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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (48842)	11/12/2003 12:39:41 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57110

Did you see the disparity in resale/residual values between American and Japanese makes as reported in the WSJ earlier this week? November 11, 2003 Will Your SUV Hold Its Value? In New Study, Big U.S. Models Lose Ground To Japanese: Toyota Tundra vs. Dodge Ram By KAREN LUNDEGAARD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL In a new study of how well car values hold up, General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChryslerAG's Chrysler Group are losing even more ground to the major Japanese and European brands. The biggest surprises were in areas once dominated by Detroit: big SUVs and pickup trucks. In those key categories, the new study projects that Japanese brands such as Honda Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan MotorCo. will have better resale values after three years than competing U.S. brands such as Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge. Indeed, the top-ranked vehicles in four categories of SUVs and two categories of pickups were all imports. The best full-size pickup according to the study? The Toyota Tundra. Its worst? The Dodge Ram 1500. While it took Japanese auto makers awhile to understand minivans, they now control the category in terms of projected resale value, accounting for the top three models -- Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna and Nissan Quest. The study was released Monday by Automotive Lease Guide, whose figures are widely used by banks and finance companies to set prices for leases. The lower the resale value, the higher the monthly lease payment. .... Discounts are a big reason for the disparities in resale values. "Three years ago the incentives were nonexistent on full-size SUVs and trucks," says Raj Sundaram, president of Automotive Lease Guide. Today, they typically exceed $3,000. While such incentives have helped propel a period of extremely strong sales for car makers, they have hurt domestic brand models when the time comes to trade them in. Residual values, the term often used for projected resale figures, take into account a long list of factors including how long a vehicle sits in a showroom before it is sold, what it sells for compared with its asking price, production levels and quality. General Motors, whose brands such as Chevrolet, Saturn and Cadillac ranked below industry averages, said residual values are often misinterpreted. Residuals are based on a vehicle's asking price, not its selling price, so in this incentive-heavy era, domestics will of course be hurt in such rankings. Comment: What that tells you is that the domestics create an artificially high sticker price (I call it a fake price) and then give you a "deal" by offering many thousands off that price. The used car market sees through that to what the cars are really worth. Some examples: Honda Accord MSRP 23760 After 3 years 12875 vs. Dodge Intrepid MSRP 23495 After 3 years 7200 Toyota Sequoia MSRP 35695 After 3 years 21075 Ford Excursion MSRP 42065 After 3 years 16375 Consumers have caught on to the fact that the true "cost" of the car is not the price the dealer charges or even the price you pay; it's the difference between the cost you pay now and the price you sell it for when you get rid of it, divided by the number of years you have it. Using the Sequoia/Excursion comparison above, the Sequoia costs less than 5K per year for the first three years of depreciation; the Excursion costs nearly 9K per year. And most drivers rate the Sequoia as a better vehicle to drive.

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (48842)	11/12/2003 2:04:01 PM
From: X Y Zebra	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57110

and from a engineering and design perspective both gm and ford have been braindead for years Thank you.... HO HO HO... -gg Which brings interesting situations since Toyota, BMW, (and I believe Honda too) have growing manufacturing plants here in the USA. Next question would then be... How come these manufacturing plants are not dying... is the hand of the UAW working "its magic" here ? or... as you point out, the engineering/design capabilities of ford & gm totally dead...? My personal experience (after owning two Suburbans) and in the process discovering that the gear-box for the half-ton truck is a mere souped up version of the passenger car box, hence if you are to buy a truck, nothing less than a 3/4 ton would do... so I drove the 1/2 ton truck with a dead transmission into the dealership and exchanged it for a 3/4 ton.... then.... for the new truck I bought one of them "nation-wide extended warranties" [just "in case" -gg] .... which, I tried to use a few years later (in a different state) and after several "warranty work performed" --brakes, alternator, steering rack, air conditioning... etc etc.. the dealership in said other state, refused to honor the paid warranty any longer --no specific reason given--... I protested to no avail and the GM customer service told me to "take a hike" so I did... went to the dealership that sold me the extended warranty and demanded my money back (which I got ... about $800.00 --and that is a prorata amount--) Next.... I told the two GM dealerships AND the GM customer service that .... "I will go to the competing Toyota Dealership, give them your GM piece of crap and exchange it for a Land Cruiser, then I promise you that it will be my mission in life to become the best negative advertising representative for GM and would NEVER again buy a single GM product in my life"... and so I did... since then, I have bought two Land Cruisers and one Sequoia (I still own the L/C that I exchanged for the crappy 3/4 ton suburban) The Toyota trucks are bullet proof and drive great.... too bad they are getting a tad expensive... to the point that .... Porsche Cayenne becomes a definitive alternative.... For no other reason than a powerful 450 HP Porsche motor -gg btw... Speaking about water cannons... (or save the whale stuff, for that matter... -g) Look at the test track Porsche recently used to test the Cayennes.... ---> That is Barber Motorsports Park a new track in Birmingham, Alabama.... and never mind Porsche, YOU can have your own track day with a Cayenne... (a two day event)... porschedriving.com porschedriving.com Turn a hot lap.... click on "turn a lap" and then on video (I think they used a Cayenne on that one) porschedriving.com Other courses... porschedriving.com barbermotorsports.com Anyway... you get the point.... -gggg If people had to go through a course like that to get a license, the amount od accidents would be far less... Well... I can dream can't I ? -g