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A few things Posted by Snowmobile [Email]  (#686)  [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Snowmobile) on Tue, 2 Dec 2014 12:39:12
In Reply to: Re: Mahindra buys NEVS, EGD  [Profile/Gallery]
, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 11:54:47
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First off, "Mahindra buys NEVS" may eventually be true, but it's not quite like that yet. And does it even matter? who knows...
In terms of European production... well, production costs in Europe are not cheap, so it is impractical to build a value oriented brand there. SEAT and Skoda are relatively value oriented brands, so I can see that being a problem, but iirc they are owned by VW, so they at least have decent financial backing. SAAB was (at least for the past few decades) not really a low cost brand - maybe a notch cheaper than BMW/Merc/Audi, but about the same as Volvo. At this higher price point, "sameness" is kind of an undesirable thing, and so in principle they could carve out a niche, but it is true that they need to make the numbers work and the market may not be that big, at least for what they were doing.
Basically, we can to some degree blame GM for a good deal of this, as they attempted to position SAAB as a value European luxury brand, vs BMW and Audi... although one could argue they were already in that niche, GM stripped SAAB of the uniqueness - hatches, etc, in favour of pushing a direct 3 series sedan competitor value proposition into the market. Imho, this attracted a very different type of buyer than the c900 attracted, and though there were loyal existing SAAB customers who bought the 9-3ss, the ownership makeup changed with some SAAB fans leaving and some value sedan folks coming... and quite frankly, I don't blame the value oriented folks for jumping ship to a Kia, Hyundai, or other value oriented sedans... that is what they were looking for when they bought a SAAB and what GM offered in 2003-05: - 2 nice luxury sedans at a good price, and where Kia/Hyundai have been adding lux features at low low prices, no brainer... it's much more difficult to buy an Elantra or Optima after a c900 or 9000 hatch than after a 9-3ss or 9-5 sedan...
sure many of the people on this bb are not so much new buyers - many come here because we work on our own cars, and most new buyers largely are leasing and churning them on a 4 year basis. Not much to discuss here if you are doing that! And I guess where we keep the cars a long time, we're the ones who see the difference between cars that are better built. The current market does not care about long term build quality (like the c900 or 9k or old merc), and quite frankly it is not in the manufacturer's best interest to focus on that!
Anyway, I significantly agree with Dean (and posted re this on Swade's blog several weeks ago): SAAB's technology was still relevant 10 years ago. Now, everyone can build a car with a turbo, safety has drastically improved across the market place, luxury features (eg heated seats) are commonplace etc. The differentiation is less. I wrote SAAB/GM when the 9-3ss came out to ask "where the heck is the hatchback" and also to point out that the technical advantages they were enjoying with the turbo were going to be short lived, and that many people in the SAAB demographic would be interested in hybrids etc or at least something new. Well, the engineers at SAAB were on that track, but not GM... that vert, and the recent e-XWD stuff looked fantastic. Too bad it was never realized, and too bad that was not what NEVS was going to make.
I'll get off my soap box, but the further this spreads from Trollhattan, the less I think there will be a car that comes out of this that is of any interest to me. We will see.
, Mon, 1 Dec 2014 12:12:27, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 11:54:47, Thu, 4 Dec 2014 12:25:11, Mon, 8 Dec 2014 08:06:08, Tue, 9 Dec 2014 06:59:51, Fri, 5 Dec 2014 19:22:45
, Wed, 3 Dec 2014 14:28:59, Thu, 4 Dec 2014 17:19:28, Wed, 3 Dec 2014 14:48:58, Wed, 3 Dec 2014 19:01:35, Wed, 3 Dec 2014 17:35:12, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 18:34:45, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 19:36:18, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 12:39:12 <-- Viewing This Message, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 18:06:16
, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 12:19:00, Mon, 1 Dec 2014 21:37:57, Mon, 1 Dec 2014 18:18:50, Mon, 1 Dec 2014 15:18:21, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 00:25:08, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 18:04:43
, Tue, 2 Dec 2014 12:18:02
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