Comments on: Car Sales in 2008 Were Horrific

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:49:54 +0000

In other words no worries because Subaru customers can actually afford to purchase.

I guess selling fair-trade Peruvian clothing and performing at open-mic poetry slams is more lucrative than I thought..

By: V

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:18:24 +0000

Interesting comments from Subaru regarding the ability of customers to obtain finance.
In other words no worries because Subaru customers can actually afford to purchase. (4:00)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=z63wpghWW8s&feature=channel

By: gloppie

gloppie — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:30:05 +0000

Here is a car I would buy…the Citroen deuce redux.
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/05/02/deux-chevaux-redux-citroen-2cv-ready-for-return/
If it is anything like the old version, it would be great to own a simple, efficient, reliable vehicle, that gets you from A to B, AND looks good and turns heads.

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:44:50 +0000

I’m skeptical of your cars lasting until 2020. That’s quite a while, but I’m here in the north where the winter salt will slowly eat your car no matter what.

My friend got a 1988 Toyota Corolla as a HS graduation present.. It died late last year (2008) after 20 years of northeast driving.. My panzer is a 1987 300SDL, still ticking and puffing at 417k mi (hope to get to 500k before starting to look around for newer)..

Oh, you meant American cars, engineered by beancounter committees?

By: DP

DP — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:47:59 +0000

Maybe they should consider making the actual experience of buying a car a little more pleasant. A car is a tool to me, when I have to buy a new one I dread it. I don’t want to deal with car salespeople online or offline. I don’t want to deal with a sales organization that won’t acknowledge your existence the minute you drive off the lot – you’re the service department’s problem then.

I’ve been in dealerships and “made a deal” only to have the manager come in and tell me they “made a mistake” and that isn’t really the price. I’ve been in dealerships and had an agreed on price retracted when they realized I wasn’t going to finance so they couldn’t add in a little extra on the interest rate. It’s an urban myth perhaps but I have at least one confirmed case of where the salesperson accidentally repeating something they could only possibly have heard by “listening in” during that “I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss it” (with my wife) period. A few years ago in one showroom I had to state quite clearly that if they didn’t return the keys to my own car immediately (they had the keys to ‘check it out for trade-in value’), I was driving off in the car I had just test-driven and our lawyers and the police could sort it out from there.

The entire industry is corrupt. No sympathy here and somewhat furious that I can’t “opt out” of bailing them out.

By: jonpublic

jonpublic — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:55:47 +0000

Its not just the big three that’s suffering here. Japan is going to run into problems if the U.S. auto market completely collapses.

@constantnormal I’m skeptical of your cars lasting until 2020. That’s quite a while, but I’m here in the north where the winter salt will slowly eat your car no matter what.

At least here in Michigan there is a sense of things bottoming out. Things will get worse, but they aren’t going to get a ton worse.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:34:44 +0000

Seems like people are starting to see the light regarding reliability/safety. Just doesn’t make sense to buy a new car… hasn’t for a several years now. The EPA now require that drivetrains last for 100K miles with minimal maintenance (150K for some parts). Your off-the-assembly-line engine needs to run for 100K miles and still meet emissions regs, which means your car needs to be able to do that, by law. I guess old habits die hard. Safety hasn’t increased much in the past 5-10 years, but a ton during the 10 years before that. Most of those dinosaurs are gone now though, so for the average driver, new cars aren’t getting you much more than a sat-nav and somewhere to plug in your ipod versus 5-year old cars.

I assume the Subaru sales refer to December. According to this article -

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_bi_ge/auto_sales –

sales are up 0.3% for the year, not down 7.7%. Of course, if most of the media reported that their sales were up for the year, that wouldn’t fit their narrative, and might require them the write a whole sentence on why everything isn’t black and white. Good thing there were two authors on this article to help spread out that workload. Lazy… Also, their isn’t much reporting on these numbers:

Hyundai: Down 14%
Kia: Down 11%

Even though these two brands (same company) only account for about 3% of the market share, these are a couple of interesting data points because it shows that this market hasn’t been hit nearly as hard, much like the high end market. Why are the Koreans in the same company as the Germans? Maybe it says something about ripping off German styling! I’d be curious to know how Kia’s sales are affected by fleet sales to rental car companies, etc.; did that help them or hurt them this year? Based on my visits to the airport, it must be a big segment of their sales.

By: edhopper

edhopper — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:08:18 +0000

“Interesting reading in the NYT about a ‘new normal’ in auto sales… Wonder where sales would be minus the HELOC/e-z credit bubble, because that’s where sales _should_ have been… ”

My thought’s exactly Dr.N. Has anybody looked at how many car sales were from MEWs and perceived “house wealth?

By: Thisson

Thisson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:54:05 +0000

The Panamera looks like a hatch-back. It’s strange looking. My dream car is the Audi r8:

http://www.myride.com/images/vehicle/2008/audi/r8/oem/R8060005_large%5B1%5D_(400×300).jpg

By: Ken M.

Ken M. — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:55:54 +0000

Southern Nevada: http://www.lvrj.com/news/37134354.html