - I really fail to see that there's a market for re-pops..... but crazier things have happened.
To me though, I'd think it'd be a better investment spending the CAD and R&D time on a B5........ because I think the 4.2 was a bandaid hoping to hide the fact that literally every other manufacturer has released a new car in the last 2-3 years except AE, and I can't see them sitting on their hands for another 2 or 3 years as every manufacturer passes them by. .... Don't you think it kills them back in the AE offices in California, every time they see someone running and winning with a "sorta-B4" (Centro, Vega, X-Factory, etc) that nobody is calling an Associated? While some can say it was easy to overlook mid-motored versions, because it's primarily been a UK/Euro thing, you can bet your arse the fire alarms were going off at Area51 in March when all the top finishers at the Cactus Classic in the U.S. were mid-motor set-ups and the AE team drivers had no answer.