I asked, I reasked. Scott bought a set of the Kato HO scale cars and went to the builder and said copy these. His one and only single unique builder said ~$200 for each car or ~$600 per set of 3. End of story.
The history of the builder is brass as Bob has stated. Right now the builder is getting used to the plastic shells. But the builders pricing is still in the brass world. The primary body of any intermodal car needs to be die cast for weight and the builder is today uncomfortable with large die castings so that puts it out for the present too.
Scott would love to make something that would sell in the thousands; he's a business person. But when people on this forum say it's about time Lionel did an SD40 when the Atlas one is available are the people who will keep the quantities down for 3rd rail.
MTH deserved to loose a bundle of money doing a 2nd class knockoffs of the Atlas cars. The only people who would buy them are the cheaper is better crowd. Any not before done intermodal car done with the scale quality of Lionel's husky stack would have sold and would continue to sell very well.
It took Atlas a while to figure out this modern full scale stuff would sell well with the Trinity hoppers. Lionel finally figured out with the full length autoracks followed up with the 86' box cars and now the 21" passenger cars that people who say no one will buy those long cars is full of carp.
