why have buggies got so expensive?

[szymanski2oo1]

well ...what i found last year when i started again after 20rs of absence was i bought a second hand buggy ( looked out for a club members car while visiting and checked it in person ) ...bought cheap shorties ( £20 each ) from hobbyking ( fine for club racing but not for brca meetings ( didnt know at the time ) ), second hand motor and speedo from oople members....
bought tyres ...shock oils ...paint, spares ,bodyshells from my local shop DMS ... converted my old sanwa gemini 90s radio to 2.4ghz for about £40 inc receiver ....
its never going to be super cheap to start afresh if you want to avoid an RTR set up and tailor make your own kit.... but once your going its manageable

[Danny Harrison]

I think the OP wants a yokomo yz2. It did hurt a little spending nigh on £500 on release day (needed shorties) but its honestly worth it.

You can get other new buggies that are compettitive very cheap. Think MB have durango 210 up for under £160!

[terry.sc]

Originally Posted by xfactor

So like I said, they have gone up a little. Top-Cat 74.99 in 1989. 2014 kf 235 and maybe the KF will hit 300 in 2015. So I think thats gone up a little.

Not really, that Cougar in 1989 would cost around £220 today, and that was stamped aluminium and moulded plastic, not carbon fibre and machined alloy.

[szymanski2oo1]

in case anyones interested you can get a good idea of comparative cost according to the bank of England's calculator here:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/educa...h/default.aspx

sorry .... had to look it up .... was bugging me wanting to know after reaing this thread what things actually cost relative to inflation after 20 yrs or so

[jimmy]

can of coke 15p, now around 60p.... my procat was £200 from morley models in 89. houses have gone up more than coke has! toy cars are cheap.

[neallewis]

OK I found this RCP catalogue from Winter 1991 and have photographed it to show prices then.







Click each picture to be taken to a larger version.

[Danny Harrison]

Must have been so expensive back then. No wonder my parents never let me take it up.

[szymanski2oo1]

oooooh a vanessas lunch box in 1991 £72..... according to bank of England in 2013 your looking at a comparative cost of £134.00

great find neal

[neallewis]

Originally Posted by szymanski2oo1

great find neal

Ta.

Back in the day for a days racing you needed 5/6 packs of Nicads per car, use once per meeting, at ~£40 per pack, Plus a couple of chargers.
Now = £74.93 per pack!

Motors, a decent modified, ~£45, you had a handful, even before the silly comm truing days. Now £84.30 each

Yokomo Dogfighter works 91: £275 - now £515.17
Scumacher Cougar 2: £179.50 - now £336.26
RC10 team car: £199 - now £372.79

Schumacher Rear tyres: £6.43 - Now £12.04

[Si Coe]

The other thing that people forget is that the Cougar was £90 without ballraces. It really cost £105 when you added them too.
Mardaves were cheaper still - but both cars were very basic. Part of the reason they cost so little was there really wasn't much to them.


Perhaps the most interesting price to look at is the RC10. £200 for a Team car in 1991, and £225 for the Worlds car today. Since they are both essentially the same car with minor changes, and the effort required in production is the same that means that the cost of an alloy tub RC10 has increased by the rate of around £1 per year for the last 25 years. Thats 0.5% inflation!
Oh and the Worlds car actually costs MORE than the B5m......

[racingdwarf]

RCP catalogue brings back memories, sitting in the back of science lessons reading though them

[Chesty]

Maybe the title of this thread should be: 'How has RC got so cheap?'

So inflation has gone up 87% since that catalogue was published - I can't of any 'equivalent spec' RC gear has gone up that much.

I remember my local model shop owner used to drive a new Sierra Cosworth back in the early 90s. I get the impression they'd be lucky to afford a Kia Picanto now!

[racingdwarf]

so maybe RC just feels costly as everything has gone up by so much around it in the last 20 years and its harder to warrant the extra spend.

[wookiee76]

Ive been out of the hobby for a decade or so and was amazed that prices seem to be comparable with what they were back then, heck my old xx was £220 when I got that and the xxx was nearer 300. The thing that has changed massively is the electrics, the days of gearing to finish a 5 minute race are long gone and you dont need to spend silly amounts for usable gear, my hobbywing esc and motor have way more poke than is strictly necessary and I thought I was going conservative with 13t!

[mattr]

Originally Posted by HOTSHOT III

If that's your opinion that's fine, I was just trying to show the OP that you can make your money go a long way if you think before throwing your wad on the counter.

Should have emphasised some of my words!
I still do the same thing, shop around, combine postage, look out for deals. But I don't *have* to. If I did, I wouldn't have any RCs, there are better things to spend those few pennies on. That's what I was getting at.

Originally Posted by HOTSHOT III

Most successful business people are pretty tightfisted and get their staff to re-use jiffy bags etc.

Not really, successful businesses employ people who know where the savings are to be made. Reusing jiffy bags (unless you are a small mail order business!) is generally a sign that the business isn't really successful......... Just looks like it!

[honrico Diablo]

£200 for a buggy in 1988 is the inflationary equivalent of £491 today...

by that logic, r/c racing is much cheaper that it ever was!

[Lee1972]

Back in 1988 I bought a second hand Associated RC10 gold tub for £100; four years ago I bought a second hand Factory Team B4 for £75.

[keenbutkrap]

i paid £200 for a betamax video player i can now buy a dvd player for £20 i used to aspire to bmw and mercedes now they are rep mobiles only a few things seem to have got more expensive houses energy and model cars maybe its because if they price them cheaper they would be seen as inferior audi is dearer than skoda they are the same company audi is perceived as being better because it costs more badge engineering

[Si Coe]

Well you do have a point there to some extent. Inflation is not uniform (which is why it calculated on the price of a bunch of things combined) and with technology prices do tend to come down as tech matures.
However you do have to consider contexts here. House prices have been the big driver of inflation, most retail items haven't gone up that much but they have increased. New cars are at least twice the price for an equivalent model to say compared to 25 years ago. New cars have more tech and last longer, so they don't seem more expensive, plus a strong used market keeps them attainable but the increase remains.
And so it is with RC. My current 210 cost me pretty much the same as the RC10 I got in 1989, both for the kit and the price of getting it running with a single pack. But the new car is faster, runs longer, drives better, is more adjustable etc.

The DVD argument is invalid. They are cheap cos its old tech that's dying. The latest players always cost a lot more.

[mattr]

He doesn't have a point, still ranting.
Average cost of a BMW/Merc since 1990 has almost doubled, halo models, nearer 400%. And pretty usual across the industry. Pretty much in line (give or take) with inflation.
The AUDI/VW/Skoda/SEAT agreement doesn't stand up to scrutiny for more than 10 seconds either, the tech used in the cars is at different stages in its life cycle as it reaches each brand. Usually with a two to three year delay, so much of the development costs have already been amortised across the AUDI volumes before VW start selling it, and so on. So VAG can keep making cash out of old tech. That's why the 1.9PD TDi engine has only just died in Skoda, it's not been in an AUDI for ~10 years.
Not saying AUDI aren't over priced, but you always pay more to be an early adopter of new technology. You always have.
Same with the early video machines, they were hard to make, lots of scrap, small market. DVD players are now made completely automatically, in their millions.
And it's a dying tech.

Houses haven't actually increased that much outside of a very few markets, mostly those with completely knackered legal systems and an unhealthy obsession with home ownership (UK basically.) The house I'm living in has tripled in value since it was built, 35 years ago (not in the UK!) this is common across the entire country. My first house, in the UK (in a fairly crap town) nearly doubled in the 4 years I owned it, and has nearly tripled again since then, 13 more years. So my 30 grand 2 bed terrace, sold for 170 grand last year, it still had the same (knackered) windows And front door that it had when I lived there! Your housing market is bolloxed, sort it out!

Energy, not even worth talking about, it's a price fixing cartel, had been for decades, you either pay, or do without.
Toy cars, they've not even kept up with average salary increases, which are slightly behind inflation. Despite what politicians like to tell you.