complaince of a car can't be shoehorned to a fixed cost. there are people in this game doing Z11s for $1600 and you wonder what has actualy been done. cats weren't tyres- probably not. oil changed - nup. filters - nup.
now to do it properly and take into acoount the labour portion of things that car would clear $12-1300 in parts and 10-12 hrs labour (@$110/hr) to clear/cert it. that would be a close figure for a GOOD car. the worst case woiuld be doing everything needed and the parts/labour cost go up further. (more wrong with it more time to fix it.)
as for the cost of parts. ask the dealerships. on a parallel vein I bring in a LOT of jdm only bits and those are not cheap to land. now you margin those to cover your own costs and you get a final fee. for that $2000 set of cats $1-150 of that would be a margin.
most of the RAWS I know use genuine parts (and I think its a requirement they do this.) and as such those are not cheap.
V series skylines - cats (2 of them) $1600 approx (my numbers may be out a notch but for arguments sake..) then you have the compliance kit, then full service. $3k would be a LOW starting figure to do this car. personally I would pay the money knowing that the car was done properly and it was safe for me to bolt my 2 y/olds kidseat into and it not come out in an accident. yes I have seen those done poorly as well.
so where to now:
why does every one lowball - hell if 90% of the people stopped this shit and stopped taking kickbacks (locally and ex japan) I think this industry may have a chance in surviving.
that said human nature does have a tendency to f**k shit up based on price....