Omegalock

I'll have to make that call when I see one in person but I'm not betting on it frankly.

NighthawkCP

Ok, first off on the rental car thing, working at Enterprise, I personally know we used to rent base Camaro Convertibles and to some extent, Mustang convertibles. I would guess it was probably not on a huge scale except in warm markets such as Houston, LA, Vegas, and Florida that they really rolled a lot of them. Now the big one we at Enterprise is going with is the Eclipse Spyder. Certainly not my favorite of the 'verts, but a fun little car.

Rental car sales are stable and fairly consistent, in most car classes. Less so with cars like what we are discussing though, as these are less insurance replacement cars which are very stable rentals, and the more fickle business/pleasure rentals that pick up ponycars from offices. Hence a lot of the other rental car companies took a big hit with 9/11, and many of those purchases for the 'verts likely died out for a few years, putting a little hurt on the numbers purchased. But you gotta remember, most rental cars are being bought at a fraction of what you and I would pay for that car. Hell they don't pay much over 20k for any car; I've looked at what we pay when we get new Infiniti FX35's, Spyder GT's, etc. and it ain't much. As for what happens afterwards, we sell them a little under KBB value if they are in great shape. If not they auction and sell them direct to dealers, who have them all end up on the lot as "Program Cars" aka Former Rental.

As for the price and who can afford them, I still find this a nonissue around here. A lot more kids are running around in older V-6 Stangs and Camaro's at home then are sporting SRT-4's and **** like that. After having driven almost every damn econobox, I've decided my 6' frame can't handle any of them. I'd like to check out the Cobalt, but the Neon and Focus both ride like **** and are just terrible, and the Cavalier has no room whatsoever for me, though I do like it a bit more. And I guess I'm below the average on the Camaro owners thing as I was only 22 when I bought mine, and I only make about 25k a year working at Enterprise, yet I still have a Z28 convertible.

Gold_Rush

I don't think i understand what you're saying fully. I saw a breakdown of the sales number for the 2000 model year, and the fleet sales made up a small percentage. The production breakdown seperated units sold to public from the units sold to fleet/Rentals. Is that what you were getting at? Those rentals don't get recucled, and probably find their way into consumer hands eventually, but the initiall sales numbers have Ford selling 100,000+ mustangs to the public annually throughout the last decade or so. That does not sound like a car that is in desperate need of fleet/rental sales to stay afloat.

Edit: I just found an article that said fleet sales make up 10% of mustang sales. Assuming average production is 150,000 units a year, that comes to about 15,000 mustang sold to fleet with 135,000 sold to the public. Still a hot seller and one of (if not) the best-selling sports coupe on the market.