Right -- and the number of buyers for that premium American product is going to be small. #shrug I bet they ask their dealers to hold fast to the price point, too.
Note that I'm all for it: this is how it's gotta be done and it's going to take 10 years at least to grow your fanbase. The fanbase right now is basically the last bastion of Lutz supporters, most likely...
I think you gotta do it the other way, though. You don't get to say "This is expensive, thus it is good." You gotta spend 10 or 20 years building the brand and slowly increasing prices to keep sales in check.Originally Posted by novicius
Ford has broadly raised the prices on their cars to account for the leaps in quality and refinement, and I think it'd be fine for Cadillac to do that as well. But these are huge leaps - $60k V or $70k M? No way would I take a risk on the Cadillac. It'd take a long time for me to take Cadillac's word over BMW's.
Judging by reported lease rates on BMWs, I'd say that those are at least as important as MSRP, if not more so.
I disagree. IMO, one of the big reasons that Mercedes-Benz caught on as a status symbol in the US in the 1960s was, in large part, because they were more expensive than the most expensive Cadillac you could buy. People can talk about their legendary solidity and whatnot, but the reality is, in the 1960s, MB was selling taxicabs with nicer interiors in the US and making bank because they were a way to look snobbier than the "working man made good" in his Cadillac.
By nearly any objective standard, aside from high-speed handling, mid-60s Cadillacs were superior - or at least better suited - to American driving conditions than MBs were. Mercedes were underpowered, with poor automatic transmissions, and not a V8 to be had until 1969, which itself only offered 200 hp.
It's hard to figure out what advantage MB had, aside from costing more, and therefore showing the world that you had more money to blow than some piker in a mere Cadillac. Don't underestimate that advantage. True high-end car buyers don't want value for money, they want the world to know that they have so much money, value doesn't matter.
Cheapie lease rates are a whole different story. The $300 a month BMW is what a young professional gets, because a $300 a month lease gets you a much nicer looking car than a $300 a month purchase. Go see what it costs to lease an M3 or a V; it ain't $300 a month. Two totally different markets.
Last edited by KillerB; February 10th, 2015 at 09:06 AM.
Yeah but maybe de Nysschen is blindly taking past V-label sales as that specific past growth to stand on?
He's not been über successful outside of Audi so it's not like everything he touches turns to gold...
I think that's true, and I know people who won't drive a Lexus because a Mercedes costs more. Those people totally exist. But those are truths you get to apply to top-of-the-range models, not across the board. Even Mercedes competes on the C-class and has since the '80s when BMW started beating them up with the 3er. Plus, Mercedes (and BMW) don't have thirty or forty years of shitty cars and lousy resale to make up for. You can grab even a C-class out of any point in time and be confident it's gonna be an ok car. You can grab an S-class and know it was a very good car, if not the best car. There are only a handful of Cadillacs made in my lifetime you can even say anything good about. Audi spent most of the '90s building extremely nice cars before people started lining up like lemmings to buy them. I don't think Cadillac has put that time in.
He could. Or maybe he's still working with the Germans to sink Cadillac!
That's my theory, anyway.
Cadillac may just be able to rely on Escalade profits while they attempt to establish their cars as common price, common features, better execution than the Germans, and live with the shit sales.
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/02/10/c...sedans-report/
Last edited by Kchrpm; February 10th, 2015 at 10:01 AM.
Get that weak shit off my track
Sheesh! And I guess if you're making fifteen large a car you can funnel a LOT of dough back into R&D.
They should just focus on selling one $5m car a year!
Fancy minivans FTW.
Get that weak shit off my track
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