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It's really hard to gauge what the market is doing when the domestics only report every 3 months. I'm tempted to move our sales reporting to quarterly also.

My opinion : month-to-month is a puzzling, meaningless figure. Much too brief a snapshot and frankly, too much time has passed to keep the comparison valid. YTD compares (here) 7 months instead of 1; now we have some significant time involved. Moves of 2 or 3% are also meaningless by month. Sure it translates to dollars, but you’re never going to have unending ascension in business, and 2 or 3 or 4% is just a natural flux in commerce. Now, you have a model that drops 22% over 7 months this year vs. 7 months last year, and you better ‘be putting people on that’.

Chevy has sold 1636 ZR1's to private parties and the car has only been on sale/produced since MARCH. . So no, Chevy will still sell more ZR1 trimmed Corvettes than Mercedes will sell AMG GTs. https://www.corvetteactioncenter.com/specs/c7-corvette/corvette-zr1-registry/ Also, 30% of which are manual transmission. As much as I love the AMG GT, the new Vette will whoop it sales-wise and I'd wager money that id would whoop it on a race track as well.

No, I doubt he's getting a Pontiac.

Actually the material it takes to mix different colors varies widely in cost. However, I believe that those costs should be amortized over the entire spectrum. The fact that Chevrolet charges nothing for metallics on the Silverado (except for the red tintcoat and pearl white) and GMC charges 395, tells me it is an unnecessary money grab. My new truck is Kinetic Blue... a 395 option on the Colorado. I love the color, but would have happily gone with Pacific Blue and spent the 395 on accessories, like naked lady mudflaps.

Looks like MI is heading for some cooler weather...about time!

The last person out at Mini please shut off the lights.

^ Down 'only' 4% probably is looked at as 'booming' when your slashing models & employees left & right. CLA down 43%, C down 8% E down 9%, S down 22%.

'Barn jointery' goes back hundreds & hundreds of years; not necessarily Japanese in origin. Great technique, but time consuming; not practical for house construction. Also- typical house lumber isn't chunky enough to support that type of joints… unless one wanted to build the frame out of 4x6s. Reminds me of 3-D printing of houses; breezy, over-simplified videos that really only address building walls, then jumping in the air and yelling 'YAY!! WE BUILDED A HOUSE!!"

Maybe, but there are a LOT of used cars and CUVs at MSRP of the new Versa that are just as good or better.

I'm such a rabid fanboy for Mercedes I'm in another thread saying how much better the Corvette is than the AMG GT!

wow those figures are redder than my pee

Thats not a ‘house’, its a garden shed. Plus, video clearly showed metal fasteners for the wall framing. This a terribly energy inefficient methodology of construction. Firstly, nails & screws are cheap & strong. 2nd: wood shrinks, swells, weathers & splits; expect the walls, sans any fasteners, to become loose and even rattly in 5 years. This shed is built with 1-foot pieces: it has a million more unsealed seams that conventional. Why not show this built with 8 sections at the very least? The touted 'quick growth' pine is the least strong, and most defect prone type of growth/wood- slow growth fir is much stronger. And with the 'structure' of the building exposed- the decay attacks that segment immediately, rather than the siding or vapor barrier (immune and there for a reason). Fire rating mention is also woefully absent on their website. Fast growth pine packed with sawdust would be a flammable nightmare. Hard pass.

Context is your friend. One good month on top of six bad months does not mean business is “boomin”. Again, it looks more like an anomaly like FCAs past months of double digit sales growth.

Porsche dealerships are usually paired with some other premium brand.

Still down 4.0% for the year making this one month an anomaly in an otherwise $h! year for Benz. He sure as hell didn’t offer that kind of rosy observation when FCA had their double digit growth months but fanboys will always be fanboys. Hyundai was up 12% for the month while being up 3% for the year. If business is “boomin” at Benz, then it exploded at Hyundai.

For the year DOWN -4% One month does not make the year. Lincoln is UP 1.3% for the Year Cadillac DOWN .3% for the Year Porsche UP 5.3% for the Year BMW DOWN 1.7% for the Year I could go on, but MB is doing worse than many others. They did great years before, but clearly they need some major changes and style updates.

Really, you need to wash those Rose colored glasses. Excluding the few high percentage auto's, the bulk of their product line is dead or heavy down especially year to date. If this was your favorite hate company GM, you would be ripping them apart about the negative models. Plus lets look at the whole company, it is only really up 19.5% for the month as vans and smart are dragging MB down.

They sold a record 57k in the US in 2018, so 70k would be a big boost. And they are part of VWAG, not a tiny independent anymore...

So one good month out of a down year is “boomin’“? Boomin so much that they are slashing everything, cancelling vaporware projects (X Class) and lost money last quarter. You must have gotten a really sweet deal on those rose colored glasses if you’re able see that.

Saw this beauty on the last day of July. Was beautiful!

It is sad that color choices are now charged extra, as if it costs them extra to paint it a different color (NOT!). All external color choices should be 100% FREE.

The trend of only pursuing the most profitable projects (by today's measure) to please wall st is a little rearward looking. Margins on those projects may be eroded once your purchasing power has declined due to the fact that you cut a bunch of other volume projects with lower margins. A very poor and short term way of looking at the business. GM share will continue to decline, but so will their scale and purchasing power. Margins on their formerly high margin products will be pressured. New buyers won't be coming into the fold because you offer nothing to "start" selling them on. Ride sharing services? That's the answer? Again, a myopic view that works in a highly urbanized environment, but not for "middle america". What I see is a strategy that's not very comprehensive and has a lot of holes that will threaten their future capital programs.

Why does Smart and Mini still sell cars here?

1) 260k cars is still 260k cars - a lot - a lot more than Chevrolet sells of most of their SUVs. 2) Cost of development is marginal. Modern crossover SUVs are based on a sister car platform. The big winners will be the ones able to leverage both products off of a single platform of shared costs. 3) GMs sedans have been neglected and not class leading in some time. They're also priced way too high. 4) EVs aren't for everyone. Very myopic when you live and commute in a single urban environment but highly impractical for those who have longer commutes or travel a lot. Fast charge batteries haven't been proven out in severe conditions or duty either - so don't tell me those are just on the horizon. EVs also have a high environmental cost.

Chevy sells more 2-3X more Corvettes with a manual transmission than Mercedes sells AMG GTs in a year. Maybe they should get rid of the AMG GT because they sell so few.

I truly believe their sales will dip once the bulk of buyers who have been waiting for one get theirs because of the lack of a manual transmission. The most recent total sales number breakdown for Corvettes was 2018 model year(as 2019 isn't over yet) 2123 manual transmission sales - 21.9% 7563 auto transmission sales - 78.1% 9686 total 2018 model year Corvettes sold(not sales in 2018). https://www.corvetteblogger.com/docs/2018CorvetteFINALYearEnd.pdf

^ was looking at Sierras at GMC.com : 3 no-charge paint colors, 7 extra charge. Ugh. I didn't see an option for 'paint delete' either.

Yeah, I doubt there will be incentives on the diesel. That said, diesels usually beat their EPA estimates don't they? They always have in cars.

There are some cars that need a good manual to really enjoy properly. The BR-Z/86 is one, the Miata/Fiata would be another. I'm sure the Porsches in a similar vein would be also.

Yes..I remember the joys of driving a manual in a past life on winding, twisting hilly Ohio roads and winding, twisting Colorado mountain roads. It's not about 0-60 or lap times---the numbers mean nothing, it's enjoying the interaction w/ your car and the road.

Technically that might be true, but changing gears by yourself while driving on a curvy road on a nice sunny day in a nice sports car is one of the greatest pleasures a car ENTHUSIAST can have. Only a small fraction of sports car buyers actually take their cars to a track or care about extra couple seconds. There is a reason why Porsche, BMW and some other sport car manufacturers go back to offering manual transmission at least on some of their models.

Honda did this with the Ridgeline and it didn't help sales there either.

I have to say if this was offered in a full EV or plug-in hybrid sales would go through the roof ditching the ancient dirty gasoline.

Enthusiasts don’t drive the market or determine what gets built. Crossover buyers and government regulations do. Another reason to kill the manual is electric cars are going to replace ICE anyway, government regs will force that in time.

WTF are you even going on about at this point? Are you trying to argue to just argue or what? I stated an opinion that their lineup doesn't need "major changes and style updates" and that 19.5% is great, regardless of sample size.