evok

Nissan has already made the investment with their Canton plant. The Canton plant is not a stand alone truck plant but produces 5 models including the 3 BOF trucks. Nissan is not heavily leveraged by full sized BOF trucks as GM, F and DCX. They currently sell about 80k pickups and another 40k utilities. For Nissan, the BOF trucks offers the brand growth with little risk. Utility production is a small portion of the plants production and Nissan should have enough flexibility in the plant to adjust their product mix with the Altima and Quest. Toyota is Toyota. They are toolin up for 300k trucks. Because they are Toyota they are sitting on a ton of cash and could easily afford the bad that goes along with the gamble. This is an investment Toyota can afford to loose. And the merits of Toyota tooling up and selling 300k pick-up is another discussion all together. Both Nissan and Toyota are not leveraged to the point the Traditional 3 are in the BOF full size pick-up and utility business. IMO rising fuel costs will have little effect on the pickup business particularly. For the work truck, there actually might be an incentive to purchase a new truck that does get better fuel economy. The government can increase the IRS write off/mile, thereby reducing the cost of fuel for business. The biggest question mark is that the weekend Red Neck, might defer his purchase of a pickup because of the cost of fuel but the business pick-up truck market should not fall. Full sized utilities is another story because there market is less driven by business sales. We shall see what happens. Toyota will have replacements for the Seqouia and LX, but those are replacement vehicles that are not the make or break vehicles for the company that the 900s are to GM. Nissan has also held their own with the full sized utilites. Again Nissan had limited expectations for the vehicles especially when compared to GM and Ford. In conclusion, Nissan is a limited player in this market and the Canton plant should be protected because of its flexibility. Toyota on the other hand is venturing into a new territory and there are no good answers as to what will happen. Both Toyota and Nissan have researched the market well. The difference is Nissan had conservative expectations and Toyota is being very bold. One thing I am very certain of, I do not expect fuel prices to put a significant damper on the sales of full size pick up for the reasons I stated above. Two questions no one has answers to: Will the market grow because of the added capacity of Toyota or will the current players loose in a stable market volume?

MPG really is not that big a deal.

There are not as many vehicles on the track as you may think at any one time. IIRC the durability vehicle fleet only records about 15,000 miles between tear downs. That probably has changed. A lot of testing can be done on shaker tables these days.http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp...milford%7cMI%7c fyi IIRC most of the spyshot are taken in the south loop area (lower left) heading toward south circle (lower center)- Just under the lower left, kidney track which is is the Belgian block track.

There are big signs up on the grounds as you head over to certain tracks that say: IIRC Vehicle should be in Camo, vehicle may be visible to outside photographers.

But your are wrong. You personally might not call, what the transplants invested in, as trucks. But Pilots, CRV,etc have added hundres of thousands to the bottom line in sales.

You wasted your time with so many typed words.I will be brief and to the point since you obviously do not know what you are talking about. It costs GM a multiple of 3-5 times, in dedicated resources, marketing budgets, development, to achieve the same volume as Toyota in the mid sized segment as it takes GM in selling the same amount of vehicles through different marketing channels. Sorry but GM is business and not a fan club.

Could not agree more.

Assuming demand stays at the levels they are at today, you are still so wrong on this subject when compared to the opinion of the leading experts in the energy field.

Outer skin is different.

No the goal of this business is to sell product and make money first. Something GM has forgotten how to do.

The numbers are out there if you are so inclined to search. And you might be surprised to learn the volume for passenger cars is not the high. Again, sales volume was not the thesis of this thread.

Don't forget, Malibu, Park Ave., Regal (Lacross), and the Impala, Monte, Grand Prix were in production for a while before they jury rigged the LSx motor option.

Nah - I do not hate Pontiac, I just think it is going to take a lot of resources and a lot of luck to fix the brand. Both of which GM does not seem to have a lot of these days.

The marketing killed it. By the time GM fixed the marketing was when they were phasing the brand out. It is sad but to this day when I think Oldmobile I think Cutlass, not the John Rock vehicles. And as I said above, I really liked the Olds lineup in the end.

For their time, the first and second generation Aurora were the best thought out vehicles GM made. I really liked getting them as company vehicles. And the Intrigue was my favorite W with the Shortstar. In hind sight - I think they killed the wrong brand. Buick should have seen the axe fall instead. Olds had somewhat of momentum where a little bit of follow through by GM could have saved it. Plus the demographics would not have hurt Olds with Old appealing to a yonger crowd with the Achieva. The G6 as an Achieva might have done well.

LOL How Ironical! (sp intended))

Excellent point. Not in the context of what I was refering to but excellent none the less. I have been thinking a lot about that lately.

And how many F Series and GMT900/800 based vehicle plants do the respective OEMs have?

If you are so sure you are correct - go do the analysis. What is stopping you? But you might have trouble finding the data you are looking for? http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/accounts/nadm96.html

LOL

Actually they are not.

You are not positive but a 100% correct. People forgot about all the money MI gave for all the recent GM reinvestment in the state. http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdi...591571#abstract

Yes agreed - It mirrors my sentiments in the GM May sales thread.

And when I did the math last, when GM eliminates the 30K jobs, the number of vehicles/worker will be very similar to Toyotas in the US. Also those studies are not accurate and do not take into account workers that support both transplant and US brand vehhicles. i.e. suppliers that are working on transplant and US brand programs. or what about Japanese suppliers that have set up shop in the US such as Yazaki, Denso or Takata that US manufactuers use for their programs. Everything is so intertwined there is no clear distinction anymore. Looking at GMs number, GM employs more people outside the US than in.

And for the most part he would still be wrong. Lexus GX is sold as the Toyota Prada in certain markets and the euro Accord is the Acura TSX. And still few in the US market would even know that.