Gee,my buddy that started out with a coffee truck buisness 40 years ago,and now owns a 18 hole golf course’worth millions. Seems the obivious idiot was dumb enough to drop cash down for a new YUKON.

Lokkii Responded:

“Rich people got rich because they’re smart and so therefore they only buy good things”.

—–

I agree. For all we know, Mikey’s friend may be more indebted than he is smart. Or he could be a founder of an as-yet undiscovered Ponzi scheme…we just don’t have enough facts to know either way.

I’m over people and their so-called fame and fortune. I’ve grown up over the years and today I’m not automatically impressed by anybody just because they spend a lot of money on cars or because they have three homes, two boats, a tour bus or an amusement park in their front yard.

I’m certainly not about to assume that they’re “smart” or that they’re somebody I’d want to emulate, not even if they are famous, rich, or just talk a good game.

Call it a “healthy skepticism”.

The number of truly wealthy people who buy Yukons is fairly small… Yukon sales are derived from leasing and loans and go to people who ought to be saving their money.

Too many people are p!ss!ng away money they don’t have on things they don’t need and which don’t offer good value in return.

That’s a big part of how we got into the current mess and more Yukon sales are not a hopeful sign for the future.

Yukon sales, by the way, are basically a promissory note for expanded future gasoline purchases (written, unfortunately, in gallons not a fixed dollar amount) to foreign oil producers.

Mikey – I HATE this particular argument so I’m going to call you on it:

“Rich people got rich because they’re smart and so therefore they only buy good things”.

I had a tightwad boss who used to go on and on and on about Sam Walton and how Sam drove an old pickup truck. I finally had to tell him that because Sam was rich, he could afford to have a truck that might give him some trouble now and then. He was never going to be without a ride, and he could afford to fix anything that went wrong without being inconvenienced. Burn a hole in the upholstry with a cigarette? Hell, just buy a new front seat. Transmission shifting a little rough? Buy a new one.

The same can be said of your rich friend. As proof of this hypothesis, I offer the number of truly rich people who own Land Rovers… the biggest POS to leave England since…since…. maybe ever, but maybe only since the Triumph TR-7.

Gee,my buddy that started out with a coffee truck buisness 40 years ago,and now owns a 18 hole golf course’worth millions. Seems the obivious idiot was dumb enough to drop cash down for a new YUKON. I guess he wanted something comfy to drive down to his other house in Florida.

Well its good to know that TTAC’s anti flaming/trolling policy is alive and well.

Nor the new Equinox — hmm.

Still, I’m not surprised, the Terrain and Equinox are flying off the lots as they seem to be right-sized for the times, and are a step forward for GM.

Great. It’ll be that way until we have more SUVs going hybrid then eventually all-electric (or hydrogen?). Then the main difference between a compact and a SUV will be the ticket price with the not-so-green footprint being measured in terms of natural resources utilized and carbon produced during the production.

You can bet we Americans are dumb in that manner. At least their dumbness won’t have such a large impact in the future.

Just kidding. People like their SUVs and their gas cheap. You can clamor for higher gas taxes and dish all the snarky comments you want. It’s going to be this way a long time. Deal with it.

I completely agree with your C4C assessment. Since the comments on TTAC were overwhelmingly negative on C4C where are all the naysayers now? It would appear they were all completely wrong especially about C4C doing nothing more than pulling demand ahead.

Dude, this was YoY, not month over month.

Last year’s October sales were depression-like.

Some good news GM did need!

Who the hell is buying those Tahoes and Suburbans???

People like me who want that 6 speed tranny and the 400+ HP 6.2 liter engine for towing – heh heh!

Long live the General!

There’s more to tell yet as per frank rizzo’s link for us.

For example;

Silverado total sales of 31,800 were driven by the strength of Chevrolet’s “Truck Month” promotion.

What were the incentives there?

and,

GM claims 21% market share, but there is this statement; The U.S. October 2009 SAAR of 10.6 million is a 13-percent improvement compared to last month.

So the SAAR lept 13%, but year-on-year GM is up 4%, yet they’re claiming 21% market share (up from 20% last month wasn’t it?). How does that work?

Also, nice work mixing up percentages and unit counts when they need to obfuscate.

I remain a C4C naysayer. Artificially creating market by buying rebates for a few – with tax money from the many – distorts the economic realities of supply and demand. The continued discounts on cars by the mfrs keeps the metal moving. GM, for its part, has a temporary reprieve from the grim reaper (no debt), and so it can offer bigger discounts.

It is interesting that GM’s gains were all made on gas guzzlers. The next hike in fuel prices will crush them again, but people will still choose a $20k Hyundai over a $40k Volt when that time comes.

One must still consider what competitive advantage GM has going forward, especially if you believe C4C was a good thing. The point is this: C4C was temporary… what now? Hyundai saw increases before C4C, during C4C, and after C4C.

It would be great to see a surviving GM that doesn’t rely on government welfare to compete, but GM offers little hope that can happen on their own merits.

Even the Titanic’s propellers settled back into the water before it finally sank.

GM sells a lot higher percentage of ‘trucks’ than Toyota (60% vs 30% during Oct. ‘09) and trucks generally have more profit built in and therefore more room to offer a higher discount which leads to a larger average of incentives.

Again, in the end it comes down to profit, which we currently don’t know how GM is doing (we just assume not good) and we assume that Toyota is doing better (but still bleeding red ink).

http://media.gm.com/content/media/us/en/news/news_detail.brand_gm.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2009/Nov/1103_Opel

Since economics and supply/demand rules apparently don’t make sense to this bunch, think of C4C as similar to those day after Thanksgiving sales at Best Buy for flat panel tv’s.

Last year, BB ran an ad for a mid size flat panel TV for about $500. At the time, that was a heck of a deal, and probably would still be considered so today.

There were people lined out the door at the crack of dawn because essentially they were being offered a heck of a deal that BB and likely the manufacturer were subsidizing to get TV’s in the hands of those folks.

So, question is, were people saying, ahh, I’d love a $500 tv and I’m going to pick one up even though I’m not in the market for a TV? Some, but probably not most. Were they thinking they were going to buy one anyway and this created the great opportunity to do so. Probably a fair number in this group. These folks of course will likely not need to buy another one in the immediate future, especially in light of a renewed expectation that they might not buy unless they get another smoking deal.

Get it?

SAAR of 10.6 million now? Edmunds, TTAC, and the naysayers got it wrong again about C4C again this week. Everyone should have waited until October’s numbers came out. GM’s and Ford’s sales this month have proven that the jump in August sales has not hurt sales down the road. At worst it was an extra 690,000 sales with no other long term effect.

At best (and this looks increasingly the case), it provided the stimulation to the auto sector, as it was intended to do.

One month’s numbers can easily be an aberration, but I will be watching November and December with interest to see what the Q4 totals look like.

For example, incentives and sales % change for Buick sedans:

2010 Buick LaCrosse | $1,000 | 95.5
2009 Buick Lucerne | $2,500 | -30.3

Poor vehicles tend to get higher incentives. So looking at a simple average doesn’t really tell us how much money GM is actually spending on incentives.

GM was over a 1000 bucks higher than Chrysler.

They were just about the only ones with incentives similar to last month.
This isn’t about product, they are still selling the deal.

Yawn. My tax dollars at work. Still.
Dang.
I’m still paying others to buy sub-par vehicles.

Bunter

In fall ‘07 they threw together about three months of fleet stuffing and promotions and the sutomedia cried “Salvation”. Those who were skeptical were decried as “GM-haters”.

How did that all work out anyway?

Show us 6 months of up market share, reduced incentives and let us know how the corporate cashflow is. Than we’ll talk recovery.

Skeptically yours,

Bunter

President Obama

June 1 2009

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-General-Motors-Restructuring/