smk4565
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Everything posted by smk4565
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I know Cadillac makes profit and Opel does not. This is why I would sell Opel, even if you sell it to FCA or Ford or VW for $1 be rid of it. Holden/Opel/Buick isn't like the One Ford plan, it is still 4 brands if you count Vauxhall and they don't have the same product line up. Also we know Cadillac makes a profit, why even make a Regal in the first place? Why redo the Malibu ever 4 years when it won't sell anyway? Pump money into Cadillac. If GM made hybrid SUVs and pickups to boost their CAFE numbers they wouldn't need to sell Sparks and Sonics at a loss to offset the Silverado's gas mileage. Cadillac should have 4 sedans (compact, small, medium, large), 3 coupes (small, medium, large) , 2 convertibles (small, medium), 1 sports car above Corvette, 4 crossovers (compact, small, medium, large), plus the Escalade, and everyone of those products should have a V-series, and everyone of those products should offer a plug-in or diesel engine option. That should all be in show rooms by 2020. Currently only the CT6 and XT5 fit that line up, and the Escalade could soldier on until 2020, and they can re-do it in 2021. So they need 12 more models in 4 years, they need 3 brand new products per year. They need a lot of product, that is where GM needs to put focus. Why would you not put the most models in your most profitable brand?
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Toyota still out-earned GM several years ago when the Dollar to yen ratio was not as strong. The Germans are more profitable than GM too, they aren't benefiting from the Yen. My main point is GM could be a more profitable company if it had more Cadillac sales. A profitable Cadillac division could carry the whole company, and offset the money losing European operation. Which as a side bar, they should either sell the European operation totally, or go the One Ford route, and rename Opel and Vauxhall to Chevrolet, and make a global Spark, Sonic, Cruze, Malibu/Insignia, Camaro, Trax, Equinox line up that is the same in Europe, as it is in Asia, as it is in the USA.
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Well VW will pay for it dearly now. But you could pick a number of brands that turn a better profit than GM. You need profit from the luxury brand, there needs to be greater focus on more Cadillac product and more Cadillac advertising.
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not getting help from the Japanese Government... not to mention improving their line-up in a way that produces superior vehicles.. Toyota on the other hand.. not so much. Even their flagship Prius Hybrid is falling behind the competition in terms of.. wait for it.. wait.. TECHNOLOGY VW made $11.9 billion in profit in 2014. $9 billion more than GM on roughly the same number of sales. Audi alone generates more dollars in profit than all of GM. GM needs to put a bigger focus on Cadillac, they should have a bigger line up and get more new product than Buick and GMC combined.
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I think Cadillac has mediocre management, awful product planners, and the worst marketing/advertising department of any luxury brand. The ATS coupe sits in the price point of the old CTS coupe, so they still have 1 coupe too sell. But no convertible in the line up and 1 crossover is a joke. I wonder how much of this is Cadillac's own ineptitude vs GM's top brass handcuffing the brand. Cadillac could be turning 10 times the profit of Buick or GMC, yet the top brass wants to keep investing in GMC and Buick, while not giving Cadillac enough product. A company the size of GM should have at least $10 billion a year in profit, not $3-4 billion as they have been producing. Toyota for their fiscal year that ended March 2015 had $18.1 billion in profit, and are on pace to beat that this year. $20 billion in profit at Toyota, $4 billion a GM, what the hell is GM doing?
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Very true on the RLX interior. It is what you'd expect in a Maxima or Azera level car for low to mid 30s. It is not a very good looking car on the outside either.
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Rear drive is preferred, and as I said in the Cadillac thread, when the sub-ATS car arrives I did say it should have better ride, handling and performance than a CLA. Barring Cadillac putting like a 1.4 liter turbo and 6-speed auto or something stupid in it. The CLA's current competition is the A3, Acura ILX, Volvo S40, maybe Golf GTI and the GLA competes with Q3 and X1. So those are all front drivers. I don't like the CLA, but it has the drivetrain common to the segment. The Continental wants to compete with rear drive Lexus, Cadillacs, Mercedes, Infiniti, Genesis, Kia K900, etc. They are all rear drive. The Acura RLX is the front drive entrant and has miserable sales volume.
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In 2014 GM sold 9.9 million cars and made a profit of $2.8 billion. That works out to $282 per car in profit. This was a bad year though due to recall costs, in 2013, they made $3.8 billion net profit and it looks like 2015 will finish up closer to $4 billion in profit. So let's say they sell 10 million cars and make $4 billion profit, that is $400 per car. If Cadillac could make an 8% margin per car, that would be $4,000 per car. Wouldn't GM rather sell more $4,000 per car profit vehicles than the money losing Opels, or the $400 profit per car Chevrolets? I couldn't find Mercedes car division (no vans or Daimler trucks) net income, but I found their EBIT for 2014, which was $6.39 billion on sales of 1,722,600 cars. GM the same year had EBIT of $6.49 billion on sales of 9.9 million cars. Nearly the same amount of annual profit but an 8 million unit gap in sales. And Audi works on a better profit margin than Mercedes does and has even higher sales volume. This is the importance of luxury sales. Cadillac could produce more dollars of profit than Buick, GMC and Chevy combined, if they could get the volume up.
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CTS has a sales problem. I am not sure how you fix that though. It is the biggest car in the segment, maybe it needs to shrink, get a more interesting looking rear end, better interior, I don't know. The people aren't buying it though, and even more scary is a new E-class is on sale in summer, and a new 5-series is coming shortly after that. Sales problem has been outlined a thousand times and U and some still seem to not get it. No coupe, no advertising, same priced XTS on the lot.. get it thru your head. Interior is award winning. Performance is class leading. Look is subjective but I think its the best looking of the segment Why isn't there a CTS coupe then? Does GM not have the money to spend on Cadillac product development, can they not afford advertising either? The 5-series doesn't have a coupe, it has that GT thing that doesn't sell, but it mostly gets by on 1 body style. And if the CTS is such a good product, why doesn't it outsell the exactly same priced XTS? It has better ride, handling, breaking, overall performance than an XTS, award winning interior but can't outsell the XTS. The CTS was down 32% last year, something is wrong with either the product or their sales approach.
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Wouldn't a sub-ATS with RWD make it better than a MB CLA by your logic? Can't have that now can we? A sub ATS rear driver should have better ride and handling than a CLA, all other things being equal. Assuming they don't put an awful engine or transmission into the CT1 or CT2 whatever it will be called, they should have better mechanics than the CLA. Then it comes down to styling and interior.
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They used to have ZERO FWD models and it's real easy to pad your "18" count when you want to include every variant of each main model. 12 to 3 if not counting model variants or the vans. They used to have zero but the world changed, and one of their fwd cars is a compliance car to meet electric car regs. And the front drive is at the very bottom of the brand. It isn't on their flagship. The FWD GLA is not electric. In fact only one out of the three FWD MBs are electric so that little excuse does not fly. There are other reasons for them doing so but I understand that you have to come up with whatever excuse you can to justify your favorite make having what you would normally detest from anyone else. BTW, a world a difference between a $50K Lincoln Continental and $100K+ (in most trims) S-Class that it DOES NOT COMPETE WITH. Don't why everything from everyone else has to measure to an S-Class, even when said car does not compete with it. Did you read my post? I said "one of their fwd cars is a compliance car to electric requirements." The B-class is only sold in like 10 states even. The CLA gets 38 mpg, they need it for CAFE, and it is a 208 hp sub-compact car, to which you don't really need rwd for that sort of car. And the Acura, Volvo, Golf GTI crowd they are competing with probably prefer fwd. I personally don't like the CLA or GLA, but them sitting on the lot doesn't offend me. I don't think people dislike a Corvette because Chevy also makes the Spark. If you like the Corvette, you aren't going to care what other cars are sold on the same lot. I know the Continental doesn't compete with the 2016 S-class. I am saying the Continental is behind where the S-class was 13 years ago.
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Don't be daft... different types of cars. Why should a buyer be asked to pay $60k or whatever the Continental will cost for a chassis and drivetrain inferior to a $30k Mustang? This is why Volvo S80, Lincoln sedans, Acura RLX, don't sell, why DeVille/DTS sales tanked into cancellation of the product. People don't want to spend big bucks for a car with garden variety front drive, 6-speed, transverse engine, etc. If I were going to pay $60k or more for a car, I'd want performance, handling and luxury. Or imagine if Honda was going to make a full size pick up to compete with the F150 and Silverado, and the Honda full size pick up was front wheel drive, with all wheel drive optional, 3.5 V6 and a turbo V6 option. Would the truck buyers used to V8s and rear drive body on frame want a unibody fwd honda full size truck? No, it would get laughed out of the segment.
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A sub ATS model could mean the 2.5 ATS dies, and the ATS (or CT3) starts with the 2.0T at $37,000. And I think I said Johan before who has hinted at a sub-ATS. Dave Leone confirmed to Road and Track that they are currently working on a car below ATS, and that it would be rear drive. The car is already in development.
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They used to have ZERO FWD models and it's real easy to pad your "18" count when you want to include every variant of each main model. 12 to 3 if not counting model variants or the vans. They used to have zero but the world changed, and one of their fwd cars is a compliance car to meet electric car regs. And the front drive is at the very bottom of the brand. It isn't on their flagship.
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Maybe they should make the Corvette, Camaro and Mustang FWD as well, since it is so good. And since V8s aren't needed anymore, make the 3.0TT V6 as the top engine in the Mustang. I wonder what would happen to Mustang sales if it was FWD/AWD with no V8 option? Hmmmmm
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Well Cadillac is about to have a car cheaper than the CLA. I guess Cadillac wants to compete with Chevy as well by your logic. And let's see, ELR, XTS, SRX/XT5, Cadillac has just as many front drive cars as Mercedes, but they don't have nearly as many rear drive models. And I didn't move any goal post. I simply said that Cadillac needs more models, they have 1 crossover when that it the hottest segment, for example. They don't have a convertible, hatch or wagon. The product line is limited, and so are the countries they are selling in. Cadillac only has 2 countries in which they sell over 13,000 cars a year, they need to expand the footprint.
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Quick edit, the VW Haldex system actually sends 95% power to the front wheels. Some BMWs are 36/64 split. The Cadillac STS and CTS were 40/60 splits, the ATS actually has a 30/70 split. The Jaguar all wheel drive defaults 100% rear, uses a 30/70 split in winter mode and can adjust to 50/50 if there is wheel slippage. All these systems are rear biased, because as I said, you want drive power to the back wheels.
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If you look at most of the luxury all wheel drive systems they send more power to the back than the front. Audi Quattro is a 50-50 set up, although the R8 sends 85% to the rear wheels. A VW with all wheel drive sends about 90% power to the front wheels, and will only send more to the back if the wheels slip. BMW is a 40/60 front to rear split, Mercedes is 45/55 split, except AMG cars are 33/67. Because you want to power to the back, steering at the front. My Mercedes is rear drive, I didn't want 4matic. As far as Mercedes with all their fwd appliances, they have 3 front drive models and 18 rear drive models.
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CTS has a sales problem. I am not sure how you fix that though. It is the biggest car in the segment, maybe it needs to shrink, get a more interesting looking rear end, better interior, I don't know. The people aren't buying it though, and even more scary is a new E-class is on sale in summer, and a new 5-series is coming shortly after that.
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They need more products and variants for sure. I don't know why they move so slow with product roll outs. They also need to get into more markets. 1,750 cars in EU and Russia isn't going to get it done. Johan has confirmed a sub-ATS model is coming to battle the CLA and 1-series. I guess the CLA haters that say Mercedes will dilute their brand image and the CLA competes with Chevy will have to find a new argument against Mercedes product strategy.
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I don't see how Lincoln is going to conquer luxury ride from the rwd cars. Rear drive let's you stretch the wheelbase which improves ride. Even with awd you want 60-70% of the power to the back so you are pushed and not pulled, offering smoother acceleration. And I didn't read anything in the press release about air suspension or magnetic shock absorbers. Also the 2017 Continental has fewer gears than a 2004 S-class. Mechanically the Continental just doesn't have it. 30-way seats won't save it either.
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250 HP turbo 4 is plenty for this segment car. More than that is just going to torque steer anyway. A 1.6 turbo with 200 HP would be a good up-level engine for the Cruze sedan, and middle engine for the Hatch.
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Traffic at an auto show booth doesn't mean sales. Every year there is a huge crowd around the Corvette at the Pittsburgh auto show, and no one around the Camry, yet the Camry still outsells the Corvette 10 to 1. I also think we can't truly judge the Continental until we know how it is priced. If they price it the same as the MKS they could have a strong contender. If it is CT6 TT V6 money, I think it is too high.
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Once upon a time all the SUVs were body on frame, rear drive 4x4. Blazers, Explorers, etc. Then the wave of front drive unibody crossovers took over. I think Honda could win some people over. This level truck isn't used for anything heavy duty.
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The A8 is boring, unless you like huge grilles. To me the Continental is a bit bland. I don't think people will say gee, I am going to pass on that Mercedes or Lexus and spend $70k on a Lincoln instead. For me a problem is, if Lincoln is going to cut corners on the chassis and transmission, by recycling from the Fusion parts bin, where else did they cut? And even if they didn't and did the best interior and the best seats, etc, it is like having the nicest 2nd floor possible on a house with a weak foundation.
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