Quote:
Originally Posted by crysalis_01
Agreed, wholeheartedly. To be fair, I'm not the one who brought up Cadillac. . .
And honestly, i never would have brought up Cadillac, because of the very reasons you yourself mentioned. I was only responding comparison made by others and expressing why the current MK Z is the better option for Lincoln now, than a ATS/CTS style vehicle. Notice how not one of of the above posts said anything along the lines of "it's no LaX" or "I'd rather have a RLX".
As to MK Z's pricing aligning with Buick's, I'm not really seeing that completely, there is definitely overlap, but I imagine we'll only see aid overlap get smaller and smaller as Lincoln continues its current trend.
Yes there are more fleet involved but sales are sales. And Lincoln at this point need those sales to increase their revenue flow. Building a more "exiting" sedan that sells in fewer numbers, because of the reason you mentioned, does then no good to build a revenue stream...at this point. |
You don't need to build sales to build revenue. Build great cars & people will pay a premium for them. And buy them in decent numbers too. It takes a lot of time, money, and effort to pull off. And nothing says that the cars have to be great in any particular way either. Lexus and BMW are both very successful with wildly different approaches.
Not all sales are created equal. About the worst thing you can do for a luxury brand is to dump vehicles to rental companies. Not only to the rentals typically buy the cheapest version they can get (which hurts brand image when a person rents it & gets disappointed at the lack of features ... as well as bringing in less money for the automaker), but at the end of its service those cars are worth a lot less than their twins sold to the retail market. That drags the average resale value for the entire model line, which in turn makes leasing far less attractive. And if you don't have good leasing deals for your luxury brand, its not going anywhere.
Granted, a lot of Lincolns fleet sales are for limousine services as opposed to rentals but I'm sure the same logic is still going to apply. I can't see used limo's commanding a premium at auction compared to a used rental of the same make & model. Could even be worse as there is going to be an extremely limited market for limos that have reached the end of their service life.