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The Current State of the US Auto Market
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No evil intent required. Failure came out of habit.
But VW hasn't had a very good reputation, has it? A friend of mine bought/leased several VW's but stayed within the warranty. Now they have Fords.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
The thing with VW is that their cars have typically tested very well and are fun to drive, like most German makes. Their reliability is sketchy. So those who are lucky have a great experience, and those who are not pay through the nose, but still have a nice car to drive. VW's typically have quite high resale values in spite of their reliability problems and repair costs, probably due to their desirability as "driver's cars".
July Car Sales Will Be Impressive
Ahead of all GM Divisions.
Brands Ranking:
Porsche 884
Audi 857
BMW 854
Land Rover 853
Lexus 847
Mercedes-Benz 847
Cadillac 841
Jaguar 839
Lincoln 835
Infiniti 831
Ram 817
Volvo 812
Acura 811
Volkswagen 809
Mini 801
Buick 800
Kia 797
INDUSTRY AVERAGE 795
Hyundai 792
Honda 791
Ford 790
Nissan 790
Chevrolet 788
Dodge 787
Chrysler 784
GMC 784
Fiat 781
Scion 778
Mazda 776
Toyota 776
Jeep 763
Subaru 756
Mitsubishi 749
Smart 739
Good thinking on the statistical range.
We need to see the questions as they were asked on the questionnaire to see if there is a bias to the poll. How were the people picked and how were they polled?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
1000 was the max.
It is followed in the industry because happy owners are more likely to stick by a brand for their next purchase and buyers tend to pay more for cars ranking high for satisfied owners.
Apparently, happy owners are also rich owners because all the top brands in the brand rankings are in the luxury category.
The study measures 77 attributes to create a score, which is measured against other models and brands.
The J.D. Power and Associates Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study examines what consumers like about their new vehicles after 90 days of ownership. Often referred to as "things gone right," APEAL is based on eight categories of vehicle performance and design: engine/transmission; ride, handling and braking; comfort/convenience; seats; cockpit/instrument panel; heating, ventilation and cooling; sound system; and styling/exterior.
J.D. Power 2013 U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study
I'd like to see the same survey results AFTER the honeymoon is over.
I would suspect there is an income bias in the study. People on a budget to pick a car likely get one that fits the budget more than one that makes their ego "go" when they get in to drive it. Higher income (disposable income) folks get to choose their car.
And there are the older, wiser folk who have learned to pick carefully to avoid pitfalls that lead to high cost car maintenance, such as the first year of a new transmission or engine.
And I'm with Mr. Shiftright on this about the honeymoon and a changing evaluation after that period has expired. I see cars come to my neighbor's shadetree garage after being quoted a $1200 tune up for their Mercedes. Or the Mercedes which cracked a radiator idling because the fans weren't coming on and apparently the pressure maximum didn't release to vent the cooling system on the CLK 500. There are various things about BMW's he's repaired where owners may not be so happy anymore. And a few Jaguars. And the Subaru with the multi thousand dollar repair list from the dealer at 60 or 80K miles (I may be wrong on that mileage), so the car ended up at my low dollar neighbor's residential-zoned garage.
I'd love to see the questions JD used on the survey. I enjoy when I'm on the consumer end of a survey so I can take apart the techniques used.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Here is additional info.
Top attributes
Power says the attributes that generated the most satisfaction in this year's survey were exterior styling, interior styling, driving dynamics, engine and transmission performance, and seat comfort.
The top gripes, in order, were fuel economy, infotainment and communications, heating and cooling systems, storage and space, and visibility and safety.
At the bottom of the survey were the Smart, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Jeep and Toyota brands.
Brands and nameplates that ranked at the bottom tend to feature older technology and user interfaces, Power said.
Sargent some brands and nameplates continue to be hurt by cost cutting prompted by the industry's sales downturn.
Appeal
Good points on the survey though, nicer cars will receive higher scores. I bet 7ers and S-class get better scores than 3ers and C-class, too.
I was waiting to see how long before the "bias" claim came up.
While that is certainly a possibility, I've noticed a pattern, especially from GM apologists, where pretty much if somebody says GM is really good, then they're correct, and if something says GM brands aren't so good, then bias is obviously involved. I don't see that as much from owners of non-D3 makes.
While I may like, say, Honda, I don't say "I wonder why it's so biased?". I instead wonder what contributed to Honda's relatively low ranking.
For the GM makes, it seems like JD Power, Motor Trend, Automobile Magazine, Edmunds, CU, and Car and Driver are just all biased regarding GM -- except when they're not, like when CU said Impala is the best sedan.
Denial is a powerful human emotion apparently.
Denial leads to things like being too big to fail, and asking for bailouts.
I would propose that Honda didn't do well because for the last 10 years they went in the wrong direction, but it looks like this year they corrected the course of the sinking ship.
I'd expect they will do better in the near future.
No need to be insulting.
Very frankly, I paid
littleno attention to the GM placement other than I noticed Buick about middle or above. I looked more at the cost of the cars that gleaned the higher satisfaction levels. Combine that with the facts of life that most people, myself included, can't just go out and pick the car they would like most to own, but instead they pick the car that's more reasonable to their budget, future income, number of passengers needed (6 won't fit in a Tesla--which is a car I would love to own for a year),wife's choicesignificant other's if any choice, etc. They pick cars that aren't as luxurious or equipped as they might want.You are trying to assign a motivation to my interest in the dynamics of the poll. I'm interested in the automotive part and the statistics used in analyzing the polling.
I resent the inference. I went back and reread my post. NO mention of GM was made. I did mention some nice highline cars from Mercedes. Where are you getting bias toward GM? Just making it up? :mad:
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Here's a car I REALLY WANT!
I've seen the lesser models occasionally, usually in black. That's an extended length and special side trim. Limited, Riviera 750.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Back in those days, people equated length with bragging rights, so I think they did stretch them out somewhat for 1958...at precisely the wrong time!
I think Mercury ran into sort of the same problem. The '57-58 models were on a 122" wb, and I forget the overall length, but it wasn't *that* impressive. They lengthened them for 1958 I believe, to 124", but then for 1959, they went even bigger, to 126" for the cheaper models and 128" for the big ones.
I'm not positive, but I think Mercury was one of the few makes to see fewer sales in 1959 than 1958. DeSoto, Edsel, and Studebaker were also in those ranks. Buick, and GM in general, made a pretty good comeback for 1959, and for the most part the cars were a bit bigger, but styling was radically new. The Mercury, while supposedly all-new for 1959, really didn't look all that new. I though it was an attractive car, though.
Not true for Studebaker, andre. Sales were almost three times in '59 what they were in '58, thanks to the Lark.
And I'll just tag this comment here, although it has nothing to do with andre...there's a lot of denial on this board...such as when GM does something well, usually crickets are chirping here, or if a much-beloved import brand does something not very well...same crickets. You know who you are.
As usual, I'm not exactly shocked that Audis and Porsches are enjoyed by owners more than Chevys, Buicks, or Caddys. Doesn't take Einstein to notice the price differences from bottom-to-top of each's respective lines.
Same goes for when GM does something wrong. Balance! :P
Even though the success wouldn't last, Studebaker might have been one of the biggest risers, percentage-wise, in 1959 sales versus 1958, thanks to the Lark. The Rambler was also really popular in 1959, and by 1961 I think it actually ousted Plymouth for #3 American nameplate. But, it was also popular in 1958, so 1959 over '58 sales may not have been as impressive. Studebaker, in contrast, probably seemed like they were coming back from the dead!
For me Chrysler is so far gone they are a ghost.
I apologize if it came across that way. I wasn't directing it at you, but more that your post reminded me of all the times in one of our old forums that whenever certain posters saw things they didn't like, they used bias as the catch-all excuse. Appreciate your thoughts and response.
I also agree that certainly any poll has ways in which it is constructed -- from the audience being polled to the questions being asked, etc. - that can affect the way in which the answers come out.
Still, my original point was that over the entirety of many reviews, polls, and even market share, one can get a true idea of how individual brands are perceived. In discussions in the GM forum, that was the brand where I saw a lot of bias claims. For a company that I want to actually do well (GM), it seems that they are still climbing the ladder a bit.
I appreciate your response.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Thanks for that.
You brought up a good point that most people don't buy what they want, but what they can afford. So really the challenge isn't to make the best car, it's to make the best car in a given segment which runs in a certain price range. And of course there are tradeoffs to be made there. I'm sure that keeping manufacturing and overhead low is something that enables better content choices. But still, there's a lot that can be done by designing things more cleverly up front. It's an interesting balance of factors that end up producing what people do or don't like. And of course they don't always know what they want until they see it, either.
If you seriously believe that people here routinely post first, pro-GM stuff and that you and others are only responding negatively to counter for balance, well, there's really nothing else that can be said.
In today’s WSJ, Holman Jenkins write about the auto industry’s role in Detroit’s bankruptcy and explains how “The city had almost everything it needed [in terms of locational business advantages known as "clustering," that include "labor market pooling] to become an even greater capital of the global auto industry” .. except for one major disadvantage – a government-sanctioned labor monopoly known as the UAW. Here are two key paragraphs:
The United Auto Workers wasn’t just a union; it was a government-sanctioned labor monopoly that behaved as monopolies do, extracting maximum compensation for minimum productivity. A certain piety prevents it from being noted, but lack of access to a competitive labor market has undermined the Big Three and Detroit’s appeal as an industry hub since the 1940s.
The [Detroit] region may even be starting to reclaim some of its attractiveness as an auto production cluster. Ironically, a final casualty might be the UAW itself. If the union no longer has the political leverage to extract monopoly rents from the Big Three, UAW members will have little reason to keep paying dues.
MP: The chart above helps to illustrate how the higher-than-market wage (and benefits) premiums negotiated by the UAW helped to drive production, employment, and market share away from the Big Three automakers to the international automakers, many of whom now produce vehicles in the US using exclusively non-union autoworkers in Southern states. From a peak US vehicle market share of 90.6% in 1965, the Big Three’s market share fell below 44% in 2012 to 43.95%, just slightly higher than the all-time low of 43.66% in 2009.
The loss of market share for the Big Three, thanks largely to the UAW, is classic econ 101. As James Gwartney explains in his Principles of Microeconomics textbook:
For a time, unionized workers enjoy higher wages. In the long run, however, investment will move away from areas of low profitability. To the extent that the profits of unionized firms are lower, investment expenditures will flow into the nonunion sector and away from unionized firms. As a result, the growth of both productivity and employment will tend to lag in the unionized sector. The larger the wage premium of unionized firms, the greater the incentive to shift production toward nonunion operations. Empirical evidence shows that industries with the largest union wage premiums were precisely the industries with the largest declines in the employment of unionized workers [and market share].
It looks like the domestics started gaining share again around 1976, as the economy began to improve. I'm guessing that chart tracks calendar year sales rather than model year, and when GM's new '77 big cars hit the scene, they were a smash hit. People were flocking back to bigger cars in general by that time, something the imports really didn't offer yet, so understandably, their share probably fell a bit.
But then, it looks like the imports gained some huge ground in 1979-80, which I also find interesting. 1977-79 were all great years for the domestic industry as a whole, but much of that was thanks to GM. Chrysler was languishing, especially by 1979. 1980 was a pretty bad year, although GM stayed afloat thanks mainly to the X-cars. While bigger cars really fell off, the Cutlass and Century got a new formal roofline that saw them buck the trend and have good sales, as well.
1981-83 were three of the bleakest years in history for Detroit though, at least dating back to the Great Depression. So I just think it's a bit odd that the Imports got some more foothold around 1979-80, but not '81-83.
But, then again, people were starting to come back to Chrysler and give them a chance. Ford had the Escort which was popular for awhile So, perhaps these cars did help stem the tide, but then, as owners got fed up with them, the real gain by the imports came a few years later when the domestic lemons were traded in?
Or, maybe I'm just trying to analyze the chart too deeply? :P
Or what about when Ford pulled their little stunt awhile back where they slipped just enough non-US/Canadian content into the Panthers to get them classified as an import for CAFE purposes?
Everyone still says it's one of the D3, but Chrysler's home office is in Turin. Jeep just happens to provide all the cash flow at the moment.
I mean, Honda USA is a subsidiary company with a big presence in the US, but no one considers Torrence to be Honda's HQ.
I think a big factor was that during that time period Japan was mostly building small cars, while America still had big (and often tall) families. If you think about it, what really seemed to make Japan take off was the later successful larger cars like Camry a decade or so beyond that oil embargo. Then, the embargo occurred before the Japanese transplants were a big factor, so import quantities were constrained vice demand. I also give GM some credit for the very successful big car downsizing starting in 77. One final possible impact may have been that the oil embargo so impacted D3 model depreciation (albeit temporarily) that you probably got a much better deal sticking with the D3 dealers. Imports weren't going to give you Jack for trade value at that point in time - didn't have to.
"In the long run, however, investment will move away from areas of low profitability."
Does investment have a mind of its own? Or are people doing it? Why is the UAW "greedy" but not investment?
I do agree though that the UAW was allowed an almost monopoly position based on labor law inequalities. However, that could only exist for a period of time in a business market oligopoly, or really a GM/Ford duopoly situation, and honestly it lasted at the Big 3 about a decade longer than I thought it would. As more retire, Detroit may actually be in a stronger labor position than many of it's transplant competitors down the road. It's funny how many focus on union cost disadvantage as if it is primarily direct labor and fringe. In reality, I think the indirect impact of work rules and "us versus them" attitudes can be more devastating to a firm's competitive situation. Sure, they could all relocate to Mexico or China, but throw in how that would drive up the labor marketplace costs, combined with foreign exchange, language and customs barriers, logistics and transportation - and those cost advantages can start fading away rather quickly.
Generalizing is frequently a one way ticket to business disaster.
Euros: Volkswagen down, BMW, Mercedes up on sales
GM sales climb 16% in July; Ford, Chrysler up 11%
Balance. :P