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Originally Posted by mcrews
It'[B]s a chicken or egg thing. No demand, no sales. No sales, no imports. No imports, no visibility. No visibility, no demand.
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But as I have to keep asking, who* says there's no demand? The very active market for small used imports from the '80s and '90s shows that there are people who want small cars, and the amount some spend on modding those cars shows that they're not just buying them because they're inexpensive.
*Actually it seems to be the Detroit 3 and their followers who claim there's no demand, and who do everything possible - from spending large amounts on advertising to sabotaging corporate attempts to build viable smaller cars - to convince the world that it's true. I'd even argue that some of that sabotage must be deliberate, because no one could have built a car as bad as the Vega on purpose.
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Every American car includes the cost of PAST union employees current health care. or the unfunded liability of retired workers. this amount is thousands per car. So they have to cover that cost to make a penny. That is why the US manufacturers build large loaded vehicles.
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There is no reason in the world why a small car has to be sold at a low price. The Mini has a MSRP ranging from $20-35K, while the Mazda Miata starts at $23K. The few other small cars that you can actually buy in the US - Porsche, Lotus, BMW's roadster, etc - all seem to start somewhere above $50K, and climb rapidly.
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That's why kia and hundia can make money all day long on entry level vehicles. They DONT have the overhead. Sure the demand is there, but the american manufacture cant fill it
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And to repeat, small is not the same as entry level. It seems fairly obvious that entry level should be used, of whatever size the buyer wants.