Employee discount!

[misterp]

Ford jumped on the wagon, as well as Dodge. Dodge discount does not apply to any special models or SRT line.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah I'll bet that last month's GM promotion threw all the other manufacturers a horrendous beating. I'd loved to have been a fly-on-the-wall in Chrysler's/Toyota's/FoMoCo's marketing departments when the head lightbulbs finally lit upon realizing they had just lost their market share for the whole summer. I'll even bet there are some marketing management shake-ups in these other companies because nobody had a prepared response to GM's opening shot of this price war for an entire 4 weeks; GM may have not made much in that time but I bet that the other manufacturers/dealers lost billions.

 

IMO the whole GM promotion was never meant to help the dealers or us as consumers but rather was a very effective move in dealing a huge blow to the cash flow and market share of the other makes. Look at the evidence:

 

* very few dealers were helped by the promotion, most broke even or did worse because of lost margins;

* used car dealers are already fearing a complete weakening of the wholesale used car market;

* the auto repair industry is going to take a short-term hickey because of this promotion as more people choose to trade-in rather than repair their vehicles;

* consumers are soon going to be more upside-down than ever in their car loans because of accelerated depreciation and weakened auto wholesale prices - in turn if enough borrowers suffer this it may (in time) affect our national economy;

* other manufacturers were completely caught flat-footed and lost both sales dollars and marketing share...

 

The only one who benefitted from this price war dressed in promotional drag is GM Corporate. Gotta hand it to them though...

 

Mr. P.

[CoolBlueSS]

Yeah and I'll bet that you're not selling anywhere near 3.23-times more volume.  I am kind of pessimistic, I am hoping that GM does not do the same thing that Chrysler did in the early 70s with their never-ending season-end clearance sales, that was what pretty much put the knife into Chrysler IMO.  But what do I know, I'm no automotive marketing exec.

 

Mr. P.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah it would be nice to sell 55 cars in a month but obviously that didn't happen. My saving grace was that for some reason people were still buying used cars.

 

 

My hope on all this is that GM will keep the rebates low (to save their resale value) and their rates low ( to keep the cars affordable). I wouldn't be suprised to see them lower prices and go to no haggle pricing across the board. This would make car shopping easier on the customer, becasue most customer that walk on the lot really don't want to try to negotiate with me. Plus it would cost the dealers less money per customer since they wouldn't be fighting over the same customers constantly. They would just go to the dealer that is closest to them and buy the car, less time, less hassle.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think that would be a great idea. That's the one thing that people hate about buying a new car. Haggleing over price.

The big profit in a dealer is made in the back end, and these sales are really hurting that.