Quote:
Originally Posted by Markal
Both sales are high....Corvettes are high end expensive two seater sport cars...Malibus (sp) are mid sized and lower priced than Corvettes, family type cars...some with super engines. Not sure what you are comparing here or what it has to do with this discussion? Prices do effect sales....
The Corvette is considered a high end "Sports Car"....the Malibu is considered a mid size "Pony Car"??? Corvettes have their market and Malibus have their market. What are you trying to say? The concept Volt is the Corvette and the production model Volt is the Malibu.....Nah....no way...the production Volt is the Cruze on battery power, not the Malibu.
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You brought up sales, specifically that their only hope of recouping costs are if sales are high. I agree. The closest car that GM sells to what you wanted in terms of price and practicality is the Corvette, so I used it. But your vision of the Volt would certainly cost far more than a regular Corvette.
I used the Malibu because the Cobalt and Cruze didn't have a full year of sales, so using them to compare sales isn't exactly fair but the Malibu and the Cruze have been selling in roughly the same volume for the last few months (at least in the US) so I'd say it is a valid substitution as another non-threatening family sedan in the GM line-up.
I'm also glad to see you say that prices affect sales. This is one of the biggest reasons for GM to have the Volt share platforms with the Cruze. Going with a unique platform to accommodate the unique style of the concept would drive costs way up. I'm thinking in the 70-80 grand range IF it could maintain the volume that GM estimates the Volt can sell in. But the relationship goes both ways ... since price affects sales, estimated volume also affects pricing. Fewer people would buy a car at $80k than they would at $40k, so to compensate they'd have to jack the price up even farther to the point where they'd probably have to have supercar pricing on the Volt and move only a few hundred units a year ... or just eat the cost and lose billions on the program.