steel vs. aluminum oil pan

[UDelaware30]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I can not find a reason why someone has not developed a steel oil pan for the m20.

Steel will not shatter upon impact as easily as the aluminum. It will either scrape or bend, most likely keeping the oil contained in the pan.

Explain to me why this is not possible/a good idea.

[ak-]

Because ejnight will go out of business. And we don't want that.

[jquirit]

I've wondered this for a while. Considering Moroso makes so many different pans (hell, the Dodge Neon has a Moroso pan available for it, I know because it had one on an Solo II car I drove) and that the pan itself (at least from the M42 I've seen) isn't that complex. Only thing I can think of is a combination of things:

1) Nobody bothered asking them to make one.
2) There's no sizable market to support a product as such.
3) Supporting a product that is being used in a location known to have numerous failures is something they'd not pursue as it becomes a hindrance on supporting repairs of people that damage them. Those things could be taken care of by doing a few things:
3a) Interior walls bracing the pan, also allowing for baffling to prevent oil transferring away from the pick-up on high g maneuvers.
3b) Rolling front of the pan in a uniform piece so that any direct impact to the front of the pan (common) won't be directly on a weld and potentially cracking it.

They'd probably make a one-off or a few if someone provided them a car/engine, but a sustained production run I don't know. Just might not be enough a market to justify the tooling and development, especially at the common price-point that Moroso charges for their products (around $400).