@gcmeninsr Whoa, hold on a second.
Chevy is a mainstream brand. The one that brings home the bread and the butter, as does Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, Subaru, VW (mostly), etc. Call it blue collar, call it whatever, but it’s the vehicle most people buy. Today, these are good all-around performers in pretty much any category. And there’s nothing “Blue collar” about a $40,000 Silverado, $50,000 Camaro, or a $60,000 Corvette.
Now, about Cadillac: they’re actually NOT competing with Mercedes. Cadillac’s main competitor is BMW. That’s the performance luxury space, where performance and luxury are the two main objectives of the brand and its vehicles — in that particular order of priority. I would put Audi and Infiniti in that space as well, but that’s a topic for another thread.
For some reason, you mentioned Nissan in the same sentence as Acura, Audi, and BMW… Nissan is a mainstream brand. A Chevy competitor. And Chevy outsells Nissan every month… and has for ever (literally).
Now, let’s take a look at Acura. This is a brand that needs no competition, because even it doesn’t know what it is or where it’s going. It’s a rebadged Honda from crying out loud… and isn’t even a global brand. Case in point: the Acura TSX is sold as the Honda Accord in Europe and in the JDM. The same goes for the rest of the Acura line. But that doesn’t really matter as much as this:
Acura is consistently outsold (by thousands of units) by “real” luxury brands like BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus… even Audi (as of late). To make matters worse, since Acura isn’t a real luxury brand (from a price and status perspective), it makes less profit per unit. So why would a business need to compete with a brand that’s not only less profitable, but also doesn’t sell in large enough numbers?
When it comes to Buick, the brand has seen its average buyer age drop by 5 years over the last 2 years (give or take). There’s no reason this trend will not continue.
No sane customer will ever even think of Pontiac when shopping for a fine luxury automobile — like a BMW, Audi, Infiniti, or even Acura… heck, if Chevy is “blue collar”, Pontiac is even “bluer”.
Seems like GM’s “forward thinking” is just fine…
