Here are the base prices shown on my first order form from mid-2012:

Empennage $1645
Wings $6855
Fuselage $7820
Finish $5635

And here are the prices from my fuse order form six weeks ago:

Empennage $1725
Wings $7130
Fuselage $8010
Finish $5935

So on average, a 4% price increase over two years.
 
Now that Ford is using aluminum on the F150 truck bodies, I wonder if that will drive aluminum prices up for next year?
 
Has aluminum large variations in price from year to year, what was the price of the first QB kit that was sold from Van's Aircraft?
 
Metal prices

If oil prices continue to slide do stay depressed, expect to see wholesale metal price fall 10 to 30% later this year as inventories turn over. However, I don't expect to see retail prices to fall quite as much as many businesses are looking for profit taking to help regain was has been lost over the past 6 years in general. As long as the customer buys, there is no incentive to lower prices.
 
Don't worry too much, it happens every year. It's never as much as everyone worries about. If you can afford to OWN an aircraft, the price rise won't matter:eek:
 
For us Canadians, the price has gone up 25% in the last year and still rising. I figure my RV14 will be 30k more than I originally budgeted! Still building, just might take a year or two longer.
 
I purchased my wing kit second hand. I have the invoice from the initial sale circa early '90s. I think it was a little over 3K...
 
When I bought the first kit section for my first RV-6A in the late 80's a complete RV-6 kit was about $5800. By the time I completed it 4.5 years later the cost of the complete kit was about $7000.

Cost of products go up. It is a normal.
It happens because of increases in material and labor costs. It happens because of improvements being made to the kits.
Sometimes the improvements can have an influence in helping hold prices down. I remember times in the past when some of the early pre-punch kits (when only some portions of the kit were prepunched), got updated to being fully prepunched, the price nearly stayed the same when the yearly price increase came around because of the cost reduction to produce the kit (same amount of materials but lower labor cost).
 
rvbuilder2002 said:
When I bought the first kit section for my first RV-6A in the late 80's a complete RV-6 kit was about $5800. By the time I completed it 4.5 years later the cost of the complete kit was about $7000.

Cost of products go up. It is a normal.
It happens because of increases in material and labor costs. It happens because of improvements being made to the kits.
Sometimes the improvements can have an influence in helping hold prices down. I remember times in the past when some of the early pre-punch kits (when only some portions of the kit were prepunched), got updated to being fully prepunched, the price nearly stayed the same when the yearly price increase came around because of the cost reduction to produce the kit (same amount of materials but lower labor cost).
Click to expand...

Scott brings up a great point. When we buy a kit, we are not just paying for aluminum. Wrapped into that cost is the machine time (not cheap), engineering time (not cheap), and customer support and documentation (not cheap).

Being in the IT field, it surprised me that we get all this free phone support along with the kit. I suspect that Van's has been able to hold down the total support costs because of this forum since the total number of builders and kits has gone up over the years but their support staff has remained about the same. (Scott, correct me, if I'm wrong.)
 
N941WR said:
I suspect that Van's has been able to hold down the total support costs because of this forum since the total number of builders and kits has gone up over the years but their support staff has remained about the same. (Scott, correct me, if I'm wrong.)
Click to expand...

At Van's the VAF forums are considered both a blessing and a curse ( I know that statement wont upset Doug because he fully realizes it himself :) ).....
It is a great place for builders to get help from other builders which does probably reduce tech. assistance calls into the office, but that is easily made up for it by the calls that are instigated by incorrect info that can spread like wild fire within the forums.

As far as tech support team size?.... it has grown over the years. In the late 90's - early 2000's it was three people. Currently it is five people.

Another factor that has helped hold the size of the tech. support team in check is the improvement of the kits and the assembly instructions. Someone that has built the later vintage kits (particularly the RV-10 and 12) can not even imagine the differences in regards to the need to figure out what to do if compared to an RV-4 or RV-6 kit.
 
As an international customer I have a slightly different take on all of this. US aviation companies are a strange breed. Many of them have continued to religiously raise prices on a yearly basis through the GFC, despite inflation being quite low. As the saying goes "If they want our products they will pay".

As an example, when I bought my engine back in 2007 I paid Mattituck $20,500. That same engine is worth around $28,000 today despite increased competition. Over the same period Vans prices have increased ~30%.

One of the reasons that this has been able to happen is that the USD has fallen against major currencies. For us Ozzies, buying US products has never been so good and whatever increase the supplier made was dwarfed by the currency exchange.

The currency situation has now changed. Since October last year our real cost to buy US products has increased 25%. This will probably impact Van's export sales more than any minor price increase.

Vans will be hoping that lower fuel prices will encourage more local sales.
 
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