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Car Forum / GMC Cars / July 2009GM boost sales with custom-built cars
There was a time in the not to distant past when a buyer could order a tailor-made car from any GM division. The catalogue was full of options. Just a few: heavy duty shocks, battery, radiator, two-tone paint, V-8, special carbs& cams, rear wheel valence covers, twin exhaust....the list was endless. GM bring it back! The competition doesn't have it, so one up them. Sure, they sell packages, but that's no good. To get a tach on a low-line Dodge Caliber, you had to buy a loaded model for $5000 more. Who wants to pay $5000 for a tach? No Mike, I don't want a JC Whitney $20 stick-on tach. I want the built into the dash quality-built Chrysler tach beauty only available from Chrysler Corp. Only now GM should pick up the rights to manufacture the stylish and practical Caliber since Chrysler is kaputt. For years I have posted thousands of posts on countless newsgroups to no avail. If only American industry would heed my unchallengeable suggestions, we would still be Numero Uno on Earth instead of where we are now, broke, unemployed, dependent on China for kitchen appliances, money set to collapse like the Zimbabwe 100,000,000,000 dollar note it takes to buy a loaf of bread, and utter hoplessness of a moribund Federal Government set next month to abolish private medical care and drop prices down to starvation wages so thousands upon thousands of doctors will throw in the towel and set up practice in Mexico and Canada where freedom to run a thieving business still florishes. That's it! GM, start making buses again for the hoardes of sick people who will be forced to travel over the borders to the now foreign U.S. emigrated doctors. Brilliant. Il mittente di questo messaggio|The sender address of this non corrisponde ad un utente |message is not related to a real reale ma all'indirizzo fittizio|person but to a fake address of an di un sistema anonimizzatore |anonymous system Per maggiori informazioni |For more info https://www.mixmaster.it At last you finally realize NOBODY in the NGs wants to read the BS you post. Now if we can only get that Canadian tax dodger kook to realize NOBODY in the NGs wants to read his anti GM BS post either, we can get back to talking about cars. You guys should go to alt.autoes.toyota where there are plenty of kooks who you can easily convince LOL > There was a time in the not to distant past when a buyer could order a > tailor-made car from any GM division. [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] > Per maggiori informazioni |For more info > https://www.mixmaster.it Slow Leaner posted: >> For years I have posted thousands of posts on countless newsgroups to no >> avail. Jack G. I for one would love to be able to order just the options I want on a car, be it a GM, Ford or ? The first thing to go would be the standard Leather Interior, OnStar, DRL's, Auto Headlights, Auto Climate Control and Power Windows, ABS, Air Bags and Chrome / Aluminum Wheels. harryface 91 Bonneville 318,901 05 Park Avenue 86,585 >I for one would love to be able to order just the options I want on a > car, be it a GM, Ford or ? > > The first thing to go would be the standard Leather Interior, OnStar, > DRL's, Auto Headlights, Auto Climate Control and Power Windows, ABS, Air > Bags and Chrome / Aluminum Wheels. When you think about GM's position, it makes all sorts of sense to do exactly this. If I were the VP of Manufacturing, I certainly would take this idea seriously. True imports, that is the ones coming in off boats have a huge weakness the lagard D3 have ignored for decades, a huge competative advantage. Customer designed autos and everyone is different. For example I like my auto's relatively loaded but don't like OnStar and sun roofs. So why the hell should I be stuck with these two options because I want leather and hands free temperature control? And don't screw people price wise for options like these, a little PCB and sensor for hands free temp control isn't that much more expensive than the mechanical manual control. And some might like the manual over the auto version! But you have to get the plants out of the "batch" mentality. Today we make 500 red ones is obsolete. You need to make what the customer wants when the customer wants it. But here is the real reason why lard management needs to do this, carrying billions of dollars of depreciating autos in inventory is wasteful and capital intensive, capital GM does not have. Why have 5000 autos stting in a field waiting for hail and vents getting clogged with dust? It is a stupid wasteful business model. Manufacturing doesn't drive production, sales drive production! Manufacturing needs a big huge kick in the arse on this point. And fire anyone just for not agreeing, especially if management. Each dealer gets various demo models, where people can quite litterally rent them for 3 days, refundable on purchase. Rates say at $75/day for up to 3 days and a 100 mile limit per day. Very few new models on the lot. Once they have tested the vehicle, they sit down with the options and packages, view the demo that is the closest match and get a quote. The pricing will be no haggle coast to coast. Even Canadian pricing is tied to exchange and none of this price gouging and dickering and trying to "screw" the customer sales crap, a good price right now. Cut the wasteful sales BS, many customer feel jerked off by this and Toyota/Honda often duck that adversarial gong show. Once ordered, it gets built inside of the next week, perhaps 8am the next day. Shiped out twice a week is a maximum of 10 days to delivery or we lop off $1000 and $100 per day. Shipping is included in the price, cut the crap, it doesn't take $1,650 to ship a car. Robots can look up the bar code and see if it is to be manual or auto air... snap in... done.. customer gets a custom no BS vehicle of their choice. Another option for those that need to see it before they commit is a standard cheap and a standard load versions, with a small inventory. But until one is sold, more will not be built. If they sell to LS versions today, they get to build 2 next week. A JIT principle to keep inventories down. Next is flexable assembly lines. Many non-union lines can make more than 6 different cars in at least 3 different version on one line. Ford has a nice example of this in Barzil. Don't guess what the customer wants, deliver what the customer wants. Big, small, loaded or budget, who gives a damn, give the customer what he wants and stop the all or noting Volt butt mentality. If people want Volts or V8's GM will deliver and adapt in 24 hours not 24 years. GM is in a capital crunch and they have too much capital inventory rusting out, litterally. Solves a real business problem too. Trouble is finding a VP butt kiss with the courage and empowerment to make it happen. They will have to fire no-change deadwood to make it happen. >>I for one would love to be able to order just the options I want on a >> car, be it a GM, Ford or ? [quoted text clipped - 73 lines] >you should start your own company with this idea and drive everyone elst >out of business first put a $ sign to all these options for manpower, inventory, supply line, cost of delivery of 1 car, amount of people in the ordering process, see if you can build a compact for less than 100K. all of those individual options come with a extra cost its not just the part cost You prove once again you obviously know nothing about automobile assembly, or customer buying habits. Options are "packaged" with available options that normally are chosen by the majority of customers to lower the average build cost The more things on the line that are the same the LOWER the build cost. I give you two examples. For two years before passenger SRS was made mandatory, it was offered and an option to those that wanted the passenger SRS for around $800. When passenger SRS was made standard it added less than $600 to the base MSRP. As more buyers began to CHOOSE the AC option on middle priced cars, manufactures made it standard and it added less to the MSRP, as well. As more buyers began to CHOOSE the AC option on low priced cars, the did the same thing As to manufactures forcing colors or options, it is the DEALER that chooses what option packages are added to the vehicles they CHOOSE to order for stock, not what the manufacture wants to build. The fact is bodies are assembled, painted and placed on a buck to cure, weeks and even months before they are selected to be added to the line in the color the dealer chose. The more common the color the more are preassemble. One can indeed order a domestic vehicle, packaged the way they CHOOSE and have it in four to six weeks, but that is hardly the case with imports. If you think not, try to ordering a car made in Japan with the option package and color YOU want You CAN order a Harley in any color you want with whatever options you want, but that Harley will cost you at least $6,000 MORE. As to the shipping cost, you are correct it doesn't cost $1,650 to ship EVERY car, some times it cost a lot more and the dealer does not get a penny of the delivery cost. There was a time when the shipping cost was different depending on how far it was shipped to the dealership and by what method. When Federal vehicle pricing laws came about the AVERAGE shipping cost was added to the window label because similarly equipped vehicles must be the same for all buyers. >>I for one would love to be able to order just the options I want on a >> car, be it a GM, Ford or ? [quoted text clipped - 71 lines] > a VP butt kiss with the courage and empowerment to make it happen. They > will have to fire no-change deadwood to make it happen. "Mike" <mikehunt2@lycos.com> wrote in message > One can indeed order a domestic vehicle, packaged the way they CHOOSE and > have it in four to six weeks, but that is hardly the case with imports. Every car I've bought in the past 15 years or so has come with something I'd not order if given a choice, but when spending $30k, I'm not going to quibble over a $150 option that I don't want and wait weeks not to get it. OTOH, I tend to get my cars very well equipped and the dealer either has one on the lot or can get one in a day or two from another dealer. Some options are left off the price sticker so they can advertise a "starting at $xxx" price that is lower than anything you'd really want to buy. Lucerne, for instance, has Stabilitrak as an option. on the $32000 base price, but it came standard on my Hyundai for 10k less. I remember reading that Scion was going to ship cars with some features to be installed at the distribution center. They buyer can choose certain (bolt on) options, like steering wheel color, sound system and the like and have the car delivered in 48 hours. I don't know if it was implemented or not. When I was Group Sales Manger I needed to order the number of Toyotas, we needed to have in stock, four to six month in the future, not four to six weeks for domestic brands. That is one reason why today Toyota has hundreds of thousands of unsold '09 vehicles sitting in storage at points of entry on both coasts and why they are dumping them on the rental fleets. As of last month, for the first time ever, half of vehicles in the rental cars fleets are IMPORTS. Literally half of all Hyundai's sold in the US, over the last six months, have been sold to the rental fleets. > "Mike" <mikehunt2@lycos.com> wrote in message >> One can indeed order a domestic vehicle, packaged the way they CHOOSE and [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > and have the car delivered in 48 hours. I don't know if it was > implemented or not. |
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