lagos said:
yeah, but lets think about it this way... what exactly are you paying for when buying a turbo? what makes one turbo more expenive then another ?
the car parts market seems to inflate prices based on what gains you get and not what the part cost to make. you can have 2 turbos that cost the same to build. one will gain you 50hp and the other will gain you 100hp. you can bet that the 100hp one will be sold for twice as much.
a good example... those fake hks bov's. i bought one for fun (60bucks)and took it apart to compare it with my real HKS (200$). first thing i noticed was that there was nothing inside the HKS that should cost anywhere near 200$. the insides of the real and fake bovs were exactly the same! so sometimes buying a copy over the real thing, can be a smart choice.
It is hard to explain if you do not already get it, but I will give it a shot.
There are many factors that can drive the price up on any product. Let us put aside old school supply and demand for the moment and focus on the real vs. fake manufacturers. You are right in that you will pay more for a name brand than a knock-off, but there are reasons for that beyond the mere profit motives (such as cost of materials being the same verses selling price) that you are aware off.
The key here is that you also paying for more than the parts alone. Consider that a legitimate manufacturer such as Garrett will have much more stringent specifications, which require more time and precise work to produce. This means having to pay for better equipment and even better employees. And never forget that you are also paying for the painstaking research and development that goes into making a product. These are all costs that the company must pay for beyond the mere price of materials.
Putting aside R&D, let us go back to quality. Let us (for the sake of argument) say that you did not care if someone just ripped off the designs of another company and began producing their copies. Are you still getting the same product? Well, first you need to ask yourself this: if a company can not be bothered to develop their own product, what makes you think they can be bothered to make sure their copies meet the high specs of the originals? As Turbo Pepe mentioned, they do not. I too have read horror stories about these copies.
Now there are probably certain products where you might be able to save a few dollars and get away with a knockoff, but we are talking about a product in which a mere millimeter of tolerance can mean the difference between blowing up ten miles down the road, or enjoying your turbo for the life of your car. So now, considering all of that, would you rather pay $1200 for a real turbo or $600 for a knockoff?
