| I beleive MS greatly underestimated the salability of the product. I dont know how many manifolds he beleived he would have to sell to recoup his R&D. IMO the potential market for these is approx 20,000 pairs in total worldwide. If they cost $500 almost EVERONE who did a turbo upgrade would buy them. Now if he recouped his R&D costs at a rate of $150 a pair. Thats a total of over $250,000. Anyone who recons he invested that amount in the development is in fairy land !! I expect he estimated total potential sales of 1000 sets. and spent $10,000 developing them. The R&D recovery for 1000 sets based on that are $10 a pair. THERE IS A HUGE GAP BETWEEN THE CURRENT SELL PRICE AND A REASONABLE MARGIN IN THESE PRODUCTS. They are curently priced at what the market will bear. Not at a sustainable long term price. Once the current KEEN buyers snap these up. The price will drop to get the next teir buyers etc etc. If anyone thinks Nissan pays $100 to make these two manifolds you are kidding yourself. I expect they cost Nissan $30 the pair. These are sand castings. The cheapest way to cast Iron. It isnt rocket science. Even of you allow $150 a pair cost price, plus $10 R&D recovery. They are overpriced. Which left open the door for copiers
Lastly, why is everyone going on about patents ????
Patents rely on evaluating three criterion. Form, fit and function. This is not a potential patent violation. He maybe should have COPYRIGHTED them. He cant PATENT them. Anyone had grounds for a COPYRIGHT action it, is Nissan. Cast iron has a shrinkage factor of 5% any sand plug made to replicate these manifolds, cant be struck from the MS ones. It has to be made from a new pattern. They have to machine new internal and external patterns to make a sand casting mould. Therefore they WILL BE DIFFERENT, Even in some small ways. Look at the heatsheild mounting lugs. Different arnt they? What has happened here is that the IDEA may have been copied. But the product definitely hasnt been. So what we have here is a group of guys enraged that someone has copied the IDEA of bigger bore manifolds. When in fact MS copied the Nissan ones and made them bigger. The MS manifolds look the SAME as the stock ones
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