Motor Trend Also picked the Yugo as car of the year.

 

3,000 units isn't a whole lot, right? except when you expect to sell around 50,000 units for the year, then its fully a 6% cut in production.

53 day supply seems equally benign. but when you consider Honda had a 151 day supply of these at some point, not to mention they had to use incentives to move a vehicle on the market for mere months (had Honda EVER had to do that before??), then it starts to not look so good anymore.

 

Everybody has had to do it before and everybody is using incentives right now...of course if you are GM; you just keep producing vehicles because it's cheeper to build cars and sell them for a loss than to pay people not to work!

At any rate, right now, many vehicle lines are in the high 90s-low 100's day supply on hand area so to move form 150s to 50s is quite an accomplishment.

 

My buying experiences have always been based on my ownership experiences. It's nice to hear so many magazines etc. Like the Ridgeline, but only time will tell, and if it turns out to be as crappy as my last (and I do mean last) Chevy truck, I'll quit buying them too. The reason car companies lose cutomers is because of bad experience. I don't care if Chevrolet only built one bad truck in their entire history, if it was the one I bought and it cost me too much money to keep it on the road, then guess what, I'm gone.
Prove your products are better and at least extend the warranties on faulty components instead of profitting from them. Of coarse much of that credit goes to the dealership, I know.
Apparently you guys are still loyal customers and you feel as though GM is earning it. That's great, congratulations. I hope it continues. Just realize that all of us haven't been so lucky.

-Motor Trend truck of the year 2006
-North American Truck of the year 2006
-Detroit News truck of the year 2006
-Consumer Reports top rated truck
-JD Power & Associates 2005 APEAL award for the Honda Ridgeline
-Autobytel 2006 Editors' Choice Award: Truck of the year 2006
-Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) Best New Pickup 2006
-On Wheels Incorporated: Ridgeline 2006 Urban Wheel Award for the Urban Truck of the Year
-Ridgeline wins Strategic Vision's coveted "Most Delightful" compact pickup award.
-best rollover resistance rating of any pickup tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
-first-ever 4-door pickup to earn a 5-star safety rating for both front and side impact crash test performance from the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).
-Society of Plastic Engineers 2005 Grand Award (composite inbed trunk)
-Car And Driver Rates Honda Ridgeline #1 Pickup.
- AutoWeek Editors' Choice Award as the 'Most Significant' new vehicle in the show
-Maxim Truck Of The Year 2006
-Autoweb.com top ten tailgater

 

these are cars that nobody gives a damn about..... "look at me, i have the best unibody v6 truck (ridgeline). look at me, i drive the best small sedan" doesn't mean a thing to the american car makers. domestics can do nothing about toyota having the market on economy cars. they have it cornered pretty well. american market still has it's place.

 

Here's some interesting reading and points of view on the way Consumers Reports ranks reliability.......(it's long....)

http://www.allpar.com/cr.html

I don't agree with every point made in the posts on that site, but I will say once again, that statistically speaking, the CR reports aren't worth the paper they're printed on...........but unfortunately people believe it.

I especially like the point about the "owner justification".......

sounds like a few people I know...........

 

They are the cars YOU don't care about...that doesn't make them either unimportant or unneeded.

It's all the people who buy cars you don't care about that makes it possible for the manufacturers to build the cars you DO care about.

 

Since none of the publications/organizations that you've cited above are saying what some people on this board want to hear, I suspect they'll say that they all are considered trash to "true" enthusiasts.

 

There's a difference between what people want and what people "need"
You can't say "Oh an LS1 is the most powerful therefor everybody will buy one over a Mustang GT" cause that didn't happen. Priorities are not always in the drivetrain or the truck that can tow the most.

 

That is a lot of praise for a truck that did not sell well..anywhere near expectations. If the truck was that good, I would think it would fly off the lots...instead of cutting production while adding incentives. Looks like the general public already answered the reviews here.

 

And that's a very sweeping dismissal for a vehicle that has only been in the market for a year this month. And of course, we've never heard of GM cutting production or offering incentives have we?

Sometimes a new vehicle is a huge success right away such as the Xterra which has an almost cult following...sometimes it takes years for a vehicle to come into its own and sometimes they never do. Whether any of the import brands trucks are ultimately successful in knocking Ford and GM off their mountains I don't know but I do know that anyone who actually looks at the trucks from Toyota, Nissan or Honda with anything near an open mind will realize that there are other legitimate players in the market now and GM and Ford had better be taking those new players very seriously.

 

The problem with the Ridgline is

1) Looks (gah - subjective of course)
2) Capacities (compared to Avalanche)
3) Price!

 

I'm sure the low production figures have allot to do with the fact that there's no bargain basement, two wheel drive, four cylinder cheapy version. Plus Honda's sales figures don't include the low profit high volume sales to rental car companies.
As for the price, I didn't pay anymore than I would have for an equally equipped Colorado, with the exception of employee discount days, and I was able to negotiate the price down substantially enough. I also feel like (at least so far) that I got what I payed for. Sometimes "cheap" has it's price too.

 

And it appears you are easily dismissing the actual sales of a truck that has been out a full year. A full year after all the extreme hype, greatly added press from excellent ratings and reviews, it still floundered. I think this drives the point I just made home even more on how reviews might not, and in this case, does not reflect the general publics wants or needs. Talk about a negative. Probally the most talked about truck in the press this year, could not even sell near Honda's projections. It is like a gigantic box office blunder, and people were not watching.

On that note, I totally agree with you that GM and Ford need to watch their back. Not from the Ridgeline, but I am sure Honda is trying hard to figure out what went wrong with a truck that bombed in relation to their expectations, and will try to change that quick.

FYI, I own a Toyota and a Lexus, and a Mazda, so I am not GM nuthugger here. Just being realistic, which some people on boths sides of the American/Foreign issue here seem to "dismiss".

 

Actually:

American Honda Sales Increase 8.7 Percent to New February Record
By Daniel
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Torrance, CA - March 2, 2006 -- American Honda Motor Co., Inc., is posting record February vehicle sales of 106,644, up 8.7 percent, led by increases for its most popular models including the all-new Civic and the re-designed Accord, up 37.6 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively. Year-to-date sales of 205,038 are up 14.1 percent.
Honda Division is posting record February sales of 92,498 cars and light trucks, an increase of 12.8 percent, with additional records broken for total Honda truck sales of 41,980 and Pilot sales of 10,901. Year-to-date, Honda Division is up 18.1 percent with sales of 176,911.

Civic sales of 24,722 include 1,780 Civic Hybrids (up 31.6 percent) and Accord sales of 25,285 include 783 Accord Hybrids. February combined sales of Honda's three hybrid vehicles are up 18.2 percent to 2,635, and up 47.5 percent for the year to 6,210. February marks the first full year for the Ridgeline with sales cumulatively reaching 50,892, on-track with its 12-month sales target of 50,000 units.
"The American consumer is re-discovering cars and the timing for the all-new 2006 Civic couldn't be better," said Dick Colliver, executive vice president of American Honda. "The Civic has been strong out of the gate and Honda's diverse lineup of light trucks has set a record for four consecutive months."

Acura Division posted sales of 14,146 with record TSX sports sedan sales up 1.4 percent. The TL performance luxury sedan continued as Acura's top-selling model with February sales of 5,169.