Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris06GT
So then what's the advantage of a fiberglass hood? Is anyone making aluminum aftermarket hoods?
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Price. And variety. To make a metal aftermarket hood you have to invest in extremely expensive tooling to stamp all the parts, then assemble the top sheet and lower frame, then weld it all together. For such a low volume part, you'd never break even for a single design much less the half dozen or so different ones each company seems to manufacture.
For a Fiberglass hood, you make your master by hand, create a mold from (relative to tooling) inexpensive material, and then just make copies by laying glue and 'glass in it. (Okay, this is a bit of a simplified explanation, but it's the gist of it.) You can recoup your 'tooling' costs with a handful of sales.
The Ford Factory hood is $1,200 (roughly) which even with the OEM price inflation puts the 'normal' cost rather high. The Saleen is $1,500+, and the Foose is $1,000.
You can probably find similarly styled hoods in fiberglass for a little over half the cost of those.
