I was looking at making some of these up for myself out of chrome moly tube, slightly different design.

The most expensive part is the race grade uni-ball rod ends, they're not cheap.

I could do them cheaper than $1500 though.

how much cheaper?

I was looking into getting these at a later date for the S13 gear swap. You can find a couple of them through ebay and places that love their ricer goodness. Only issues I am having about them is finding some decent feedback from people who abuse them like a ginger child, they'd be getting some NDT testing if I did buy them.

those pitroad ones look so small, surely not strong enough for anything other than a show car

our rally car came with rose jointed LCA's and the one issue we discovered was that while they were on the car we could not detec the amount of slop in them... one day we took them out and they were absolutely flogged out with heaps of play, they were much much larger joints than the two pictured in this thread too

It would depend on the wall thickness of hte moly tube, I had some made up for the rear toe adjustment of a suzuki swift and they were actually heavier than the std pressed steel/rubber bushed units.

Thick wall tube I would think they would be more than strong enough for a road/race/tarmac car, maybe not gravel and the pounding they receive tho..

I would think that stainless was not the best choice of material as it fatigues and crackes much quicker than cro molly .

Id prefer Mild steel anyday.
As for rallye Id rather abuse a taxi than a fine 1200 coupe :)