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GM's Latest Flop: Dealers "Stuffed" With 725-Day Supply Of "Tesla Competitor" Cadillac ELR
Ten days ago, some of the more confused fringes of the blogosphere took great offense at our repost of an article showing thousands of idle cars strewn around various ports, dealer lots, parkings, airports and any other flat surface in what is merely the world's largest ongoing manufacturing channel stuffing and working capital gimmick.
Amusingly, the most vocal critics were primarily offended by the photos which they said, correctly, were from several years ago. What the critics apparently did not do, as we will gladly demonstrate in a follow up article as soon as GM's dealer inventory numbers are released next week, was to do a quick parallel image search because all those same venues clogged to the brim with unsold cars, and whose addresses were explicitly laid out for anyone willing to do 30 seconds of work and plugging the address into Google earth for an updated aerial photo, are just as crowded today as they were in any point over the past 5 years.
The far bigger point, obviously, is that there are millions of cars clogging up the supply chain of automotive delivery - both then and now - which is precisely why we started off with the topic of GM's record channel stuffing...
... something we have been following keenly for the past three years, and of which lots parked with brand new cars around the world is merely a manifestation of the same underlying problem: namely massive inventory mismanagement, and an attempt to affect pricing through working capital goosing.
To this point we could have clarified that what is going on around the world with various car makers stuffing unsold cars in every possible nook and cranny - certainly including transit ports and continuing all the way down the supply chain and far from it - is nothing different than what Goldman and Glencore were doing with their cartel-like abuse of commodity warehousing (which has now attracted even the Fed's attention), which as we showed earlier this month were at or above 700 days delivery for aluminum respectively, in what is simply an attempt to induce artificial supply shortages by keeping intermediate product from its final destination. That we didn't is because our regular readers are familiar with this topic.
Sadly most others were not.
However, the one fair criticism is that to get a truly detailed picture of just how horrific the channel stuffing problem across the US auto manufacturers, one described quite effectively by Bloomberg in its recent article "Most Autos on U.S. Lots Since ’05 Has Ford Leading Cuts", what we should have done is show aerial picture of dealer lots of local car makers such as GM, Ford and (Italy's) Chrysler which are the fullest they have been in a decade. We hope to update our photo narrative with just that soon.
And in lieu of that, instead here is a verbal account of precisely what happens when domestic car-makers overestimate the purchasing power of the US, and clog channels to an epic extent. In this case, we refer to the recently launched GM Cadillac ELR, launched to much aplomb just five months ago as a competitor to the Tesla Model S for a $76,000 price point (above Tesla's $70,000), has been a complete disaster. And how is GM dealing with this latest sales disappointment (which struck even before all the recent recall scandals had hit)? Why by jamming dealers with an unprecedented 725-day supply, or exactly two years worth of cars!
So what is GM forced to do now? The same thing every vendor does when realizing they have overproduced a product and have too much in inventory - liquidate.
From MarketWatch:
The Cadillac ELR has been on sale for just five months, but General Motors is now offering dealers a $5,000 incentive to offer test drives in the Chevrolet Volt-based plug-in hybrid. To receive the incentive, dealers have until June 2 to designate ELRs in their current inventory as test vehicles, after which each test car has to log a minimum of 750 test-drive miles.
The incentives could be because 1,700 ELR coupes remained unsold in dealer inventories at the end of April. At current sales rates, that’s a 725-day supply, which is almost exactly two years’ worth of cars.
The discounts and incentives don't end there:
General Motors is also offering $3,000 in customer discounts toward the lease or purchase of an ELR, in addition to the 240-volt Level 2 home charging station with included installation that was offered to a number of early buyers this year. We noted in January that a Level 2 charger typically sells for north of $750 excluding installation, so a number of ELR buyers essentially received a $1,000 value with the purchase of an ELR.
Curious why the US economy had a mini manufacturing and inventory stockpiling boom in late 2013? Precisely due to cases like the ELR:
General Motors told Automotive News that the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that builds the ELR has been producing a higher volume of cars since the beginning of the year, which could explain the nearly two-year stockpile; industry analysts keep pointing to the price, which is twice that of the Chevrolet Volt. The ELR starts at $75,995 including destination, but before the application of discounts and state and federal credits.
And here we get a paradox:
General Motors, by its own admission, did not intend the ELR to be a volume seller in the lineup.
In other words, a car that was not supposed to be a volume seller, had its production volume cranked up to the max just to stimulate economic activity by building up inventory. And then it hit a snag: "However, it appears that the price continues to keep a lot of customers away."
So yes, while those lots filled to the brim we showed were not of ELR models, they should have been. Unfortunately stock photos of this brand new car sitting untouched on dealer premises are unavailable, at least for now. They will be in due course, unless of course GM is forced to take far more drastic price writedowns and offer much more generous incentives to move the excess inventory - incentives which will bite right into GM's bottom line.
Which really is the bottom line, pun intended: if those thousands of cars held for "inventory stocking" purposes - and nobody knows just what specific intent management has to park thousands of cars idle in plots around the country, not us, not our critics, except that it is an explicit attempt to throttle the supply chain and artificially boost prices (think diamonds) - were to be forced into the broader market and sold at clearing prices, there would suddenly be no epic inventory glut. But far more importantly it would lead to a collapse in car prices as suddenly car supply exploded and dealers were forced to apply the same liquidation methods to all their models as they are doing to the ELR right now.
Finally, since the company under discussion in this post is GM, the same company whose quality control track record has been destroyed following a recall of 50% more cars so far in 2014 than it sold in 2013, expect to see many more stories about exploding channel stuffing for all of its brands, not just the car that was - erroneously - thought would become Government Motors' own Tesla killer.
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Why by jamming dealers with an unprecedented 725-day supply, or exactly two years worth of cars!
365 * 2 = 730
Must be that common core math
Or just a test to see if anyone is actually reading the article.
Wait....
Cadiddilliac has an electric upscale offering?
Whoda thunk?
OK, now what demographic is Cadillac?
Upscale trendy metro-sexual, tree hugging, rich, techie guys or some other demographic I'd best not touch with your 6' hot poker?
Huh?
No Shit, Sherlock....
Iwans da chromezindas golda matches my toofs
Most of the Cadillacs I see are driven by old geezers.
That other demographic has to wait about ten years for the used hand me downs.
I'd rather drive that Caddy than that fagmobile Tesla.
I'll stick to my '92 Jeep. It's paid for and I can work on it.
the solutions are as simple as they are obvious
- interdict googlemaps satellite images of vehicle depot areas
- arrest/imprison/fisa anyone who shows or links to such images
- put camouflage netting over the vehicle depot areas
- truck the vehicles to areas in detroit that are scheduled for demo
- fill fukushima with unneeded vehicles
- dump the vehicles into the ocean so no one can see them on satellite images
Blame Putin.
'87 Isuzu P'up diesel longbed with 82k miles is what I drive when I'm not riding my titanium commuter fixed-gear bike.
I never get less than 30 MPG, no matter what load I'm carrying, but I never break 75 mph, either. :-)
I have a Tesla on order. I'm not an environmental type. I didn't buy it for some political cause. I bought one because it's fucking awesome. Say what you will about Elon Musk. I doubt I'd agree on a lot of his politics, but the fact is he brings it. He supplies a space station and has successfully broken into an industry that no one in the US has penetrated for decades. In a world dominated by megalomaniacs focused solely on their own power structure, this guy throws every last penny against the wall to create a new paradigm. Love him or hate him, I wish we had more people willing to further their vision instead of being parasites on society.
Sorry I can only vote up once
GM should have made it more like an electric Vette.
And they can call it Corvair as it's "unsafe at any speed" when it can explode into flames like the Tesla.
Funny thing is, if they did that it would still be safer then any gasoline car on the road.
I'm surprised they haven't by now.
Bazillions in excess inventory? Not to worry! The Fed will buy them. (probably already have)
I think they will be shipped to the multiple number of warzones erupting all over the world and used as car bombs, portable gun carriers, and transport vehicles. Watching years of yotube clips on the Syrian war would suggest this theory is partly correct.
But look on the bright side. With a two-year supply in the dealerships, that means you can buy a 2016 model right now! What an opportunity!
I agree Troll, its a really nice looking car, and I didnt know about it until now. The volt has gotten very good reviews, and having an engine onboard to charge the batteries is indispensable. Who the heck wants to be swapping out batteries with the Tesla, talk about gettting a bad back, have you seen how heavy those things are.
Tesla is a one trick pony and the sooner Elon Muskstain takes a hit the better. The guy is one slimy dude. Buys up patents and then acts like the is the biggest inventor in the world. The dude had only one good idea his whole life and that was being a middle man with Paypal and carrying out credit card transactions for parties looking to make a sale and their buyers. So he was basically a transaction machine for a piece of plastic.
You are being silly, your not going to be swapping the batteries by hand. You use the superchargers to recharge that 0.1% of the time someone travels over 200 miles. Most of the charging is done at home. The volt needs an engine because it has a tiny battery.
And you seem to have your information confused. All Tesla patents were made by Tesla, none of the patents were bought from others.
Elon Musk has contributed a lot from Tesla Model S (the highest customer satisfaction of any car in history and won many car of the year awards) . To SpaceX where they launch rockets for NASA reliably at the fraction of the cost of the competition. To SolarCity where he came up with the idea of solar leasing which has created a boom for solar installations in the US.
He also never acted like he is "the biggest inventor in the world".
Saw a Tesla and a Leaf owner almost get into a fight for a charging station parking space. Definitely first world problems.
Wrong Caddies sir. The CTS-V are actually very popular in the circles he just mentioned.
I deal with a lot of that crowd myself, and I see what they drive, it's mostly Vettes and CTS-V's with a few Chysler piles of garbage thrown in. Some have M series BMW's and whatnot as well.
Old geezers?
Yes, I remember fins on Caddies. Land yachts we called them. Chrome boats.
Some rocket designs were actually based on the 1959 Cadillac.
Whose rockets? North Korea's?
I drive my '71 Eldo Ragtop every day. For GM, it's been down hill ever since.
Free Cars for the homeless. An idea whose time has come.
Almost there. The government gave me $10K to buy a GM Spark. I sincerely appreciate all you ZH's subsidizing my commute.
GM's new CEO must be thrilled she just jumped into the hot seat. Recalls out the ass, bloated inventory, pissed off customers. The government helped cover ALL that shit up for GM, just to unleash the hounds as soon as they sold off their last shares. Pump and dump, government style.
I'm so glad we bailed them out. What a bargain it was to save a few thousand union members' bennies.
Shame we can't bulldoze their homes we have to pay for the bulldozing of the homes they destroyed instead..
Gummint Motors: makes nuttin I wanna own or drive....
Mostly your right, this was a massive coverup and they found a sucker that was willing to take the job once the govt. sold their shares. It wasn't to save a few thousand union members jobs, it was to save the manufacturing supply chain of the US from being destroyed along with banks and the 1.2 million union retires that would have been shifted onto the PBGC (pension benefit guarante corp) which didn't have the money. You see GM had many suppliers who where waiting for payments for goods and services at 60, 90 or even 120 days or more. And many of those suppliers much of their business comes from GM. So if GM would have went into bankruptcy, it would have put a stop on paying those bills. So now you being a supplier with most of your business and/or a major part being GM and it not only paying for the services and goods that it already used but possible future ones also, your looking at layoffs and possible bankruptcy yourself. Then it goes down the line to the suppliers of the suppliers etc. etc. and you can see where I'm going.
You would have had medium to large manufacturing companies that would have defaulted on loans to banks because they where defaulted on their payments or had to go out of business. It would have been disaster. It wasn't about saving GM, it was about saving the US manufacturing supply chain.
Aren't government induced bubbles grand?
You are correct.
And they should have let it burn.
Bloody hell. GM assets would not have suddenly evaporated in a real bankruptcy. They would have been bought by existing auto companies competent to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Most of the marques would have survived, along with most of the jobs actually salvageable. There is no magic available from government to make capital assets more valuable than their actual productive value. The feds simply bid up the value of these assets on the taxpayer's credit card to save the loss of union pension funds which would have gone bye-bye in a bankruptcy.
Had the government done the "right thing" (if it was determined to "save" these companies), it would have been to purchase the stock when it was bottomed out and outright gifted the whole company to the autoworkers' union as new owners. The circle of financial virtue would have been complete at minimum cost to the taxpayer. And the union could then sort out who to hire to manage the company and their pensions on their behalf, just like any other owner.
Cadillac has been trying for 7 years now to reposition from an old lady florida car to
a younger hipper sporty urban brand.
The CTS and ATS were part of that repositioning, and they were advertising to single women in their 30s
GM should just sell or lease the Puppies at a discount. They can afford to do what Tesla can't - take it in the chin while giving potential buyers the Volt/ELR combo. ROTFL!!!
<SARC>
I'm sure Onstar would be a big selling point... on getting Roadside Assistance for Re-charging, Towing, and...Firefighting...
</SARC>
Wait another 2 years and they'll be giving them away.
Can't call someone out for .6% - especially for a headline
The word "exactly" has a precise meaning, and was chosen incorrectly.
in accounting we used 360 day years. TD was being generous.
Accounting, work days, holidays. STFU on the rounding error, fucking nit-pickers. Exactly means we are working with rolling averages and 99% numbers. Exactly how tall are you on a full moon versus no moon in the sky?
Exactly.
An interesting concept.
Taken literally, nothing is exact, as humans can't measure anything to an arbitrary precision.
Please define your terms.
Discrete vs the real number line. I can have exactly 4 batteries in my hand at one time. It's discrete. I cannot measure out exactly 1.277645 inches.
Arithmetic is so subtle.
"we be jammin, mon"......
Gen-fukking-Mo
.
Well, yeah, that's the metric year (also known as the yearre).
Clealy the article was referring to the short year (still common in the US and Burma), which is exactly 362.5 days.
Just tryin' to help.
The incentives could be because 1,700 ELR coupes remained unsold in dealer inventories at the end of April. At current sales rates, that’s a 725-day supply, which is almost exactly two years’ worth of cars.
$75K for a glorified Prius. Case closed.
No, worse: a glorified Chevy Volt.
That's one well-polished turd.
My electric bike has a 75 mile range and looks awesome.
http://madscienceunlimited.com/thebike/img/blackbird_mk2_1.jpg
http://madscienceunlimited.com/thebike/img/blackbird_mk2_2.jpg
These guys making cars, they don't know shit.
Dayum...
Thing has that steam punk look to it.
That's no accident. If you're gonna roll, roll epic.
Nice.
I bet it's turning circle is a bit on the large side though.
It turns every bit as good as a battleship.
An icebox and a place for the BBQ grille!
Liquor cabinet on the bottom?
How fast does it go?
Liquor cabinet next year.
It goes fast enough to be completely insane.
Link / buy / instructable?
You can't buy it, and I never got around to doing an instructable. But I probably will some day. "How to build a Blackbird super-bike"
That is cool like Batman's BatCycle. Not much impresses me, but that is fuckin' cool man.
What a re-Volting development.
Tyler, if you want I will go and take pics of empty spaces by me that are becoming stuffed with cars. Mostly GM. what is amazing is that no one sees it until you point it out and then they call you a week later going "Holy shit I saw more!". They are literally spilling over onto the main roads over here and taking up a lot of commercial lots.
Please do
Okay will do
btw this was pretty funny for anyone who has not seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGJSI48gkFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4L8QMNJyiU
That's funny shit, Fonz
I'll settle with my good old pickup truck any day. :-)
I spit out my coffee watching that shit lol
That is one fine corporate sales job for micro vacations and shitty healthcare.
Ha, excellent fonz! Thanks for posting dude :-)
Wow, a '60 Coupe de Ville, used to run the same car across the Mojave at a flat 100 mph back in the day...it had more, but would run all day at 100+.
fonzannoon
Dumbass is waiting for the next container manifest.
Keep up the good work Tyler. :)
And I have been taking pics of my man bits and sending it to the bank, just for fun!
They asked you for a deposit , yet?
Nighttime spermbank deposit. Sit on a happy face ;)
Where are you, Detroit?
But snopes says the zerohedge channel stuffing article was complete bullshit.
Snopes is a product of His Eminence, George Soros.
And you can check that out anywhere.... but Snopes.
God will forgive you for your sins, George.
But not until after eternity.
Every time someone criticizes a ZH article and questions it's veracity, it's time to store that criticism away in the memory banks. In a few days, weeks, months (or sometimes years), it turns out it's true. Ask Mario Draghi. To my knowlege the Tylers have never been taken down based on having just dead-wrong facts. (Wrong opinions, sure, but everyone is entitled to their opinion, right or wrong.)
And, in case you missed it, this Tyler is obviously on a mission here with this story. I would NOT bet against him on this one.
Sometimes we are ahead of the game. What happens when you shit your pants after the story is told? How do you go back to clean up your diaper? How does that process work?
Snopes was stuck up Obamas ass, and excited as a brown turd.
Sombody getting "production bonuses"? What else makes sense?
I've never understood why we don't just report retail sales of cars instead of sales to dealers. We could then look at production numbers vs actual sales. Sales to dealers and phony parking lot sales are meaningless.
try explaining that phenomenon to a Libtard.
The sales are out of factory, not dealer.
They'll look at you like you're a... an... uh .. .. um... Conspiracy Theorist!
OMG!
If anyone uses the term 'conspiracy theory' you know they have no argument.
The number of things formerly known as conspiracy theories that are now FACTS is huge.
Him: I don't believe in conspiracy theories.
Me: Ah, so you don't believe people conspire?
Him: No, like, obviously people conspire!
Me: But everyone else knows about it?
Him: Er...
Me: Or veryone else knows about the real ones, as opposed to the make-believe ones, the conspiracy theories?
Him: Yeah!
Me: So all those years they were rigging LIBOR, and the few people who were saying it was being rigged were called conspiracy theorists... you're saying LIBOR wasn't really being rigged until the story broke that it had been going on for years?
Him: What's LIBOR?
That's why.
"I've never understood why we don't just report retail sales of cars instead of sales to dealers. We could then look at production numbers vs actual sales."
Where have I seen this technique for BS recently?
"..the government chooses to measure U.S. gasoline consumption in a very odd manner: by measuring the amount of gasoline entering the domestic supply-chain rather than by measuring actual consumption at the other end of the supply-chain – i.e. “at the pump”."
"If you choose to measure the amount of gasoline leaving U.S. refineries and entering domestic inventories and call this “gasoline consumption”; you can hide the actual collapse in gasoline consumption – until those retail inventories are overflowing, and there is simply no more room in the storage tanks."
"This conclusion becomes even more visible/obvious when we view the gasoline data just from the start of the mythical “U.S. economic recovery” to the present. At the start of the “U.S. recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption was at a rate of 52 million gallons per day (already more than 20% below the 1998 all-time peak). In the five years since the start of this pretend-recovery; U.S. gasoline consumption has fallen all the way to 18 million gallons per day.
Since the beginning of “the U.S. economic recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption has plummeted by nearly 2/3."
U.S. Gasoline Consumption Plummets By Nearly 75%They're trying to drown us in bullshit.
Here is a nifty chart showing vehicle miles driven on US roads.
Spoiler alert, it is literally all downhill when plotted on a chart.
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/DOT-Miles-Driven.php
And gasoline volume sales are even more interesting to look at:
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Gasoline-Sales.php
Electric Cimarron.
The Caddy that Zaps.
ummmm... the point here is to dump a similar vehicle to the Tesla on as many people as possible in the hopes of taking Tesla's projected market and driving (forgive the pun) them out of business?
...bet me you can't pick up one of those Pieces Of Shit (The Cadillacs) for south of 60k?
Yes.
There is even a Method To The Madness of The Dumbass US Auto Makers.
Who knew?
If all they cared about was taking out Tesla, they should retail these for $40,000, eat the loss and glut the market.
Yes.
But then they would be guilty of Obvious Predatory Pricing or product dumping ala Chinese solar panels or tires.
At 60k they can say that they accidentally produced two years of crappy cars to keep the Detroit Union workers happy and in their jobs.
Tesla is another screwed up company waiting to go bankrupt when they run out of cash.
GM is just trying to speed up the process.
Oh.
And if making two years worth of Tesla look alike cars isn't "glutting the market" then who knows what is.
Tesla is not going to run out of cash any time soon. They ended 2013 with being cashflow positive. Tesla has been performing better and better each quarter and now sits at over 25% gross profit margins. They hope to reach 28% gross profit by end of the year.
Even if GM made a look alike car and priced it cheap, nobody would buy a GM. Especially after the whole covering up 13 death thing. There is also a reason why Cadillac cars are not even considered luxury cars anymore by most people.
Not to mention GM still needs Tesla's carbon credits.
They do, it is called a Chevy Volt and they sell it for 35k. It is not gutting the market though.
I'll wait for the $399, 36 month lease and I would drive it. It's nice, not 70k nice!
Deadhead sticker on a cadilac? (Technical term )
Or
Boys of summer in the radio song rotation?
Elvis must be spinning in his grave....... no great cadilac since they took off the tail fins
I'm not sure if you're asking a question referencing the "Deadhead" sticker, but what Don Henley is referring to is the Greatful Dead bumper sticker on a Cadillac. Grateful Dead fans were often referred to as Deadheads.
Not sure if you knew this.
GM is an abomination of a vehicle manufacturer. You would have to pay me a monthly stipend to drive anything they produce. This is what the cleansing process in 08 tried to get rid of - a lumbering half zombified albatross but instead is on life support by corrupt politicians who have "constituent" aka union interests to protect.
725 hours is about how long it would take to drive from coast to coast. Drive 100 miles (2 hours driving) stop charge it up (12 hours) then another 100 miles stop charge it up (12 hours).......
1 point in its favor is at least you will not be carjack when you stop for Gas.
They should sponser an electric gumball rally. Get a Tesla, swap battery packs at each station going one way, then back the other way so the batteries get returned.
If they did that, they would run out of gas. The Cadillac ELR has like 35-38 miles electric range. Beyond that it kicks in the gas. If you recharge every 100 miles you would run out of gas before reaching the coast.
When I started driving (a while ago!) it was fun.
Cars have now become what I call 'debtmobiles' because it seems that the production of debt is the most important part.
They've also become 'taxationmobiles'
I could fix my own car when I first started driving, now you need to take it to the dealership to get air fitted in the tires, for fuck's sake.
I put my car in storage 3 years ago (maybe it'll be a collectors item one day!) and now cycle almost everywhere.
Yeah those proprietary tools that change with every model are a nice fucking scam.
Buy the piece of shit and you're locked into the dealership.
No thanks, I'll drive a beater that will probably still be going in 15 years.
I rebuilt a Volkswagen '64 Deluxe Beetle (with bigger 1500cc bore cylinders), for my first car. The entire thing was user-serviceable; the engine only weighed around 300 lbs! Could almost lift the thing out with one person. I miss that car...
I used to have a 57 Karmann Ghia that had 300K miles on it. 36 horsepower and 6 volts. Loved it until some welfare slag ran a lite and killed it. She was Judgement proof, the slag I mean.
Mine was 6v, too! I had to buy transformers for all of the electronic devices, to connect them to the modern 12v battery.
My first car was a Mini.
Bought it when I was 16 - couldn't even drive it till I was 17.
Rebuilt the engine and gearbox in my dad's shed.
Spent many a weekend down at the local scrap yard for spares.
Never had as much fun with a car since!
My first car was a hand-me-down Toyota Crown. Hellavah car.
The first one I bought was a '70 AMC Javelin. 304, AMX differential, air-induction hood, velour interior, rallye steerring wheel, 'whale tail'... looked good, ran good, it was fast, and I paid $800.00 for it. I had a cop pull me over one time just because he wanted to look at it (he said had one when he was in high school. That was before cops were totally piggified. Nice guy, actually). Next one I bought was a '64 Chevy El Camino. Straight, fair, paid $500.00 for that one. Had all three at the same time.
THEN, I got stupid and fell in love and got MARRIED...
SHIT!
When I lived in Sydney, EVERYONE had Morris Mini Minors (except my family. We had a '65 Plymouth Valiant that was converted to R.H. drive after we shipped it over). Funny little cars, but sort of neat.
Valiant - CLASSIC!
Buddy of mine had a '63 (I believe) with the slant 6, and push-button tranny.
Damn thing was bulletproof.
Yet more evidence that the business practices pioneered by John Z. DeLorean (i.e., when faced with abysmal sales, double down manufacturing like crazy) are standard operating procedure at auto manufacturers here in the States.
A man 30 years ahead of his time, indeed.
The car industry in general is all smoke and mirrors. I worked for a dealership way back when. We would take ownership of the vehicles delivered immediately, without selling them, a lean incurred of course. The vehicle could then be reported sold without a single buyer having seen it.
It was a good incentive for the dealership to sell mind you, due to the fact the longer the car sat idle, the more we paid in interest.
What a racket.
Hopefully they keep knocking the zeros off that caddie, that's a nice looking whip. Even if it will rattle it's self into a lose box of bolts within a year or two, as I'm sure many GM owners can attest!
And check that stock... That bitch is a dead man floating
Car and Driver says: "With its full 217 ponies saddled up, the ELR gets to 60 mph in 8.1 seconds and slips through the quarter-mile mark in 16.5 seconds at 87 mph, putting the ELR in a dead heat with a $16,000 Honda Fit."
It looks nice on the outside, but it's what's under the hood that counts.
bullish.
i'll take the Fit any day over that 5,000 Pound Dinosaur.
It's changed to a fashion industry
4,000 pounds, 217hp, should be faster than that, more like 0-60 in 7.5 seconds QM better than 16.
No, no, no.
You aren't familiar with the O-metric system now being taught in 'common core'.
An 'HP' is actually equated to the calculated heat-energy of a 'Headless Pony', after it's been bleeding out for... um... 27.835 seconds (the time it takes this electrified bling-wheeler to reach 95 MPH). SEE? 217 times 95 minus $76,000 divided by the weight of the average American driver (385 pounds)...
Ask your kids. they'll explain it to you.
Thass juss plain stupid
don't even have to ask kids.
That's fucking hilarious! $76k for all that speed?
Let's see if I can do 'common core math'.
It takes 8.4 seconds for this slug to accelerate from 60 to 87 MPH.
SHIT! I owned a YUGO that did better than that, with 5 people in the car! (sarc tag OFF!)
That fucker can't even get on to a FREEWAY, for God's sake, without FLOORING IT (and making everyone else slow down, and flip you off).
217 'PONIES' (Shetland ponies, perhaps?), and, what, a 'massive' 35 Ft/lbs of torque?
OH! Sign ME up! Can that free charger plug in to my laptop or my EYE-fone and charge THEM as well?
(I've got to run to the store, Biff. Where's the Caddie keys?)
(Better take the Yugo. The Caddie's still charging, Muffy.)
(SHIT! I HATE that little car!)
(Don't have a snit, Muff. if you want to wait a few hours...)
GM has for years designated money losing, high fuel economy cars to be produced to balance out SUV sales so as to meet government mandated CAFE milleage standards.
Great example of how gov regulations promote poor capital allocations.
The problem is people still prefer the bigger vehicles. Get rid of CAFE and just slowly but steadily increase gasoline tax for better results.
'tax for better results'... oh yeah, the way of the hairlip... 'more taxes'
"just slowly but steadily increase gasoline tax for better results."
Much like the frog who is thrown in to the boiling pot, he will jump out because the difference in heat alarms him (it will kill him, in fact).
HOWEVER, if the frog is put in to a pot of cold water, and the heat is turned up very slowly, the frog fails to notice; until eventually, it boils to death.
(Credit to Sibel Edmonds. I didn't quote her blogspot directly, but the idea remains constant, and is provable by experimentation).
Well, 'Matt', I would say that your idea is really, um...
FUCK YOU-esque.
Fuck Off, Matt. Really. Fuck Off and Die.
Legacy costs. +76K.. Fuck off union. Send in your Grievance report to all the taxpayers that bailed you out. I will never buy another GM POS again. Again, never!!
At the height of the G.M. empire (2008 or so), it cost an average of $76.00 to employ a line-worker (when factoring in all the bennies and retirement).
The number $76,000.00 and the mention of 'legacy costs' are quite strange.
SO, a thousand workers on the line, I suppose.
Look for, the Union label...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV9_nGt9FzE
I hope I get at least ONE 'upvote' for the WKRP In Cincinnati reference. I LIKED 'Bailey'.
fuck GM...
NEVER, EVER will i by a car from that mother fucking bailed out manufucksurer.....
+1. GM screwed me twice, took my money and showed me door. SCREW THEM
The Lie
They are not being "blown out at clearing prices." A clearing price would be below the bloated price of the Volt, or lower.
OMG! It has a range of 35 miles! That's supposed to compete with a Tesla?
Short GM
Receivership
Put a Fork in them.
They're done!
I bet if you wait 18 months you can buy one for under $30k
It has a range of 35 miles ... on electricity. Add another 250+ miles on gasoline. If you use a free public charging station, you can commute to and from work at the public's expense, and just use gasoline for long trips.
How dare they call it "plug in". It's not as good as a Prius. The implication of calling it a plug in is to make one think it's like a leaf, an electric car. Does it mean it doesn't charge when it's being drivin on gas, during braking? In order to use the electric, MUST you plug it in? Or is the electric motor like an appendix, you go through the trouble of plugging it in for a lousey 35 miles?
I'm afraid you'll never win me over. I bought a Vega. That was the end of my association with GM.
Yes, and the depreciation on that Volt in it's first year will be something like 25% as soon as you drive it off the lot.
In less than 5 years, you're gonna have to get that battery replaced also. You're looking at $$$$$ for that.
I read somewhere that dividends don't start getting paid back to you on a Volt until you've reached 400,000km on the odometre. Factored in are the repairs and the cost of that new lithium battery in year 5.
The electrical cars reminds me of the time when gas prices started going up and people started panicking and dumping all of their SUV's for smaller, fuel lean cars. Once you factored in the big hit on selling/trading in the family SUV at a near giveaway price, turning around and getting financed on a new, smaller car, doing the math you'd realize that you shoulda just kept the gas guzzling SUV in the first place and just driven it into the ground.
Er um, 35 miles is a short trip for most living in South FL.... and there are not any public charging stations in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach or points north. No wonder the dealers are not stocking the ELRs down here.
When GM starts missing the payments, Average Joe will get a bail-in slip. I bet it’ll be somehow taxable too!
For Sale 1965 Ford GT40 Roadster Prototype
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20140527/CARNEWS01/140529845
A car nut friend of mine just told me last week that the '40' designation was because the car was 40 inches tall.
You are correct, and so is your friend.
The GT40 the "American Muscle car" designed and built in England.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_GT40
Less than half the dealerships stock them because the dealerships had to fork out $15k for training and equipment, which most didn't want to do for a low (no) volume selling car. And a 725 days' supply is still only around 1500 cars. That's right, they're selling 2 ELRs a day in the whole *country*.
Once again, great article ZH!
It's amazing how they can produce exactly 2 years of inventory and have enough profit to share to pay $6k bonuses!
Wont the battery be dead in two years?
I can't wait 'till they start parking these in front of the vacant houses in my neighborhood. Gotta keep up appearances.