Yeah, but if GM knew they were looking at a 20% marketshare 10 years ago, they would have never signed those contracts.

Back to the original point of the thread -- if your plant capacity is correctly sized, you can get away selling a more expensive, higher-featured car instead of the current Ws.

 

I agree. Which is why I think Flint's analysis is flawed. He's looking at numbers that are pumped up by fleet and discount sales. If GM sells 1/3 the number of RWD Impalas, but gets an average transaction price of $6000 more, they should be much better off.

 

And if I throw the Chrysler midsized cars in the discussion prior to their recent redesign, those vehicles were almost 100% fleet.

As I have said, you can not condone relative levels of badness.

If your hang up is the term I used for the LX cars is Fleet Queen, then I will broaden that statment to include the W cars, Vibe, G6, DTS, Taurus, Calibre, Sebring, Panthers, and I will include the Hyundai Sonata to round off the mix.


You need to understand the order of magnitude difference between government (state, local, federal) purchases when compared to Rental Fleets. I have trouble understanding how app. 100,000 government vehicle purchases a year compares to MILLIONs of rentals for the Big 3. That is a significant difference.


For added clarity the Crown Vic is the governments vehicle of choice by a wide margin and the Charger is not a even a player.

The "Buy American" policy is insignificant.


They are Fleet Queens and are heavily incentived to get retail purchases.

I will elaborate furtherwith regard to the point of this thread and the poor analysis by Flint, the face values for annual sales of the Impala or LX cars are hiding a serious problem for the domestics. These vehicles are not success stories with real buyers. There success has been dillusional. All the banter on message boards and in the press about how successful the LX cars have been and how much the US buyer wants RWD and what a good indication this will be for the zeta cars is over blown.

If not for the rental sales and serious cash on the hood, the LX cars would most likely be selling at half the level they are. Chrysler knows this and is explained by cutting production of the vehicles in half this January 07.

GM knows this also and this played a factor in cancelling the original 28x zeta programs and the heavily revised estimates for the relaunched zeta programs.

The days of irrational exuberance or dillusions of grandeaur with forecasts are over.

 

No debate there.


I feel better now.


I think government & corperate purchases run higher than 100K, but your point of more going to rental agencies stand.

For those not familiar how things work, government and corperate purchases tend to have a turn over of once every year or more, a rental agency runs their cars only a few months at most, before the cars are sold at aution to dealers and more are bought. Automakers bought rental agencies and run their cars through them (raking up far more $$$ than the depriciation value of the cars), then dump them on used car lots. A good idea since it kept factories going, production numbers up, and made a little pocket change. But it sucked for anyone who bought the cars at retail at trade in time.




I agree 100% with the points you're making despite again singling out the LX (wrongly IMHO).

The way I see things shaping up at GM, I'll accept your premise that the Impala will go heavily towards fleet. Impala is going to be targeted towards ploice and taxi buyers. My understanding is that GM's gameplan is heavily depending on a strongly "heritage based" design to snag in retail buyers to round things out.

But I still say the Impala numbers will be much larger than expected. If the design is as good as I've heard, and the interior quality and design continues the direction GM seems to be taking things, and the craze that the 300C created when it 1st came out (and it's only now begining to depriciate), the lack of any new Impalas on used car lots the first couple of years, and the fact that used 90s era Impala SS is still overpriced to this day, I'd say unless GM purposely limits Impala production, it will push 200K for the 1st couple of years at least.

After that, then I suspect we'll see major incentives. But like the top level 300C or the special Chargers, I doubt the person who buys the "performance" or top "bling" version will see any discounts, and you won't be seeing many on the used car lots.

 

If I was not clear earlier, my premise is not that the NG Impala will be fleeted it is just the opposite. GM got RELIGION on fleet and the other two will follow with their NG vehicle. Tooling and manufacturing production estimates will be restrained to realistic retail levels. The days when a domestic OEM will over inflate production extimates to build a business case are over. This goes for the Camaro also. GM seriously planned for a substancial drop in Camaro sales after the first year hysteria.

Unless the NG Impala is a BUST at launch, I would not expect to see heavy incentives over the life of the product nor would I expect to see a substancial increase in volumes even if demand is heavy early on.

I highly doubt it. GM and Chevrolet do not command the same clout with the public they once did.

I will be surprised if the G8 hits their modest targets for the same reason no matter how good the vehicle is.