2) BIG events will cease to exist. No more NOPI Nationals, no more HOT IMPORT NIGHTS, no more FORMULA D. I predict they all are gone by next year. If not the following year. With gas prices, lack of interest, lack of payouts, lack of sponsors, its just not worth going for ANYONE.
3) Drifing was ALWAYS a FAD. It will start to dissappear from the professional level. As a BUSINESS , which is what it needs to be to survive and grow, it is a HORRIBLE model.
A) Drifting shares almost NOTHING in common with other motorsports in terms of accessability and marketability. Where do you go drifting on a saturday night? Friday night?
B) Its too expensive to drift. at the rate you go through tires, even if you are in some ricer midnight club drifting team, you gotta have tires.
C) For the tire companys it sucks. I mean look at Falken, Maxxis, Bridgestone, etc. Do you really think that spectators at a DRIFT event are thinking "wow im going to go buy their tires to drift on!" Hell no. So essentially their sponsorship dollars are being wasted. Why advertise if your demographic isnt going to buy your product. you know how many times i sold a Maxxis Tire at B***ground? ZERO. you know how many DRIFT CARS we built, ZERO. Whose paying $175 per tire to go **** it up in 5 min? Whose building a $10,000-15000 car to run it into a wall?
So what you essentially have is this motorsport, that is judged on opinion, and has no model for bringing in revenue. Eventually the companies will start to see that and it will dry up. Why spend $150,000 on a motorsport that gives you no return?
At least in drag Racing you see people that will go buy Skunk2, Competition clutch, Ferrea, Edelbrock, etc based on what they see, etc. You can go to a track on a friday night anywhere in the country an practice. Hell even street racing is still around.
In Short: Drifting dissappears in the next 2 years TOPS.
4) The Greatest Illusion in the Sport Compact Industry. China. Period. EVERYTHING IS MADE OVERSEAS, if its not, that company will NOT LAST.
I see friends going out of business every week cause they are fighting over $15 sale for an AEM part or something. Its a joke. The AMerican companies had this illusion that their products were made in house, developed, etc its all bullsh!t. Everything is outsourced overseas and brought in, repackaged, and marketed.
What happened was these american companies got greedy. They didnt control the market. They made EVERYONE with a SSN a "dealer" and didnt enforce pricing rules. so now you have 1000 AEM Dealers that are all selling the same product competing against each other so what do they do? they have to have the "lowest price" . So they atart cutting it by $5, $10, $50, $75 until you meet the EBAY guy. The guy that has no shop, no overhead, no employees, so what does he car if he only makes $5, $5 is $5 to him. To a shop, with overhead, its not worth the phone call.
So the Ebay people killed the Sport Compact Market parts and the Companies did NOTHING about it.
And why should they? in their eyes they had a feeding frenzy over a product they had $10 in, and their 1000 dealers were paying $250 for it and trying to fight over a 1% markup. The only one making money was the company.
Well then the dealers die out, cause they dry up, go out of business, cant make any money. etc. you just lost alot of your Wholesale program, an now you are going out of business.
Expect to see alot of wholesalers go under. Which means access to parts is limited and prices go up.
So the comments i hear about Ebay **** and CHINA ****, newsflash, 98% of all your high dollar JDM parts are made in a factory by a Chinaman
thats fact.
There will be a proliferation of people that start going exclusively to Overseas manufacturing. theres just too much money in it. Custom will become a thing of the past as efficiency and availability will come first. Cost is low, profit is high. its very attractive and everyone is moving that way. Look at CHinas numbers in the last 15 years.
Expect your favorite name brand whatever to be knocked off or replicated. Everything from Gibson Guitars to Volk wheels are being made in China RIGHT NOW. The Chinese are getting GOOD soon youll never be able to tell the difference between your $4000 wheels and their "$100 wheels" in terms of quality and contruction.
5) The rebeginning. Youll start to see stuff go back to how it was 10 years ago. Small little meets, little hang out spots, little localized events, little car shows. Itll get back to just having fun, little to no payouts etc. Corporate sponsorship will all but dry up for the most part. So that means people will be back to spending their own money GASP!
Expect street racing to grow again, as more an more people hanging out it usually leads to that anyway. Even last night i was coming home and was going down 138 and i saw 30 cars at the old QT i used to go to. APparently they are still racing.
6) Expect forums to grow in participation, users. Just an outlet for people.
7) Expect internet advertising to drop in terms of cars and car parts. Companies will realize its just not worth it in this time right now, UNLESS they are selling parts i mentioned.
8) Performance market is dead, expect it to continue to die out as gas increases and people start heading toward the NEWER CARS. lets face it the popular cars 5 years ago were EG hatches, EFs, 240s, etc. They are almost 20 years old now! They will start drying up very soon along with their motor supplies. Forcing people to move into the newer chassis which cost more to mod, and cost more period. So i expect this trend of "make my car JDM first, go fast second" to last for a few years before people start figuring out how to crack the OBD2B+ cars.
So yeah, major restructuring, major changes are in store IMO
Drifting still popular?
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Originally Posted by Vteckidd
