In the book The High and Mighty, it's pointed out that the middle class is becoming smaller, giving Detroit more incentive to make the luxury SUVs.
Doesn't that assume that the upper class is getting larger? I would suspect that the people in the middle class are moving lower not higher. But that could just be me.
Personally, I don't care if GM wants to make big SUVs -- so long as they make them clean and efficient! If they found some way to make a H2 get 30-35 MPG and SLEV I wouldn't get hot under the collar seeing them on the road.
And that's probably GM's biggest problem: they are ACCURATELY seen as a "yesterday's technology" company that is unwilling or afraid to innovate.
Just got my new Car and Driver in the mail. GM is coming out with a hybrid version of their new Tahoe........ it is estimated to get 20 mpg. What is the point?
Just got my new Car and Driver in the mail. GM is coming out with a hybrid version of their new Tahoe........ it is estimated to get 20 mpg. What is the point?
--------------
Well, I'd say that coming out with a 1st generation hybrid that only gets 3 MPG more than its ICE counterpart, and launching it in 2008, pretty much defines "yesterday's technology".
Besides, GM hasn't actually built the truck yet, have they? Anyone can say they're "coming out" with something, but it's a lot harder to put it on the showroom floor.
I'm not saying that GM *can't* catch up, but it will be *difficult* for them to catch up.
Just got my new Car and Driver in the mail. GM is coming out with a hybrid version of their new Tahoe........ it is estimated to get 20 mpg. What is the point?
Reminds me of a story four years ago that Ariel Sharon liked the taste of Slim Fast so much he drank the entire six-pack. ....well not so funny now.
I have no problem with large-vehicle hybrids - if the driver needs it's capabilities...of course we know about 95% of SUVs are never used off road.
Someone mentioned last night the most popular vehicle is now the pickup truck - wonder what their market share is now and what it was twenty years ago?
The mention of a GM "brand penalty" in the CNN article reminded me of a passage in my all-time favorite novel, Atlas Shrugged. In it, a former employee of the 20th Century Motor Co. describes how the place went to hell in a handbasket after the late owner's Marxist kids took over:
Quote:
In the old days, it used to be said that the Twentieth Century Motor trademark was as good as the karat mark on gold . . . I suppose that like all social planners and like savages, they thought that this trademark was a magic stamp which did the trick by some sort of voodoo power . . . Well, when our customers began to see that we never delivered an order on time and never put out a motor that didn't have something wrong with it -- the magic stamp began to work the other way around; people wouldn't take a motor as a gift, if it was marked Twentieth Century.
Yesterday I posted the CNN link and the 20th Century reference (without the quote) on Yahoo Finance's GM message board; exactly one person figured it out.
Last edited by tanstaafl14; 02-01-2006 at 10:03 AM.
Reason: additional material
Re: Flood of E-Mails to CNN/Money Trash GM
