"I Wouldn't Say That Right Now We Have Been Specifically Enamored of the $2,500 Price Point"
Rick Wagoner, eh? "Not specifically enamored." Classic passively constructed British understatement from an American car exec. Anyway, for those of you following the development of India's revolutionary Nano, it's probably no surprise that GM doesn't have the hots for the people's car's $2500 price point. The Financial Post reports that GM's chief executive declared that that “the magic” price for an ultra budget car is yet unknown. Meanwhile, GM will compete with the Nano by taking costs out of existing economy cars (e.g. GM's Daewoo delights). Speaking from the floor of the North American International Auto Show, Wagoner also admitted that his golden parachute provider has tried making a cheapo car from scratch before, using coloured plastic panels instead of painting the cars later on. "Overall, the effort hasn’t worked," he said. "What we ended up with was not a very good looking car that wasn’t that cheap.” I say nothing.
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After looking at some of the Chinese offerings in Detroit earlier this week, I left convinced that a large reason these cars will be cheap is not because of inexpensive labor, but because of subpar materials and subpar quality. The interiors that I looked at were worse than the worst 1980s Pontiac, the doors opened with a loud thunk as the latches released, and the windows rattled when closing the doors. Third world consumers don't have the same quality/style/reliability expectations we have. A $2500 car will be disposable, and it won't be good.
They will have to compete with the used market. 2500 dollars still buys a decent beater
GS650G: True, they will have to compete with the used market, and $2500 buys a decent enough beater, but assuming these little taters don't self detruct (India is actually pretty good with quality in my experience), then the second hand market for tatinos will be even cheaper... why buy a 100k mile beater when you can have a 40k mile nano for $800?... If they can get established, they'll re-jig the whole market. And with their piss-ant motor, they could wind up with a smaller TOTAL carbon footprint than the chevy MysteryVolt(tm).