25 replies to this topic

[rmw00]

Anyone have info on how much an F1 car is worth? Excluding the R&D, overhead, etc. Just the cost to build another of the same car. Obviously some cars would be worth more than others, but just an average.

[Ali_G]

About 1.5 mil pounds I think.

ALMS Prototypes cost 1 mil pounds.

Niall

[Greg L]

Yeah, Niall, considering Le Mans cars cost over 1 million, I'd have to say at least 1.5 million for an F1 car, possibly even higher. The engine alone has to be extremely expensive.

[Ali_G]

Greg: At one point I think back in 98, GT1 cars cost more than F1 cars. Then the FIA cancelled GT1 for 99.

Niall

[random]

I think you're asking what it costs to build an extra car once all the R&D, tool manufacturing etc... is paid for and done.

If you only consider the manufacturing cost and no R&D (also withholding the R&D costs of the component suppliers), it would probably only be a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe less.

For instance, what is the dead cost to build an engine once you have all the tooling set up and own a CNC? Probably not that much, just labor and billets of metal. It's much the same for the rest of the car.

As such an "extra car", without amortized costs of production, probably doesn't cost much more to make than a very high end street car. (ie Ferrari F50)

[Melbourne Park]

I read one of the engine suppliers were charging $US200,000 for each engine supplied, so you could start with that. but if you go down to Honda and try and buy one, you'd have to offer to buy more than one ...

Ignoring the development costs means that a McLaren would be around the same cost as a Minardi, which would not be a correct cost.

To work the whole think out one could divide the overall annual team cost by the number of cars made. So I'll guess:

Engines 25,000,000
People 25,000,000
Materials 10,000,000
Software 10,000,000
Wind tunnel 3,000,000
Travel 15,000,000
Tyres 10,000,000

Total 98,000,000

So I say about 100 million per year.

If they make 20 cars, that's $5 million per real F1 car.



But do you want the 21st one for free??

[100cc]

look at the budjet, subtract hopitality, drivers, and all other non-car development/construction cost and divide this by the amount of cars produced and there you have it!!

[Greg L]

Melbourne Park,

I think that is a good way to estimate the costs of an F1 car, but I think you may be underestimating the costs per car. Reports I've read (who knows how reliable they may be:rolleyes: ) peg Ferarri's annual budget of between $150 - 200 million US. I've also read that teams only produce an average of 5-7 chassis per season. So, the actual total cost of an F1 car would be as much as $200 million divided by 5 = $40 million per chassis!! I think that this is the most accurate way to determine the actual cost of the car, as Ferarri spends up to $200 million each season to race 2 cars. Damn expensive!!

[Engineguy]

Originally posted by random
I think you're asking what it costs to build an extra car once all the R&D, tool manufacturing etc... is paid for and done.

If you only consider the manufacturing cost and no R&D (also withholding the R&D costs of the component suppliers), it would probably only be a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe less.

For instance, what is the dead cost to build an engine once you have all the tooling set up and own a CNC? Probably not that much, just labor and billets of metal. It's much the same for the rest of the car.

As such an "extra car", without amortized costs of production, probably doesn't cost much more to make than a very high end street car. (ie Ferrari F50)

I think Random has come closest to answering the question as asked. Most of the budget of an F1 team would be spent if they could get by somehow with only building two cars. The cost to build one car (the first one) is of course enormous. The incremental cost of deciding to build 16 cars this season instead of 15 is virtually nothing. The main reason is that outside suppliers seperate tooling, setup, and piece costs.

Example: Your designer has cleverly saved 3 grams by using a custom stepped fastener to serve double duty. One of its duties is as a suspension rocker pivot, so it's a critcal part that's going to need a custom forging die so that machining the step doesn't weaken it. If this were a customer car (say F3000) this would probably be vetoed by the boss as too expensive, and a redesign would be ordered. But this is F1, so you fax the drawing to ARC and they come back with a quote that says $2,000 engineering charge, $11,000 for the die, $1,500 for the CNC program, $400 setup charge, and $50 each for as many fasteners as you want. To get that first car on the track, those two fancy bolts are going to cost you $15,000. If you want to look at the "averaged" cost (silly, not what he was asking) it's $1,000 per car for these two bolts. The INCREMENTAL cost of these parts for another of building that additional car is only $100. The incremental cost here is less than 1% of the tooling cost.

The incremental cost for another F1 engine, if you outsource everything, (again, once you've already paid for patterns, dies, CNC programming, etc.) is under $60,000. That includes your suppliers' markup for profits and overhead, so if you do most of it in-house (i.e. you're Ferrari, or if we're looking at the cost from Ilmore's perspective), your cost is probably under $30,000. I've been through some costing studies close enough to F1 to assure you these numbers are accurate.

Same with body and chassis... If you don't have to count all the design cost, wind tunnel expense, programming and machining of models and molds, and you've got the facility and autoclave, it's just the cost of materials and labor. Even if you're ordering custom weaves and such, the total isn't going to run more than $25,000.

A definitive answer would be difficult for even someone like Ron Dennis to give you, because of so many blurred areas (so many entities are some combination of supplier/partner/sponsor... i.e. Sachs, BBS, Magnetti Marelli, TAG, etc.). My guess is that the incremental cost, to the team/engine manufacturer combo, of an additional car with engine is only $100,000 to $150,000, depending on who you are.

[Melbourne Park]

Thanks Greg and 100c for comments. I actually just made the figures up on the fly, I have little idea at all and also would have left things out and got figures poorly weighted. For instance I have not got mouldings / costs included as a separate item, or even gearboxes. And my personnel cost is no doubt somewhat below Ferraris's.



However I believe that all the costs, including even the hospitality and the driver's payments, should be included. The reason for this is that they all contribute to the car. And without all the various costs, it would not be an F1 car after all.



So the numbers are wrong (agreed - although the teams do vary, but I have little idea anyway), but the biggest criticism I have is whether the marketing sponsorships should be deducted from the total figure - I do not think they should be deducted.



As to the number of cars, they do crash a couple for safety. They do plan have spare cars. Also they repair and change various bits of the cars all the time - like the 10 handled 7 headed grandfathers axe. Considering a car is 1.5 seconds faster at the end of the season, they could be an argument that there are four cars developed (how many different teams would cover 1.5 seconds?). And since there are two cars and a spare, 4 x 3 = 12 plus some crashed cars at 4 and then 3 test cars and the safety cars at 2 is 12 +4 +3 +2 = 19 cars.



But then again, maybe we should just say there are only two cars, each worth quite a lot, especially if they are winners...

[swoopp]

Last year on Speedvision, they talked about the cost of the cars. They said the cars only cost a couple to a few thousand dollars to produce. All the other money spent, is on R&D practice, traveling, public relations, etc...



That sounds about right when you consider the McLaren F1 street car sells for a million dollars. It's made with the same technology as a F1 car, but the fit and finish is so much better than any race car. For that reason, street cars are more difficult to produce than a race car. Plus, the street car has a good profit margin built into it.

[Melbourne Park]

Originally posted by swoopp

...the McLaren F1 street car sells for a million dollars. It's made with the same technology as a F1 car, but the fit and finish is so much better than any race car.

I don't agree at all. The technology is different, and the fit is totally inferior. F1 cars very precisely set up, for each track, for each driver and for each condition, and account for each change in their continuing quest for sustained speed for a 2 minute pole and for a two hour race.

[swoopp]

Melbourne Park:

Have you ever seen a race car up close? I suggest you get a pit pass and go look at a race car close up. Because race cars are taken apart so often is the reason their fit and finish is so crapy.

[Melbourne Park]

Originally posted by swoopp
Melbourne Park:
Have you ever seen a race car up close?

Yes, and I've even owned them.

But that is not the point. A race car is highly sensative to adjustments, road cars much less so.

Just on this issue swoop, which do you think is a more high quality car, a Volkswagen Golf or a Rolls Royce?

[swoopp]

Melbourne Park:

I haven't been up close and personal with a Rolls Royce lately, or ever. But, I'd have to say the VW, since they are made in higher volume, on assembly lines with robots no doubt. As I understand, Rolls Royces are made by hand, so they will have greater tolerance differences. Therefore, a lot of the parts won't match up the way they're supposed to.

Okay, you've owned cars. Have you ever built a car yourself?
And if so, how much does it cost you to make spare parts once you have a mold or specs for the part? Not a lot.

[Melbourne Park]

Built a car myself? Well even Henry Ford had to buy the paint.

I made a Tamiya remote control car with my son. I spent a fair bit of time on the Lola F5000 in the garage.

As you indicate, variable costs are just the input costs, so they are low.

And to make an F1 car that looked like an F1 car, smelt like an F1 car, maybe even sounded a like an F1 car, would be much cheaper than the F1 McLaren. Of course I agree with that.

But a real, able to compete F1 car, is more than the cost of its components: its the sum of its parts, and I am afraid those even include the office staff.

I do not think it is sensible to say that if Minardi made an extra 2000 spec F1 car for just little old me, that I should expect it to cost the same as an MS's 2000 spec Ferrari. The materials may be similar, but the effort behind the materials, the office staff etc., they differ.

[swoopp]

Melbourne Park:

I think that all the cars would total no more than about a few thousand dollars difference. Since they're all made of the same basic materials, the biggest difference is the location, angles and shape of the components. If you were to pay a higher price for a Ferrari, it would be for a few MPH that was gained by the knowledge of the engineers and not the build quality of the cars.

The original post was asking about the cost of the cars without all of the other factors that go into designing them, such as: engineers, drivers, transporters, workshops, offices, staff and on down the line.

[Melbourne Park]

I suppose when you get a legal opinion from an articled clerk that's one page long, its worth the same to you as the legal opinion of a QC that's also one page long?

[Timm]

Twenty cars a year is Nascar & WRC territory, not F1. At most, F1 teams will build 9 or 10 cars

[Nathan]

Im thinking some numbers such as $1.5-million pounds is a tad over estimated. I think the question has been observed wrong. Prototypes of course are expensive, but teams like Ferrari and McLaren Im sure produce atleast 5-6 cars per year.

Now my thinking is, considering that customer CART chassis's are priced at around $600,000-USD I think that is a good bench mark. The reason I say this is because unlike the sole cost of making a forumla one car, companies like Reynard and Lola have to cover their costs of R&D, salaries etc. etc. and unlike engine manufactures, they have to make money because they dont have huge industrial backing. Now since this question was the price of a car alone, not including this and that, Im going to say it probably costs roughly $200,000-USD to actually make a CART chassis. Now lets say you sell to half the CART grid. That means 15 cars in each race are made by your company. Lets also assume teams will buy 2 cars, one spare, and lets say 5 more of the better funded teams each buy a third car for testing or whatever. So you have sold 35 chassis for roughly $21,000,000. Now the question is, how much of that is spent developing, testing, paying salaries, factory costs etc. My good quess is roughly 2/3's of that has a place to be spent. Leaving my estimate of $200,000/chassis per chassis left for construction.

Now we have to assume F-1 cars are more advanced, and have more equipment. Carbon brakes, more advanced electronics, a more advanced gearbox, a bit more complex body etc. etc. I think we can be very fair and triple the cost to cover these "extra" cost areas. So lets say a F-1 chassis costs $600,000 to build.

Next the engine. Again more advanced, 2 more cylinders make for more pieces needed, the materials are of much higher quality and therefore cost. I know customer IRL engines cant cost more than $75,000, but thats a bad example. Im sure both Nissan and GM loose money on each one. But then they can, because they have the money to loose say $50,000 on maybe 200 engine each year. None the less I would think now with the limit of use on MMC's, the cost would be in the $250,000 area for a F-1 engine.

Im going to think a Formula-1 car is ROUGHLY $1,000,000-USD to reproduce. As said GT cars are costly, but then again to an extent GT cars are almost as advanced, or use to be as F-1 cars. They are bigger, and thus require more material to make. In reality the biggest differences is electronics, and to reproduce electronics is cheap. Develoment is not, but again development cost was asked not to be an issue.

I also read in my 1996 Renault F-1 book that the cost of a Williams F1 car was 4-million Francs at the time. Thats roughly $550,000-USD today. So even if we DOUBLE the cost of an F-1 car over the last 5 years, it is still around my estimate.

[FlagMan]

How much do you want to spend?

I you ever get the chance to tour a F1 factory you would be amazed at the size and number of people involved.

You cannot really divorce the cost of actually building the car from the costs of the infrastructure involved - the majority of the costs are people and facilities costs - the materials themselves a relativly cheap - but without the people and facilities they are no more than a just a pile of metal and carbon fibre (some drivers lately seem intent on returning them to that state in the shortest time possible )

[wheel]

Swoop:
Dont quit your day job.


Road cars are designed and built for a COMPLETELY different objective. Where race (ie F1) cars are built to go around the track as fast as possible (within the rules), there are many more aspects to road car design. Even if the car will be raced, it is foremost a ROAD car (yes, even the Maclaren F1). An example of this is the mountings for the suspension. F1 use rose joints and spherical bearings which allow precice movement but transfer vibration, etc. The Maclaren F1 has its front suspension mounted on brackets which are in turn mounted to the chassis via rubber bushes. The axis of the bushes allow stiffness in most directions, but compliance through the axis of rotation of the wheel. Also, the engine (although mounted to the chassis similar to an F1 vehicle) uses specially designed rubber mounts which combine structural rigidity with vibration damping qualities.

Dont even compare the costs for a specialty road car and a purpose built race vehicle, they differ as much as the design.

[swoopp]

Wheel:

Yes, road cars and race cars are made for COMPLETELY different objectives. We all know this. Road cars do have more aspects to their design, and are generally more expensive to design because of this. The reason I compare a F1 car with the McLaren F1 is because they are made out of the same materials (except for a couple joints that you point out). They both use carbon fiber chasis, titanium, aluminum, etc...

The McLaren F1 is the only road car that you can compare to a F1 car, since it is the only car built by a F1 team, bringing the technology of F1 to the streets. Therefore, the cost of construction should be about equal.

beotch

[random]

Originally posted by swoopp


...The McLaren F1 is the only road car that you can compare to a F1 car, since it is the only car built by a F1 team, bringing the technology of F1 to the streets. Therefore, the cost of construction should be about equal.

beotch

There have been other road cars through the years based very closely on F1 cars. The first that come to mind are the Ferrari F40 and F50.

On the point flagman made, you actually can divorce the costs of development and overhead from the cost of the building the car. It's called raw production cost.

Let's not forget the initial question was in reference to that cost, not the combined cost of overhead and R&D.

I actually do find it a valid question. For instance, let's say the owner of a team wanted an extra car at the end of the season for his personal or museum use.

What would it really cost the team to build this "extra car"? If you discount opportunity costs, only the labor and raw materials would apply.

[FlagMan]

only the labor and raw materials would apply.

Why include the labour costs? - You are employing the labour anyway - they cost the same if they are building a new monocoque or sitting around doing nothing.

As for the owner requiring a car at the end of the season - just build one up from all the life expired bits taken from the cars over the season - thats how most F1 'show' cars originate.

As for the difference between road car and F1 car design - surely it is that a road car is designed to be built as cheaply as possible - this is not even a consideration in F1.

[andy_bee]

one of the biggest costs is actually tooling. The tooling for say a floor is very high, cnc-ed on a five axis machine, then probably modified and hand finished if necessary then prototype used for fit and finish before production, but here is where the cost is. You probably only build less than 20 floors, maybe as few as 5 floors. Same with Engine covers, you probably get away with 15 for the season, yet the tooling costs and prototyping would be very expensive and have to be spread across 15 engine covers rather than say 100-200 for say Dallara who produce F3 cars.

Obviously Production Car design tooling is more expensive, but its then sprad across 100s of thousands of cars.

What consitutes a car is another question, it will always test have spare parts and to a team, a car is just the tub, nothing else.