tinted windshield

[Jim Nilsen]

Hello Tbair, While I was at SEMA I talked to a glass supplier about tinted windsheilds and the cost to make a special run for a car make.
The newer Lexus models and several other cars have gray tinted winsheilds from the factory which are DOT legal. This is a special process they have come up with and it seems to work so far.

The cost of getting a windsheild for my 67 Camaro could be around $250 to $350 minimum and as high as $500 to $1,000 depending on how many were successfully made in a special run of them. To get 25 guaranteed good windsheilds they need to make about 45 to 50 of them because they tend not to be good at the beginning of the run and at the end of the run,so they can sometimes get lucky and get more of them that are good which helps out the cost when you have more of them to sell. Making more in the run would bring the cost down for sure.

The big thing is to get enough people together to want one of them and have the money secured to pay for the production run. The cost of the prodution run was around $20,000 at a rough gestimate.Having a profit margin for someone in the process is also a problem.

The good thing is that it is the same windsheild for 67-9 Camaro's and that there are a lot of people out there that might want one? Wanting one and paying for one up front is the big key to the whole endeavor. I personally would pay $300 up front for one without hesitation if I knew I was going to recieve one . $500 is not quite in my ballpark but I might consider it if one was right in front of me and it looked perfect.

I talked to Frank at SEMA about maybe getting a group purchase together. It is something the will take more research and needs to be discussed before it will ever happen.

So if you are really interested in a tinted windheild and have a 67-9 Camaro maybe we could all be in luck and if enough people got together the cost could be in the lower range to get one. If several hundred people would want one it could get them down to a nice price it would seem.

I know that Tbair is talking about a 62 Impala and it will be more difficult to get enough people together for that model of car,might not be impossible? but once we get the process started and some interest in them maybe someone would be interested in doing more cars.



Now that this is now a subject of interest ,lets see if we can respond. I know that it would be really nice to have a windsheild that went along with the smoked gray side and rear glass that I have now.

Jim Nilsen