Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
At some point, you run into diminishing returns as to how much car you can make out of "x" amount of raw material, with the R&D already paid for. The Maruti Alto was the example I gave, because it is far, far, faaar past that point... Another car that's possibly there is the Nissan Versa. The Jetta is a likely candidate (simply for the stripping it gets in Mexico to meet the price point it hits in the US).
Hey, the Nissan Tsuru (Sentra to you folks... B13 to any Niss-o-philes on the board) is still on sale in Mexico. That's a car whose R&D were paid off way back in 1996 when it was retired everywhere else. Far as I can tell, it's about $2k less than the Versa.
But:
And then consider it has less legroom than the Versa, poorer fuel economy and truly scary handling... that's pretty much as far down as you can go for a "normal" sized car.... actually, too far down... and it's still way too close to $10k for no discernible benefit over what's currently on offer near that price point. (Versa, Mirage - which also has more legroom... I used to drive a B13), etcetera) |
Central and South America are a goldmine for this exact sort of thing, I love it. Although I'm guessing the Tsuru is one of the oldest examples.
The relatively high price is curious, but the unknown here is profit margin. I'd bet that it could go lower, but Nissan doesn't see a need to cut the price.
I also wasn't really thinking ancient, but simply keeping a generation or two previous going. The Malibu Classic was the best example I could think of; a new, worse looking Malibu came along and the old one changed its name and was stripped down to continue along for fleet sales. Chances are the R&D was paid off by that point, no need to go back a couple decades. And when the replacement model would get to the end of it's normal life, it could become the new cheapo car.
Actually, as you brought up the Jetta, the Volkswagen City Jetta is probably a pretty good example (perhaps a better example).
