Quote:
Originally Posted by Martinjlm
Nope. Relevant past information is a part of the mix. Your statements seem to indicate that it should be THE factor. In actuality it is ONE sometimes significant, sometimes insignificant factor among hundreds of factors. Taking this to an extreme, if historical data was the primary factor we’d have never moved away from roll-up windows, because the take rate for power windows sucked for a long time, as did the warranty cost. But when other factors are given more weight than historical numbers, change happens.
Without context, past volumes is just a number. There are inputs wrt cost, price, competitive offering expectations, regulatory issues, financial climate expectations, synergistic technologies, etc that have to be considered. How much each of those gets weighted is a whole additional thing. Two companies looking at the same information (GM / Volkswagen Group) can come to completely different forecasts based on how they weight each of the elements used to build a forecast. GM most likely put less weight on past sales of MT and more weight on cost to develop a unique transmission for Corvette. VW, most likely put more weight on past sales and the ability to just continue on with the same transmission that they cancelled to keep a manual option for 911. Something GM could not do because the new platform for C8 required a completely different transmission configuration. There was no doubt a lot of discussion around “do we develop and integrate one all new transmission or two?”.
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Great post Jim.
My comment was directed at a significant miss on the forecasting team, but I never meant it as the only factor in assessing C8 purchase trends.
The reason it has been focused on, including by myself, is that Tadge's 15% statement has been used and published by many - including some larger publishers like MT, C&D, etc. This bothers me as there is clear evidence that the worst manual take rate data is the 23% you posted here prior, which is closer to 25% than even 20%, making 15% just a made up number.
At any rate, I fully agree with your post above. What will be interesting for you and me is the success of the CT5-V Blackwing manual sales or not...should be telling for what the "could have been" but never will for a manual C8.