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GT3 and GT4 are modeled after the printer business. With a printer, it costs $130. They get you on the ink because when it runs out, you need to spend $60 for a refill. If you try to be innovative and refill them yourself, they got that covered because that chip in them will constantly give you errors and never tell you when it's ready to go empty. In the end, your printer craps out in 5 years and you buy a new one. best part is, the ink cartridges are different and thus you go through the whole situation yet again.
With GT3 and GT4, you get a reasonable priced car that the manufacturer either loses money on or breaks even. This is because they know you are forced into buying all of those homologated parts which cost 3X over what they should. They make it up over the long term because as we all know, racecars get wrecked and wear out. Then you'll get no more than 5 years out of it because manufacturers are changing models about every 5 years. So, if you buy a VW MK7 TCR car today, guess what, VW is ready to crank out a MK8 soon. So, a brand new 2018 VW will be good for about 2 years and all of a sudden, they want you to run the MK8 and will amazingly stop making parts and provide support for the MK7. Thus, your 2 year old car just dropped like a rock in value because it's relegated to club racing status. Then any new renter want's a nice and shiny new car because VW will tell you. it's way better than that MK7.
Top that off with things like when there was a 25% increase in race fuel cost. Things like this. If you ran an ST car in 2007, you spent $20K in entries for 10 races ($24K adjusted for inflation). Today, it's $35K if you prepay for the whole season, $41K for per event basis and then $44K for a standard per event. So, same number of events, less race and track time. In 10 years it has gone up anywhere from 46% to 83%. Premium gets you some extras but in the end it's not needed. Credentials were only $400 back in 2007 and even if you bought 10, that is still way cheaper than the premium for IMSA. For me, I don't understand why the entry is so much more. 1.8% inflation over 10 years yet racing entry fee inflation is 46-83%. How can that be?
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