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Goodness me that Traverse thing is ugly and expensive.
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all the rest are imports, and the only home grown one is Huge Hideous and High fuel consumption.
Do the American car industry learn nothing?
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 28 Mar 10 at 13:48
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>> all the rest are imports and the only home grown one is Huge Hideous and
>> High fuel consumption.
>>
>> Do the American car industry learn nothing?
>>
Give the customer what they want ?
If the vehicles they made did not sell and make huge mark-ups (F150) then the companies would not make them.
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errr
they didnt sell, thats why they had to go cap in hand to the fed.
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by the skin of their teeth.
Stopped making F150s for a long time tho didnt they. All those workers making all those F150s the customers wanted were at home making holes in the sofas instead.
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I think that's it. Recession hit and people could not afford the big stuff in the same volumes. The consumer jumped ship quicker thean the manufacturers could retool.
However, if you look back at the 70's and the fuel crisis, people down-sized to more fuel efficient cars but as soon as they had a few pennies in their pockets the big stuff made a comeback.
All those people who traded in big cars during the scrappage, I wonder how many will choose a supermini the next time around ?
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Big SUV sales started to fall off a cliff in 2005/6 - before the crash and during the peak boom. US car makes share of their own market has been in constant decline - now down to 60% - and this in a market that is furthest away form any other manufacturing country and one that had fierce protectionist laws and trade unions.
It all really means they just dont know what thier home market wants.
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>> Big SUV sales started to fall off a cliff in 2005/6 - before the crash
Subjectively you can see this on US roads, I spent some time in the US last year for work and it had been perhaps 3 years since I'd previously been over. What struck me was that the cars tended to be smaller "compacts" (Accord / Mondeo sized) and Korean, Japanese or European in origin, I even saw Golf TDis in use. Previously they'd all been SUVs and "full size" sedans (Ford Taurus and its like). this is reflected in hire car bands too I'd observe, yesteryear's Ford Contour (Mondeo) is now a Toyota Corolla sedan.
Not exactly statistically valid but enough for me to notice.
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>> all the rest are imports and the only home grown one is Huge Hideous and
>> High fuel consumption.
>>
I think you will find that the Nissan Altima and the Hyundai Elantra are built in the US or Canada, or possibly Mexico, and I think the US market Golfs are built in Mexico too.
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>> I think you will find that the Nissan Altima and the Hyundai Elantra are built
>> in the US or Canada or possibly Mexico and I think the US market Golfs
>> are built in Mexico too.
Yes silly mistake - I meant Non US owned.
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 29 Mar 10 at 12:31
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I guess when assessing the Traverse it's as well to remember that it replaces the Chevrolet Trailblazer, a car with no positive qualities whatsoever other than looking big and butch. The Traverse at least has independent suspension as an indication that GM might have actually spent some time engineering it.
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Best cars for 2010 - US Style - R.P.
