Quote:
Originally Posted by Number 3
If you look at the history, they did not do a bad job at all. It's jus the historic problem GM has had for the past 30 years. Price a good car up to the point where you can have a German or Japanese Luxury brand in the driveway and GM loses that transaction. It's the reason why a really and truly great ATS and CTS aren't selling. GM went toe to toe with BMW on content and pricing and as of today.......................they are slowing the plant down because both cars are selling poorly.
|
Coupes don't sell well NOW. They used to. Used to be I'd never ever ever ever consider anything but a 2-door. I think car companies lately aren't as slow to react as they used to be. It took them 5 years to shrink the body sizes for gas mileage considerations from the oil crisis in '73, but at least they looked a bit smarter when the second gas crunch hit by default. But when you produce a pricey vehicle and present it to the finicky public, sometimes you miss. Used to be the car companies could absorb the hits, but now they need to ensure the styling is still relevant as well as pleasing a lot of buyers to make the car successful.
Don't forget in the mid 80s, the Cutlass was a monster seller as well, in 1984 it was the 3rd top seller at 334,060 units (Chevy Cavalier was the best selling at over 371,836 units). But when the "foreign" makers started making better cars and slicing into GM's sales everywhere, they had to give up some of the redundancy and bloat that eventually made some models unmarketable. Again, using 84 numbers, the final 10 days in Sep, GM sold 102,000 units. Honda?...2,641. And Chevy sold 1.1 MILLION trucks in 84 and STILL was behind Ford Truck sales. (For reference, 84 Mustang sales were off 135,678 to Camaro's 261,591, nearly a 2:1 advantage!)
Speaking of the CTS, the wife's 2010 CTS Wagon is, mechanically, the best GM car I've ever experienced. In fact, the CTS is on sale now and we're considering a new one.