Looks cool!

 

That right there is GM think. No one said anything about raising the price.
I want that car at the same price as the 'base' car and I don't even really want a base car.
That little stuff doesn't cost crap more then the basic equipment. GM in their infinite greed just marks it up thousands and has to put 'as shown $99,999' in small print in their commerical.

I just got an 03 impala.(it was free but anyway)
Stupid thing doesn't have tach, doesn't have an oil pressure guage, doesn't have a volt meter. That's unacceptable. (they put them in the monte carlo which I am swapping in there) None of that costs anything but yet it wasn't standard.
No rear spoiler. Again doesn't cost anything.
No ABS, ok I don't care about that one and actually am happy it doesn't. More surprised a non-ABS model is avaliable on a late model car. But a lot of people care.
GM needs to cut the crap on skimping on options.
It's like when commericals would say "a/c standard'
Are you serious? You think I'd even consider your crap without a/c? Why are you insulting me telling it has a/c. It damn well better have a/c, power locks, power doors, tilt, nice wheels, bluetooth, GPS, nav screen, leather, STANDARD. And the price better not go up more then GM's cost because of it.
GM has room to make up. If they can get on TV and show a base model Aveo with all these normally upper level options and then compare it to a base model toyota thats the same price or more with steelie's then they got something.
They need 'world class cars' so start building them.
The new car looks good. Now don't just come out as an equal with the competition. Go over and above and blow them away.

 

Some more pictures here

 

I understand what you're saying, and perhaps I'm of the old GM mindset too. But to say it "doesn't cost anything" is very much not true. Automakers are under extremely intense cost pressure. Back when GM did a redesign on the Cavalier a few years ago they dropped the tach to save (I forget exactly, let's just say) $10 on the instrument cluster. Peanuts, you say, but over 300k units they sell a year, we're talking about real money. Even more dramatic, I also recall the chief engineer of the Toyota Tercel (again, years ago) talking about how they stopped painting the heads of some interior screws, saving something like 0.4 cents per piece, but it added up over time and volume. That's the type of cost pressure there is in designing a modern automobile. And you can't just hope to recoup the variable unit cost of these items, there's also the fixed costs that go along with them, as well as an expectation of return on investment for supplying them. So hopefully you can appreciate how adding tachs, extra gauges, spoilers, etc., really and truly impacts the cost/value/return on investment proposition of a car.

Having said that, I can see how one would argue it's time to break out of that paradigm and exceed the expectations of the market. But you also have to abide by the financial obligations a company has to its stakeholders to invest company funds wisely. It's not an easy line to toe.

 

Gauges usually hit the $6/ea average price when in a cluster (tooled part), and that assumes the gauge just reads the value off a network (no sending unit required). That's $18. How many Impala owners don't care about any of those? Most of them. Rear Spoiler? That'll actually cost quite a bit.

For reference, the battle for cost is so aggressive in auto companies right now that anything that saves more than $5/vehicle is considered a 'huge cost savings'.

However, in regards to your comment on tech in the other thread, that is why many companies (BMW, for example) started nearly a decade ago with central displays. A single LCD can display any data on the network, which means if you can justify the LCD for another use (like for Entertainment and HVAC) you can use it as an aux gauge cluster for "free" and pull gauges out of the primary cluster where they have a high pricetag.

But that LCD will cost you $100-$200 per vehicle, depending on many things. It's easy to justify that cost to a customer, but you have to justify it to upper managers first.

The Aveo is nothing revolutionary, but it *does* at least show some hope GM is slowly improving.

And the 130hp version should be decently quick - if GM can only get the handling right.

 

It sounds to me like you got a base model car. My soon-to-be-exwife's 2004 impala LS has a tach & spoiler. I can't recally whether or not it has those other gauges, but I betcha the 9C1 model did. Her car also has the painted moldings, foglights, sunroof, Leather interior, & aluminum wheels. However, it doesn't have the redundant stereo controls on the steering wheel like I have seen on other cars.

 

I don't like it. Reminds me of a lancer though...

 

I like this. Nice work.

That being said, I am dissapointed about the power level. I was hoping for around 200hp. Does this thing weigh less than an SVT Focus?

 

Stop by at NAIAS and give the car a look. We'll have the Boracay Blue one there.

 

$18 on a $20,000 car? This shouldn't even be a discussion!!!
No one is going to notice paying $20,018 for an impala.
What should be a discussion is why the LS impala which still didn't have ALL those guages but did have a tach was a couple thousand dollar upgrade.


It was free that's why I got it. Even the LS only gets a tach.
However the wiring is there, the monte guage cluster is a direct plug and play.
So GM souced two different guage clusters for $18. Then had to keep them seperate on the line depending on if it was an LS or not. That had to cost something.
And if buying the unit brings the price down I wonder if it was really $18 because instead of building a second 500,000 base guage cluters, they could have just bought another 500,000 of the better clusters.
When your talking 500,000 units I bet your supplier might really cut the $18 price down even less for buying in bulk.

Either way here you have a couple hundred base cars out there all leading to the stereotype cheap cars all because you wanted to save $18 that no consumer would have even noticed if you passed it on as only an $18 cost.

I'm just saying they have to be better then the competition, not just equal if they want to make an impact and overall this is a pretty easy way to do it.

 

Yea me too. I actually like it!

And GM build it like you did the Camaro. This is a winning design. Do not blnad it out. People want a nice looking economy car. This goes right in line and in some wyas better than the others small cars.

 

I agree with you, but you have not grasped the issue. The problem is it's not $18 on a base car. If you're going to include standard gauges, why not another $60 for a standard spoiler? $20 for a better head unit? $16 for better speakers? $30 for fog lights? $6 for a USB port in the console? $5 for a spare 12v outlet? $40 for radio controls on the steering wheel? I could go on forever. The problem is you end up with $1500 of those little things (which add up fast) and then you roll all of them into a trim package. You can't just say "put this one on the base model" and give one priority to another with so many different sides to the issue. You've got a dozen design teams all trying to get their parts on the base model and you can't play favorites. Every one of those details has a solid case for being standard - but if you made them all standard you'd loose a lot of sales because your base car would be $21,500.

How does the line get drawn - what gets included as "base" and what isn't? You're talking about $1500 on a $20,000 car - which is a HUGE deal.

Notice what happened in the late 90s to the Ford Taurus. The Taurus got a redesign and bumped its price tag up a tiny bit to cover the increased content. What happened? They got too close to the Honda and Toyota competition and sales fell through the floor. The market in these segments is extremely fickle. We're not talking Corvettes and Camaros here that are for enthusiasts - we're talking people that want a cheap and effective appliance.

I agree with you on gauges. I love gauges. I love knowing what is going on. But the issue is so much larger than that. I'm dead serious when I say $5/vehicle is considered huge - and that is what the whole industry has come to.

My $6/ea estimate is from suppliers that do clusters for the industry - it's not perfect, but its a rough number. At those levels for tooled parts, sometimes EAU doesn't matter as much if there is a contract already in place for tooling charges.

 

I used to work for an HVAC supplier for GM. We realized we could do without 3 out of the 25 or so screws used to hold the HVAC unit together. Even that was a worthwhile savings. Not only in material cost, but also savings in manufacturing time and increased output. We built about 800 HVACs a day, at pretty much a minute for each to come off the line. Lets say those 3 screws saved us 3 seconds in build time. At the end of the day that time savings allowed us to build almost 40 extra units. That's HUGE!

Now imagine if every other part / subassembly etc could do benefit from little things like that - It all adds up.

 

We make alot interior components ( switches and trimplates mostly ) , just due to the shear volume ...saving tenths of 1 cent can = huge savings .

Ford and Mazda alone are about gonna force GM to not decontent or dumb down this car , the 2 or fiesta dont look very cheaped down ...nor does the VW Polo that coming to the USA . Time to put up or shut up , because unlike before , this segment has got quite competitive on items other than price alone .

 

and you know what i'd probably include most of that stuff too. I just made a car much more desirable for only $200. To quote GM I probably increased percieved value by $800. My competition is only offering these type of things for a $2000 increase if I step up to a LS or GT or whatever model.
Suddenly my base model doesn't look overpriced because it's thousands less then the equivilant equipped competitior.
And if the competition wants to undercut me by $200 with some plane jane POS let them. In the long run it's going to bite them.

base impala is already $23,890 but maybe you're talking about the aveo.
On the impala on top of that 23,890 a leather wrapped steering wheel is a $195 option.
Come on it's not even real leather and it's another $6 price difference.

Assuming you mean aveo. It's $14,100 for the old style If I want an auto which a lot of college people will it's $15,025. I doubt an auto costs that much over a stick. I bet I could give them an auto at cost and then include all those guages/spoiler/steering wheel controls for the same $15,025 and have a much more desirable car.
We haven't even talked about cruise a $250 option that is nothing more then a $5 button with a serial cable ran to the computer. With drive by wire everything else is already there.
I'd personally be appalled to go in to a dealer and find an automatic car doesn't come with cruise in 2010, no matter how entry level.
XM radio is $200.
I bought a new headunit off ebay for $125 that included an SD slot, aux in and USB port on top of am/fm/mp3/cd/cd-r an GM wants to charge me $200 JUST for XM. Again unbelieveable.



line gets drawn at big things where people may really not want them.
Sunroof for example. Some people really don't want a sunroof even if it was a free upgrade. So that would be a $$$ option.
Same with leather. Some think it's too hot so that would be a $$$ upgrade.
On a side note I used to work at the place that made seats for chrylser.
You'd be surprised how little difference there is in making a leather seat vs cloth. But the consumer pays for it.
V8 would be a $$$ option from the standard v6.
AWD would be a $$$ option.

Things that need to be standard.
Power:locks, windows, mirrors, steering. Tilt, a/c
Steering wheel controls, for things like the radio and cruise
LCD screen that does GPS/NAV. It should also interface with the radio for things like song display and station ID. I can now eliminate the secondary radio lcd.
It should also give engine info. I can now eliminate the lcd in the guage cluster(the impala has that)
It should have an SD slot, aux in and USB port on top of am/fm/mp3/cd/cd-r/dvd/ and bluray very shortly as the price is coming down quick.
Decent alloy/aluminum/whatever wheels (no steelies) standard.
4 wheel disk brakes. Still can't believe drums are around on the things they are.
I'd say ABS should be standard but that has such a god awful high failure rate I understand why people are gun shy of it. So ABS when it won't fail.
That 2nd lighter/power supply.
The fog lights if they were to come on a higher level car with the same nose. Doesn't apply if they higher level car needs a different nose to accmodate them.
Same idea with the spoiler.

Things that need to be a no money option.
Paint color. Green doesn't need to cost more then red. We aren't talking metal flake or chamelon here. Figure out the average cost for all colors sold and that's what everyone pays.
Body-Color Bodyside Moldings-I don't like the guady chrome so why do I have to pay more to have you spray it all one color.

In summary I charge cost for certain things and suddenly I have an extra $800 I can spend on extra features and still not raise the cost of the car 1 penny!
Competition=owned