The technical and commercial barriers to the development and successful exploitation of a high strain rate superplastically deformable aluminium alloy for use in the automotive industry are considered in this paper. Batch processing routes, such as mechanical alloying or equal channel angular extrusion, employed to deliver appropriate chemistry and structure, are inherently costly and unlikely to deliver either the quantity or the size of strip required commercially. There is evidence that there is still scope for development of conventional casting and rolling routes, but a particulate casting route combined with roil consolidation offers the prospect of a commercially viable Al-Mg-Zr product. The use of alloying additions, including zirconium, is also discussed and comparative costs are presented: on this basis the use of scandium appears economically prohibitive.