[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Originally Posted by ericr

well nobody has so undercut Champion 3X plugs so as to cause them to cease production, and whenever anyone mentions them on Amazon, there is a stampede to buy them at a modest savings. But I am sure there is far more truth than poetry to what you are saying. I simply hope there are enough restorers that are willing to put their $ where their mouth is, and support our suppliers that take the risk to market better-quality parts.

Your example of the 3x is interesting for the reason that they have been out of production for several years and a run was just made off-shore to fill the 'pipeline' again however speculation is the plug will be unavailable after this round. The reason Champion halted production was this was a hand-assembled item, and labor costs here in the States made them cost prohibitive to manufacture.

If you read the publications, even when the cars were new, after-market suppliers were undercutting the factory on quality vs. price. Northing new under the sun, is there.
Two totally different scenarios in my view and not the same.

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Originally Posted by heneste

I too wouldn't mind seeing gas tanks being put into production but , as has been mentioned in other posts, it's probably due to liability issues.
That myth has been discussed here many times before and it is my opinion there is just too many differences and tooling costs. If it were indeed from liability issues, then we would not be able to purchase new reproduction tanks for Model-Ts nor for the early V-8 Fords.

I agree with Brent's comments regarding vendors options of doing production runs at feasible costs. No vendor wants to stock his shelves with parts that are so expensive to produce that no one buys them and he's stuck taking the loss.

I'm sure the vendors want the best quality part for the best possible price but it economically boils down to production costs and likelihood of being able to sell the item.
The quality of a given repro part doesn't necessarily increase as the price increases....it may just be the area it was produced that has higher labour costs, taxes, etc.