Ford dealer, 30+ trucks and SUVs, 5 cars.
Mopar (FIAT) dealer, the row of pickups was so long I couldn’t get ’em all in the picture, there’s another row behind them, and a couple more rows of more pickups and SUVs behind that… And maybe a half dozen cars. Didn’t bother with a pix at the GM dealer, as they’d given their cars equal billing with the pickups and SUVs, though they too had a smaller supply of cars.
Got to talking about this perverse product mix with a couple dealer sales folks and factory reps, and they pretty much admit that they ain’t got enough cars. One even admitted that they put their glutted inventory of traded in pickups on the front row in hopes of selling them… Those pickups were largely traded in on cars rather than more of the same (gas hogs).
Clearly, despite their recent near death experience, the corporate culture of the “big three” is as fat and happy as ever, continually convincing themselves that we all really want a supersized 4 door pickup with every gadget up to and including automatic defibrillators and preplumbed oxygen ports for every overstuffed seat, with powered massagers to ward off the deep vein thrombosis ’til we arrive at the ER.
But the customers have moved on. Having learned from the still lingering recession that a low or no payment and stinginess with fuel are a good thing. So the customers will find those under $20k econoboxes even if they’re buried in grime at the back of the lot, or move on to the foreign car dealership down the road.
And how many billion of GM’s debt are we taxpayers still on the hook for?
GearheadGrrrl 