Originally Posted by
jerry d
Back when Remington was made aware of this problem by Walker himself (in 1946) it would have cost 5 1/2 cents per rifle to fix the problem. Now I think they estimate some in the ballpark of 29 million. Heres another link:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/massiv...211600967.html
If the $29M number and the 7.8M rifles number are both correct, they're still only looking at under $4 per rifle for the repairs. I'll assume that's the
after insurance cost of repairs, since not even a high volume shipper like Remington can ship the rifles one way for $4, let alone install a ~$100 trigger and PAY someone to install the trigger for $4 per rifle.
Pretty sure that their net profit on each rifle is more than $4.
Even if you consider Remington's margin restrictions that they impose upon their retailers - they let you make about $50 on every remington rifle if you want to stay a vendor for them - then you're talking about a 10% profit loss on their flagship model line. It's probably fair to assume that Remington profits more on every rifle than they allow their consumer retailers to profit, so we're really looking at a less than 10% profit loss.
One could offer a bit of a conspiracy theory on this that Remington, like all firearms manufacturers, had a banner run after the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings, such that they're displacing "extra sales profits" into this lawsuit settlement. Remington is privately held, and I won't take the time to dig up Cerberus Capital Management's performance reports over that time, but I think it's safe to say that they made a boatload over that time frame, just like everybody else in the firearms world, so dropping $29M on a recall is no sweat. Wasn't the settlment with the family larger than that anyway?