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Suaviloquent

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Everything posted by Suaviloquent

  1. Suaviloquent
    Carandriver had a piece or was it MT... Whenever they went to gas stations to fill up the vehicles for testing, the Mustang consistently got more attention.
  2. Suaviloquent
    The problem with your counter examples is that they precisely prove my point. Chrysler DID own the minivan segment for nearly a decade, and Ford didn't relinquish its ponycar sales dominance for a long time either. GM will get to market first, with way more experience building cars and a dealer network more than up to the task of moving cars in the required numbers. The Tesla? Debut delays and troubled launch of current product are both very troubling signs. Their insistence on fighting legal battles to sell cars in Michigan will just wear them down even more. They're in huge trouble. No you're just heavily cheering for GM. The new market is heavily competitive. There's no protection for domestic makes from the foreign competition. GM will not gain any advantage, especially if gas prices fail to cooperate. I can for sure give GM a pity point for head a start of a few hundred to a couple thousand in sales. Pony cars sold in the hundreds of thousands, in the millions in the first few years they came out. That isn't going to happen for electric vehicles. The Volt was meant to transform GM's alternative vehicle footprint. It did in a sense, but now it's in dire threat by another Chevy, and by making a conventional Malibu hybrid - the Volt will be in even more scrutiny. Even the famed Prius is no longer going to be the top-seller Toyota as the company predicted. GM isn't going to win here. No one will, not at first. And because of inertia and bounded rationality, I can easily bet ham over fist that people will definitely wait just a few months more to get the Model 3.
  3. Suaviloquent
    Okay so you're salient to GM's PR fluff... when I'm not mentioning any of that at all. PR fluff is fluff. Gm has yet to even outsell a conventional EV, the Nissan Leaf with their Volt - the EV killer of all vehicles. I'm not holding my breath for GM to gain any significant market share in the EV market, none more than their current market share at this point. DFelt, you have your opinion on styling, but the Model S is atleast not a bloated hatchback like the Bolt.
  4. Suaviloquent
    It's about the same as someone saying the minivan market would be permanently Dodge/Plymouth's because of the first caravan. Or the same as saying that the Mustang would always reign supreme. Nothing is guaranteed. The Bolt is a great vehicle. But that's mostly because electric vehicles are fundamentally superior in every aspect, expect driving range to gasoline cars. And that is quickly changing. Putting a battery pack in a sub-frame sandwich, having the electric motors placed next to the axle for desired drive-train layout, and ease of packaging, that is nothing new. The Model 3 will be rear wheel drive. The BMW 3 Series or Cadillac ATS may have similar driving ranges to say a Honda Fit or Ford Focus hatchback. But I'm never going to confuse which cars are purpose built for more than just being excellent compact cars for every day driving. Don't get me wrong, I want the Bolt to succeed, but it's just not the end of the story. The Bolt might add some decent incremental sales for Chevy. The Model 3 could easily double or triple Tesla's sales. But Tesla at the end of the day is not company about sales as much as just the true champion of electric cars. They don't have gasoline cars that they can assign overhead to in their production facilities. They don't have high turnover of gasoline cars to make dealerships viable. So they are forced to take the task of manufacturing, distributing and then getting the cars in the hands of customers in a novel, but just really simple way. This is what happens. A new-comer shakes up the industry and the incumbents gritting their teeth finally muster something worthy as competition.
  5. Suaviloquent
    Tesla has a different sales channel. One thing - Tesla has a major capacity issue - which they are really trying to get sorted. I honestly don't see how the Bolt will come as-is fully loaded at its base price that has been much talked about either. No way are you getting the Cadillac through-view mirror or all the safety tech in that base price of the Bolt. I see the cars really being well differentiated. The Model S looks fantastic, and the Bolt looks like any other small hatchback - it really reminds me of a Honda Fit. And being the car it is, I don't think buying a Bolt will be as simple as just going to the neighborhood dealer expecting to drive out the same day. You're going to wait for the order to come in. So, I hardly see how GM can claim substantially faster delivery times. Tesla is a growing company going against giants. Yeah, they're having delays, but they're doing things which are forcing the bigger guys to react. In a vacuum, I'd say GM would win entirely. But there's still only a handful of players. The electric vehicle market is not as competitive as the other segments. There's still plenty of room for others to join. What Tesla has is its superiority in customer experiences. And it's been fleshed out with their cult like following. Ask anyone my age, when you mention Tesla, they aspire to own one. I rarely see such aspirations for any other manufacturer or brand of automobile in the incoming demographic that will be rising to majority of sales in the coming years.
  6. Suaviloquent
    This would make a perfect Dodge subcompact crossover, bring more people to the brand and potentially save the Dart because some sales could be sprinkled onto it. They sell hundreds of Fiats per month, while they sell thousands of Darts... Yet they want to get rid of the Dart? If they're really commited to keep the $h!ty sellers out, are they seriously going to keep the 500 and 500L? And the 500X isn't a saviour either. It just won't sell, when the Jeep Renegade gives you more vehicle for the same price... the Fiat 500X is like the opposite of the Buick Encore/Chevy Trax twins. You get a worse vehicle, and you pay more... I'm just laughing incredulously that they're going to make a high performance model of a model that they can't afford to even sell, and they are enabled to do so by not developing their only competitive small sedan in their entire family of brands. Unbelievable.
  7. Suaviloquent
    Actually ccap depending on their income tax assets or deffered liabilities, they could have very well paid only $1.1 billion in taxes.
  8. Suaviloquent
    So is the C.O.E going to get painted, perhaps the rust taken care of?
  9. Suaviloquent
    Which cheek? Don't say closer to the middle.
  10. Suaviloquent
    Well, in the new MT test (which I think was poorly done)... The new Prius, despite its looks, they said really corrects many of the daily driving issues of previous generation cars. The car feels more substantial, not as much as the Volt, but the Volt is aided in that feel because of the heavy battery pack. And it beat its EPA estimates in their Real MPG test, that most hybrids fail to do really. I think, the car is quintessentially what Toyota is about. Take away the ugly styling, here you have a clearly Japanese-focused car. In the JDM market, it is the sales king, the car gets undoubtedly stellar mileage. And I think Volt still has the issue of being a more complicated car, that adds cost, and makes it less competitive on an entry starting point. If there was any hybrid that was really just focused on mileage, it's Prius. But this generation, they've finally made it a daily car. And like Mini - it has its legacy quirks, part of the way the car is - is for it to be bizarre. Given how people actually drive cars, I think if someone told me they wanted efficiency first without the entry point of the Volt - handily get the Prius over the Fusion/Malibu/Camry/Sonata/Optima hybrids. Easily.
  11. Suaviloquent
    Take away any real premise of sport (atleast when compared to the ATS or XE), give it an exterior that is a mash-up of the K900 and Optima, give it a very nice interior for the price, albeit a bit derivative... I see another car with no real prestige, but plenty of spendy looks for the price. The problem is that the only thing you could get more that might be over a loaded SXL Optima is RWD. Which I don't think is very compelling for a Kia buyer. I think they would have more success with a car that apes the Mercedes CLA, like a sedan and jacked up hatch duo that are clones of that kind of product. Then use the value for money quotient to have excellent interiors, worthy of a car a class size above, and the tech, which is Kia's Forte... excuse the bad pun, but yeah. There's more money to be made by Kia by doing something that... ahem.. articulates the needs of buyers who want the aspirational product without the aspirational badge.
  12. Suaviloquent
    They did great, and really most automakers all had pretty stellar turnouts. Riding the back of a strong(er) North American economy certainly helps, especially given how the domestic makes really live off of utility vehicle sales.
  13. Suaviloquent
    Anyways, I confirmed 3 tickets to the CIAS. Got 'em at a nice discount too. I am stoked.
  14. Suaviloquent
    I'm someone that Scion could target, and I would consider their cars. It's one of those brands that yeah maybe their cars are a good value- an perhaps the iA, which is a Mazda is probably excellent for the money. But I'm the kind that would just save a bit more to get a decent mid-size sedan. The new Malibu or Mazda 6 could attract my dollars way better than any Scion ever could.
  15. Suaviloquent
    I could see this car as some kind of Audi TT competitor if it had a different power-train. But wait... it's probably a segment better covered by Buick. And the Buick Cascada is not the optimal attempt to compete there. And uh, I gotta tell you, the poolside commercial wasn't universally praised. At first I liked it. But then I thought, Cadillac should not be carrying some smug baggage, because if the company tries to tie itself to some past American ideal, then it just keeps holding itself back. I would like Cadillac to not even mention the past, atleast not the last 4 decades. In between those pockets you find some great Cadillacs, but it was an overall decline. Being quietly smug while watching the segment incumbents scratch their heads, and then laughing in the security of a bank vault - yeah, I'm okay with that.
  16. Suaviloquent
    Wow man, it looks unfreaking believable. An ST wagon?!! I just wish for once, people would NOT buy a crossover and buy this thing, or others things that compete directly with this thing. You get the style of a sedan, with the utility of the crossover, with the exclusivity of hero vehicle. Like if you were a soccer mom, why not? Hero mom. If you were the soccer day, why not? Hero dad. If you had pets - Fido would love to snuggle in the hatch.... Like you win-win-win, and 100% full win. You are made of win if you drive this. Yesh.
  17. Suaviloquent
    Oh sorry Drew, I thought the last year the sales mix was heavily the new gen, I didn't realize they cleared out a lot of glut of the old 200. Well, if this is the normal sales level... I don't know why they went into this new generation, only to see it gone within the product cycle. I mean, I think it's a solid product... But I'm not sure if it has the substance if you don't go for the higher trims. I would go towards Chevy or Hyundai Sonata Eco or Accord Sport if I wanted an excellent mid-size sedan that is more affordable. The top-end is where the 200 was really supposed to shine, and it does... but I just can't get how the selling point was the really well done interior. You lost some interior space, and now with the refreshed entries, you don't have to compromise...
  18. Suaviloquent
    Nice. What's their earnings after taxes? It's good their getting it done. Sustainable business, is what GM has to deliver.
  19. Suaviloquent
    Uhhh. David I imagined for a second that your nose was taken off and you "packed" it in the thing-a-ma-bobber....
  20. Suaviloquent
    It better be, because I'm wearing summer shorts outside tomorrow.
  21. Suaviloquent
    Now is it true that with lower volt systems they run at higher Amps? One is potential energy, the other is rate of flow, right? So less, potential, more of it can be flowed?
  22. Suaviloquent
    I know it did bad because of pricing... But the Cadillac we want will eventually be making these kinds of vehicles, just better executed. Maybe not as coupes, not yet anyhow. I love the styling though, and to me it's a discount BMW i8 with discount performance. It gets better FE in gas heavy regen mode too.
  23. Suaviloquent
    Lincoln MKR as well.
  24. Suaviloquent
    The best part is that with the flagging Yen, Mazda wins on Forex transactions.
  25. Suaviloquent
    Ahh, tanked relative to the year prior. That's not good. The hallmarks of resurgent sales are continued growth year-over-year. But it petering out means there's a real issue. Chrysler has always been a brand about its sedans and minivans. To only have that number to dwindle to two is worrisome.
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