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Automotive News & Views GM News, New Models and Market Share
8455 messages, Last post on Nov 26, 2009 at 9:11 AM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: 62vetteefp (Nov 28, 2008 6:57 pm) I tried renting an Acadia for a trip. Had it all lined out. When I went to pickup the car they handed me the keys to a Pacifica. I told them the only reason I was renting a vehicle was to test drive the Acadia. Ended up driving my PU truck. Probably for the best. I got better mileage than most are getting with the gas guzzling Lambda vehicles. You look through the reviews and poor mileage is predominant. Rated at 19 MPG combined. Most are getting 15-16 MPG. I do see a quite a few here. I don't think Toyota has anything to compare. Same with Ford. Kind of an upscale mini-van.
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Replying to: circlew (Nov 28, 2008 9:45 am) Take the 1-2 best vehicles from each "brand" and take them. Leave the rest, including the brand. Don't save "Chevrolet" - save the couple of good vehicles and then consolidate it all under a new name. I suggested GM but it could be anything. That way you have a lineup of 10-12 cars that are the hot ones. No rental fodder. No base engine strippers. Fully loaded awesome cars across the board. GM may be smaller as a result, but then again, I don't see Mercedes having issues like this. |
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Replying to: circlew (Nov 28, 2008 8:06 pm) One way to combat this trend is in General Motors' decision to combine Pontiac, Buick, and GMC vehicles are a single dealership. In this way, the full product lines of all three divisions can be shown to prospective buyers -- and, Buick hopes, show off a LaCrosse to someone who might, until then, have been interested in a Pontiac G6. One new vehicle that Buick managers hope to attract the public's attention with is the new Enclave CUV. It seems to be reaching a wider demographic than the traditional Buick vehicle, as the average age of new Enclave buyers is a youthful 55. You might have missed this. " Wasn't that data from July '07? "And while Buick is typically the butt of jokes about buyers who are somewhere between retired and deceased, the average age of a Buick shopper last year was 55.2 years old, considerably younger than the average 63.6-year-old Mercedes-Benz shopper." Current data shows average age for Buick is 55. If the Lucerne and LaCrosse still had an average age of 69 and the average age for Buick is 55 and using the current sales data that would put the average Enclave buyer at 20 which I doubt. If we assume the average age is 40 for the Enclave then the current age for the Lucerne and LaCrosse is 61. Which is the same as Mercedes. If we used an older number for Enclave the others would be even younger. I think the data just shows that the age of Enclave buyers has brought down the Buick buyer age and seems to be lowering the other 2 models age also. Perhaps the strategy referred to in the article did work. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Nov 28, 2008 8:16 pm)
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Replying to: 62vetteefp (Nov 29, 2008 5:13 am) Now that the Enclave is considered the style leader, they can remove the other 3 from the mix and concentrate on the Enclave alone. Pricing then becomes key and a base Enclave should be just under $30K. As far as average age of car buyers go, here is some general trend info. It doesn't matter how good a new car looks or how many miles per gallon it gets if you can't afford to buy it. Evidence is clear that when given the choice between making a mortgage payment or a car payment, the house wins out. The weak U.S. economy and a housing market in the dumps kept many folks from buying a new set of wheels last year. The average age of new-vehicle buyers ended the year at 48 years old; in January 2007 it was 43. Another telling tale about buying age from CNW was that the average age of shoppers choosing a domestic vehicle was 49.4 years old in 2007 — older than the average 42.5-year-old buyer of Asian cars but younger than the 50.6-year-olds choosing European nameplates. Still, the median age of new-car buyers in the United States has risen to 47 from 40 over the last decade, while the median age of buyers of sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickups has climbed to 43 from 39, according to auto makers' research. Over the same period, the median age of all Americans has only crept up about three years to 34.9. Regards, OW
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Replying to: 62vetteefp (Nov 29, 2008 5:16 am) I have put a lot of miles on rental TrailBlazers in Hawaii. I cannot remember getting less than 16 MPG. Most of the time 17-18 MPG with short trips out of Hilo. Rarely drove over 55 MPH though. The little Equinox I got stuck with in April was no better than the TrailBlazer. Heck I can get 17 MPG out on the highway at 75 MPH with my porker Sequoia. I just had higher expectations for the Enclave and Acadia. Not sure why, as it is a large vehicle. I would still like to test drive one. Who knows, they may put in a small diesel that gets 35 MPG and lure me back into the fold. |
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I keep reading these analyses of buyers based on age. There are more factors involved in choosing a car rather than ones age. But the discussion presumes that age is the only factor. I've read many posts that are insulting in their discussion of older people. I'm not clear about what age someone should have been in terms of youth to purchase a Buick and not be treated as a doddering old person, without teeth as one poster intimated in the past in another topic probably. I always found the sagacity of my elders to be enlightening. On the other hand would we want all our car choices determined by what the youth want in their cars? I could make many direct and indirect inferences as to the characteristics of many of the youth I could picture as choosers of the cars' qualities made for all of us, but I'll spare the reader the insult level given to older people here on Edmunds in _some_ posts as to their incompetence because they chose a car that suited their needs, durability, reliability. If Buick still made the full-sized, comfortable leSabre from '95-05 with the same quality parts throughout, I'd buy my next car today. Sell my older one and buy the kid a Cobalt, used or new. My father-in-law has a new Lucerne in his garage: he's 83. |
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Replying to: circlew (Nov 29, 2008 5:48 am)
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| The Lambda group is amazingly well-represented in our area in West Central Ohio. The drivers are a wide range in age from 30-up. | |
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I spent time Thanksgiving Day with guests of our hosts from Michigan. They said the healthcare benefits from the automakers have had increasing deductible amounts through the last years. When I described the full healthcare, dental care, vision care, legal care, etc., my State Farm agent's mother had as a widow of an autoworker from the Dayton area, our friends said that changed... He has relatives who are still in the auto industry so he gets feedback. He worked for an independent company doing design work for 25 years, so he has a feeling for the auto industry. They live in Lower Michigan--need I say more?
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