K&N Research and Development

>I do think this is a strange way of doing it though, as
>surely a manufaturer would normally have the budget to buy a
>test vehicle and use that. This does seem like an easy way of
>getting over that cost and offering the person whos car it is
>a free kit at the end as a sweetener.
>
>Dan.

Dan,

I really don't think manufacturers have that sort of budget available. K&N will not buy every make and model of car to develop a filter for each one. Lets say each new car on average costs £20,000, and you sell it a week later for £18,000. That's £2000 spent in filter development, so you need a lot of sales to make up for that! It's just not practical, so most companies borrow cars either from customers or from dealers.

Adam.

[Dan F]

Cool, borrowing from dealers. ;o)
However have they not heard of rental? Rent a new car for a week and use it to test on.

Can't be that expensive.

Dan.

[Pedro Fandango]

>I am sure that K & N only need sight of these cars to get
>their physical dimensions correct for the filter and its
>mountings. A supplier of their standing would already have
>their basic filtering materials already to hand.

thats all Pipercross did with mine, they had the car (with me standing over them) for 1/2 day while they took pictures & measured pipe diameters. It got me a free Pipercross Viper & Cone filter