Suaviloquent

I'll have the works. 5 pitiful Novas, fried everything....such as the starter motor. Make sure it's crispy finger-licking good fried kentucky goodness. and some flavourtronics as well.

Shut up and take my money.

And also.... hindsight. Funny you mention FCA retail sales and now they're being investigated for questionable business practices and possibly fraudulent sales. Anyways, the damage has been done there.

What are you talking about? For all we know Tesla service centres staffing needs are outsourced to contractors that have a service level agreement with Tesla. Tesla above all else is network organization. They have a lot of their value chain in-house - hence their high vertical integration, but that doesn't mean they are paralyzed by organizational complexity.

Okay. So they're selling more fully loaded trucks. And GM Silverado sales have levelled off. What's the point about fleet sales again? What point is anyone trying to make? I've said it before that automakers sell to fleet all the time. I mean GM has practically surrendered the commercial segment. What's there not to benefit from? I have never been the person to go after fleet sales.

I find it highly amusing that your love of Mercedes even extends to Hitler's car. True brand loyalty. I'd love to say I like it. But in reality, I loathe ultimate irreverence for brands. Snobbery has its virtues in some situations. But I extol them.

Well, the commercial sales can be quite lucrative. No one has ever said that B2B sales aren't worth pursuing. And I hardly think the Ford Transit - arguably the best commercial van available at this time waters down Ford's brand. They're known to sell to fleets, and Ford commercial vehicles have a heavy market presence. Besides Mercedes and its corporate siblings also are deeply into those segments. Yet somehow they have a very high brand value. What should really be scary is how is Ford able to generate almost equivocal profits to the new resurgent GM with supposedly a growth spurt in utility sales and commercial vehicles, yet still being handily outsold by GM, almost twice in terms of units by GM worldwide.

The MKX had pretty strong sales. GM still sells a lot to fleet. Escalade and XTS get a good chunk from livery services. Likely that the XTS over its product cycle has seen an uptick over the years. Remember, 15% of Malibu sales are all the outgoing Limited. Most of those go straight to fleet. GM said when the new Impala came out it would wait a good while before it went to fleet. Broken promise, they started popping up at your local Enterprise within the first quarter. Likely as they wind down Malibu Limited they'll do the same for the new one.

So Five of the 1974 Chevy Nova 454 7.4L V8 then or would you rather have the Buick GS Stage 1? You're supposed to also ask, "would you like fries with that?"

Hello darkness my old friend...

Eh, when some people say that the GM's Bolt will steal Tesla's lunch money, it's entirely accurate that the Tesla is better looking than anything competing against it on the market. Plus, RWD

Then why is their growth in ATPs double the industry average? Seems like to me they are getting favourable volume in their mix. They're doing record commercial deliveries. Conceivably they could be selling more higher trim F150s to businesses. Who knows. A mystery though how their transactions prices are increasing. Also, a lot of Ford models are older now. The Focus and Fiesta are old, so getting more volume outta them makes sense. But then again, why do we continue to compare Ford's financial performance to GM? It's because for the longest time even as a smaller firm Ford outperformed GM. The General finally getting its act together - I would expect, I WOULD DEMAND GM as a shareholder to beat Ford in retail sales. No $h!.

Cadillac was down probably because of the SRX production winding down. Escalade sales have also kinda levelled off. The sedans are arguably doing much better compared to the losses elsewhere in the industry. I think BMW has finally confused its sedan buyers with too many similar products - over segmenting. Like really, if the 4 Series is the better looker of the 3 Series chassis based car - why not just make the 4 Series the 3 Series? Simply things like that. Also, I think C-Class and whole slew of competitors are giving it to BMW. I think Cadillac being reorganized - this is to be expected even now. Their new communications are all about a completely different kind of brand identity they want to project and the awareness of the brand they are striving to build is completely different. Lincoln is doing something very smart. They are catering to buyers who are no longer served by Lexus, Cadillac and everyone else going sporty. I think Buick also gains a lot from that. And the kinds of vehicles that Lincoln is selling are very viable. Commonality works. It keeps the RX and ES going. Cadillac's biggest sellers will always be the Escalade and SRX/XT5. And I think Cadillac will try to convert the XTS buyers to CT6. It should work out well. But still. The XTS I think did far better than Cadillac could have imagined. Combine those and CTS sales and you've got a lot a good combo of people buying the sports luxury sedan and the luxury cruiser sedan.

I'm not gonna bog this thread down with the specifics of product or perceptions. Just the sales channel strategies. I have strong reasons to suspect the unspoken few bright people in the car industry would slash and burn dealers if they wanted to. You look at how the dealerships exist today - they are rife with mergers an acquisitions. Automakers are beholden to them, and as any sales channel that has its own vested interests - the incumbents cannot dump them because they're the largest distribution chain. The channel innovation is a part of how businesses transform themselves. I don't understand why automakers claim they're on top of the the new stated of car access instead of ownership - such as ride sharing or car sharing services. Yet they refuse to consider direct sales. There's obvious channel conflict. Dealers would hate to see automakers sell directly. However, eventually shateholders will be barging down doors, or put management in place that are stewards of their requirements - more profits and etc. But direct sales have huge advantages. It's no secret, pocket prices are exactly what the MSRP is because there is no intermediary in the value chain that can cause price leakages. No dealer holdback, no volume incentives, no performance bonuses, none of that crap. And the inertia in the organizations is because they're too entrenched into this legacy. And the dirty secret is that every business whether for profit or not needs money badly. Those who fail to innovate - even in their "go to market aka get the product into customer hands strategy" they can leave a lot of money on the table. Yeah, sure. The Bolt will have the advantage of dealerships. But recognize this - Tesla only needs deliver half of their pre-orders, so basically let's assume they delay their shipments by another half-year to equal approximately ALL other electric vehicle sales - which also includes the Models and X!

As long as it has a time-proven reliable starter, RWD, and the biggest cubic inches of displacement.

Eh. I'm lazy. Anything GM 7.0 or above. 5 of them please.

Tiguan, the saviour of VW!!!

I saw a new Lincoln MKX Black label sitting in traffic today. A lot like this one, expect the image here is a reserve trim I believe. And it looks very handsome and the design has a really good maturity. it was red and had the adaptive LED headlights. it looked a lot like this. I gotta say, it looks like it's worth $60,000+ on the outside for sure. I hope they wait a while to graft the new grille onto this. This looks very handsome in person. You do pay a big premium though with Black Label and the 2.7, and certainly the Volvo XC90 is only a couple large more for lot more vehicle. But against the RX and XT5, it's right there.

Burt Reynolds? Why?!!!

Ghosts I tell ya. I see some ghosts. We're getting haunted.

I don't understand people's affectations for grilles. They only exist because it has its roots based on function, not form. For ICE cars - air is one of the many working fluids required. Like required. Therefore a frontal grille/opening/aperture that allows the existence of an air intake is also required. Then it's up to designers now to somehow make the grille look good and remain functional. But electric car's don't need as much air as a working fluid - perhaps only for cooling, but not for combustion!! So get used to it. Even the Bolt has the same kind of black shiny stuff to resemble what would have been a grille if there was an engine under the hood. We had that whole thread WAYY back, like McConaughey back about fake hood scoops/vents. Well, similar thing. Now allow me to use LE TRUMP CARD. Case in point: Porsche mission E. Welp, there's no big as mofo grille!!! Oh my gaud....It's like Nissan Leaf all over again. Or GM EV1....or $h!. No more distinguishing grilles, just wedge shapes that fundamentally are based off of aerofoils. And Mr. Seabaugh at the MT says the car looks better in person. Now...I gotta be honest, I'm not wowed by the styling. But it's purely function over form. How some people say it looks sleek, well it's a happy accident that it appears to be so. But they've used the nifty trait of EV packaging to produce a 3 Series size vehicle which has the total usable stowage space of a new crossover among the likes of a Buick Encore. Sure you don't get a big hatch opening, but the frunk works. It works. And then we have the requisite RWD for many of us. We have available AWD. You can get air suspension - which means potentially crossover-like ground clearance. The car is appealing to a lot of people for the right reasons. It isn't a compliance car. They actually put some thought into this, and I don't see how anything electric can touch this car except in EV range and perhaps MPG-e. Hey, let's start comparing gasoline cars that you can fill up at any gas station btw by the range you have on a tank of gas. Comparable cars too like say a 2012 Cruze and 2012 Focus. They pretty much get the same mileage on their base engines. Range might differ because of gas tank size. But why should that matter? Why should range matter when it's the last thing people think about, they can fill-up where ever they want. What I'm saying is, is that having comparable range to this car isn't going to cut it - not when Tesla has the best charging infrastructure - you can use their superchargers, you can use any SAE fast charger with the adapter provided with the car, and you can also charge on a household 110 here or the adaptive charging allows the car to "refuel" world-wide. And if you can invest some cash into some decent solar panels (which Solar City [another Musk husk] will make a gigafactory [in USA as well)) you've got some nice combined synergies. Marketers dream of synergies like this.... Seriously. Tesla can sell you the car, the home power storage system, and then you can potentially get unlimited local fueling for your Tesla through SolarCity panels, and then with all those gas savings you can buy a ticket to Mars through SpaceX. $h!. This is a helluva strategy. And made in here in good ol' USA.

The internet has blown up legit.

3 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series, and X5 all down by double digits. It must be hitting them in their pocketbooks.

For the plebes that could not see the unveiling live. The car looks the way it looks. At this point it still is vaporware. But damn do people love sniffing it - and the Bolt surely could have used a similar reaction. I saw the interior and I was like "Is that like a merging of a Prius & Audi minimalism" and some BMW i3 tossed in terms of a total lack of flavour?

It's adapting to customer desires. People want the intangible of having the AMG badge from the factory. Now the thing is Mercedes brand equity is probably very high, and for the time being - they have convinced people attracted to Mercedes that them going downmarket isn't hurting them too much. And they are pilfering sales from BMW at the top-end. I think what they're doing is printing money, which luxury carmakers aspire to do. Cadillac is already doing the same - heck people ask about why XT5 VSport isn't a thing or an Escalade-V isn't here.