QOTD: Which Automaker Will Bring Back The Small Car First?
With the death of the Ford Focus ST, the Blue Oval no longer offers a small car in Europe. We already know, of course, that the company doesn't offer one in the States.
Nor do some of its competitors.
Obviously, the small car isn't completely dead -- there are still more than a few models to choose from. But the Detroit Three have moved away from them, at least for now. All because of a crossover-crazed market.
Still, tastes shift. Also, the rising cost of new cars could create a market opportunity. So, perhaps, an OEM that currently has nothing to offer in the small-car segment might come back.
Which automaker that doesn't currently offer a small car in the States will be the first to return to that segment?
You know the drill. Go ahead and sound off below.
[Image: Ford]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Everyone who exits this segment blames these two factors in varying degrees. "We couldn't sell them" and "We couldn't make enough money on the ones we were selling." I call BS and argue that a lot of automakers just decided "We simply won't bother with stuff where don't make a nice profit." Chevy was selling 150,000 Cruzes a year when they pulled the plug.
And we end up where we are now, where entry-level transport is a used car. Many people working for an hourly wage are completely priced out of the new car market. The manufacturers' answer for that is they can get a couple-years-old car off the used lot - but at some point you need to be selling new cars so the used lot gets inventory.
When the Chinese come, they won't care about short-term "we can't make a nice profit" now because they are in for the long march. Even with tariffs or taxes they'll still be cheaply priced. And people will buy them because people bought Hyundai Excels, Kia Sephias, Daihatsu Charades, Suzuki Samurais and Yugos. They suspected maybe they weren't great but hoped eventually they could afford better.
Build cars you don't make a killing on, build them well enough buyers will come back to you later on for more-profitable cars. Don't play this game like Nissan staying in the segment with the Versa by cheapening it bit by bit year after year - we see where that's got Nissan - between that and the CVT adventure there weren't a lot of buyers coming back for more.
@Bd2 - what always clouds people's judgment on stuff like this is thinking nobody would touch it. It's a muti-faceted issue here. Rental fleets couldn't absorb ALL those Cruzes. When the Chey Trax was rental fleet only they were selling 60K a year. So someone -- a lot of someones-- found it a decent enough value to park in their own garage. My specific issue here is if a company's making 150K of a product and can't do it profitably and (we'll take your point), is also failing to find buyers in the marketplace, is the only possible solution to abandon the segment entirely? That's weakness and greed on GM's part.
But even so, if you're selling to rental fleets, the product mustn't be showroom-repellant to the consumer. I'd never had the Cruze experience, but I've rented an Impala that I'd never, ever, in a zillion years have considering buying not just for the driving character but for the condition it was in with under 20K miles - but I also rented a GMC Terrain that actually had me looking at prices.
So one man's "let's just dump these cheap on the renters" is another's "Here's your chance to make an impression, do something with it." Hey, our last rental was a a Hyundai Venue and I wouldn't go back but Mrs. DB liked the looks and layout and got real interested.