@solotworacer I’ll happily bring up the subject!
A few points about your comment:
1. Your assertion that “most people who purchased Pontiacs are not and will not be Chevy owners” is more of an opinion than it is a “fact”. I’m sure we can both cite many individual examples, but such instances aren’t necessarily representative of the entire Pontiac-owning populous. Coincidentally, I have worked in automotive retail as well, mostly on the marketing side… and I’ve seen several Pontiac owners buy a Chevy as a replacement vehicle.
All that is to say that as much as I appreciate your 36+ years in car sales, I remain a fan of an educated and informed dialogue, and simply can’t accept the claim as hard fact until seeing some hard numbers.
2. From a statistical point of view, it’s very possible that Pontiac (and even Saturn) customers could have purchased a non-GM vehicle as a replacement for their Pontiac (or Saturn), and could have then returned to Chevrolet (or another GM product) after that. For instance, a Pontiac buyer could have purchased a… let’s say… Volkswagen, and then traded that in for a Chevy (Buick, GMC, or Cadillac). That is more than possible, but the “retention” statistics won’t show it since GM would have “conquested” a VW customer, thereby boosting its conquest rate but dropping its retention rate.
3. But let’s, for a minute, forget about the conversion rate of Pontiac owners to Chevrolet buyers… whatever that might be. Perhaps an even more important question is whether GM should have “chased” after Pontiac (or Saturn) buyers in the first place. In other words, were these customers “desirable” for GM? I’m not suggesting that the answer is “no”, but rather just wondering about it. The question is interesting to me given that Pontiac was a continuous money loser for GM over the last decade or so of its existence.
4. In regards to the vehicle choices you’ve made for your wife: I can’t necessarily comment on them from a financial perspective, but I will say this. Not looking at financial figures and payment-related info:
– The Chevy Cruze is a better mainstream compact car than the Jetta (my ex happens to own a brand new fully-loaded 2012 Jetta Sedan TDI)
– The Chevy Malibu is a far better vehicle than the 200 (it’s still a Sebring that was designed back in 1999, and dates back to an even older roots)
There are plenty of examples that one can bring up to demonstrate the above statements (about Cruze vs. Jetta and Malibu vs. 200) to be true, from quantitative measures (such as overall performance, safety, technology & connectivity) as well as qualitative/subjective ones (such as ride & handling and the “perceived quality” metric). Having said that, I’m beginning to wonder about the choices of vehicles you’ve made for your wife. Why are you punishing her? 😉
