No thanks, I will keep my gas guzzler. I can afford the 460 engine.
Posted on 07/04/2008 12:44:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
DETROIT, July 4 (UPI) -- A mini-car designed by the General Motors (NYSE:BGM) Corp. for Asia and Latin America may soon be available in U.S. showrooms, a company spokesman says.
GM spokesman Dee Allen said the automobile giant was reviewing its current sales plan in the United States following new demands in the domestic auto market because of soaring gasoline prices, The Detroit News said Friday.
"Everything is under review," Allen said. "Obviously, the market has been changing rather rapidly."
General Motors already used a 2007 New York auto show to unveil its new two-door hatchback, the 11 and a half feet long Chevrolet Beat.
The company's new focus on smaller cars comes as $4-a-gallon gas drives auto buyers away from larger vehicles like light trucks and SUVs, the News reported.
The newspaper said the U.S. automaker's share price fell once again Wednesday to $10 a share, the lowest General Motors shares have been in more than 50 years.
The drop in share price comes as the company's sales have decreased 16.3 percent in 2008, the News said.
Er, that should read “even with the benefit of the doubt”.
If I’m going to ride a motorcycle, I’d just as soon have a real one...
Here's one factor to consider. Unlike Toyota or Nissan GM has to generate $2500 for legacy costs (retirement pensions and healthcare) for every car they sell. Takes quite a bite out of the old profit margin doesn't it. Smaller cars have smaller profit margins, and I bet they simply cannot make money with mini-cars built in the US without defaulting on those obligations to their thousands of retirees.
The problem with these kind of cars, and the reason companies are reluctant to sell them here, is that Americans only like these kind of cars when gas is expensive. The minute we start thinking gas is cheap again (whether it’s actually cheap or we’ve just gotten used to the cost) we dump economy cars like small pox laden blankets and the car companies are stuck with a bunch of stock they can’t sell and factories that need to be converted back to SUV building.
So? Both GM and Ford have neat small cars made for every other market but our own. They’ve brought over other cars, why not those? Build them overseas, bring them here.
(Answer: Because the unions, in many cases, have told them not to.)
So, just as I thought, you are one of the dreaded carist. Nothing worse than an SUV driving carist.
If that is true... how come Honda and Toyota are still here?
They didn’t launch SUVs until recently and did just fine without them.
And to think that all this miniaturization is not necessary if we just were allowed to drill for oil in our own backyard. Hell, with a car that tiny you can get killed running over a stray cat.
All the vehicles in this picture, get a whole lot better mileage than anything we drive... cheaper too.
(excepting perhaps that bus, way in the back of the frame - though it's still better mileage and cost, per passenger)
I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.
Have you noticed the kind of cars and trucks Honda and Toyota have been making since the early 90s? They didn’t launch SUVs until recently but they’ve moved away from the economy cars. Just look at how the Civic has changed, it’s gone from a 1500 pound economy hatch back to a 2600 sedan. Corollas have gone through a similar change. They still keep a couple of economy models around because poor people buy cars too, but that hasn’t been the core of their business for a long time.
The Peel P50, from The Isle of Man.
“If I do die, so what, I will sooner or later anyway, or do you actually think you are going to get out of life alive?”
The problem isn’t dying. It is being massively crushed and crippled and living in constant pain for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years. I would sooner drive a safe vehicle and spend 2x more for gas than take a chance on having to live out the rest of my life in misery.
Um, actually, when the Civic got notably larger, they simply brought over their now-old-Civic-sized Jazz from Europe and Japan and renamed it the “Fit”.
Most of Honda’s world business is *still* small cars, both here and in the US.
Also, IIRC, car weight has gone up as a result of more and more “mandatory safety equipment” regs. The current airbag and side intrusion regs add several hundred pounds to any car, for example.
How about we let each American make that decision individually, rather than make lots of dumb rules to protect us from ourselves?...
All we need to have more efficient transportation, is a lot fewer laws and regulation.
Let freedom ring.
That should have read “both over there and in the US.”
Bingo - beyond certain minimum crash performance specs (do not want something like the Chinese Brilliance sedan debacle), let the market decide how safe people wish to be.
This really could become an inspiring, hugh conservative/(libertarian) issue, if there were any Republicans who had the intestinal fortitude to actually...
Oh never mind.
(shakes head, disgusted)
Honda is now the elite of the Japanese car companies, most models cost more than their equivalent competition. And her in America most of their business is not the small cars. It’s the coupes and sedans. They’ve, and Toyota and Nissan, have moved away from being an economy car company here, because when gas is cheap Americans don’t like economy cars. deny it if you want but the truth is the truth and the truth is the Rice Three haven’t been focused on econo-cars in the US for well over a decade, they smelled the change in our market and adjusted. Now with gas up they will bring the econo-cars back into a higher profile, of course they’ve got a leg up there as most of their vehicles get better millage than their American company counter parts, so they can be econo without flooding the market with tiny cars American won’t want in 5 years.
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