B13 parts prices soaring

[Wayne Cox]

At 02:33 PM 6/21/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>It's just economics; you can't expect an auto manufacturer to keep making
>parts for discontinued cars indefinitely as if they were still being
>assembled new.

I agree with that to an extent, but not entirely.  The car dealers are
probably required by the manufacturer to maintain specific inventory items
for newer "supported" cars, regardless of actual demand.  Beyond that, it's
up to their inventory managers to determine what is cost effective and
otherwise desirable to keep on the shelf.  A dealer's parts counter
shouldn't have any reason to jack up prices on special order parts.  With
12+ years of applications programming  & analysis in manufacturing &
inventory I've got a decent understanding of this stuff.

As far as Nissan USA goes, keeping old and / or obscure parts at a few
national warehouses shouldn't be that terrible.  I expect the prices to
gradually increase over time, to reflect the cost of keeping slow moving
inventory and inflation.  But what I'm seeing and bitching about is large
and sudden price increases that appear to be at pre-determined time points
and not tied to actual cost of maintaining inventories.

It really pissed me off with Toyota (15 some years ago) because so much of
their claim to fame was longevity of their products.  BUT their parts
pricing appeared to penalize customers that attempted to exploit that
feature.  Now a'days, 100K+ miles and 10+ years are expected of all cars
(even GM products manage it well!) So you would think that if manufacturers
did have some "stick it to ya" policy on parts, it would at least be
extended to match the realistic lie span of the product.
    -Wayne