[theunchosen]

Subaru is owned by Ford and all of their cars are in this range, Lincoln is owned by Ford and all their cars are in this range and mercury might as well be indistinguishable from Ford badged cars.

If they could turn a pofit selling a car for slightly more than Honda they would because then they could beat honda off the market.

And its not slight. Seriously a 50% pay increase per hour is not slight. Take 2/3 of your pay and give it back to your employer and call it slight then I'll talk about that. Then come back and tell me its ok for someone to work the line and make more than the average ChE, M.E. C.E. E.C.E E.E. I.E.(average pay after employment for 5 years upon graduation is 65K) after working for 5 years and having spent 4 years in college and paid 30,000 dollars.

So yeah its called overhead and any business with high pensions, labor banking, and unreasonably high pay has high overhead and can't compete with others in the market with very low overhead. Its why monopoly busting was extended to eliminate vertical monopolies because they had such small overhead costs no one else could compete and within a few years it wiped out competitors(US Steel). I am not bringing politics into it. I am discussing economics and business macro.

Its like this. Honda pays 12K to make a car 2K to ship it and then sells it for 15 and makes 1K to pay for RD and other overhead that isn't consumed in the original 12 or the shipped 2. Ford,GM Chrysler have to shell out 18K to build it and 2K. Even if they sell at a loss(not paying RD and other not directly included overhead) its still 5K more expensive than the Honda.

Honda Accord, Toyota Prius, Corolla Camry are all in the 20K range but Ford, GM and Chrysler all have to come in above that at 24-27K. If Toyota and Honda sell more cars and Ford GM and Chrysler don't have overhead issues then they have no reason not to lower prices to compete. They might be stupid but they are not completely retarded.

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For crying out loud, you can get army surplus 30K mile HMMWVs cheaper than you can get them from GM.

I don't know how much you know about cars but the HMMWV has 0 straight axles, all downturned to get to the wheels without sacrificing ground clearance with 4 wheel drive. The H1s are all straight axle with less powerful engines(and slightly less FE go figure). If you want to explain to me how a vehicle substantially more expensive and complicated can be bought for less with 0 negative advantages on a regular basis go ahead.

To the topic I think we are swinging back a leetle towards the golden era of car design from say 80-94 where aero, FE, HP and comfort were blended for maximization of all pieces. I am biased as The Honda Del Sol sprang forward from that era but. . .you know.

It would be nice to see a return to that ideology with the bleeding edge tech of composites. Imagine having a standard production car from carbon fiber/fiberglass new engine design like v-tec but GDI for us. A 1500 lb car with lrr tires a few solar panels a few batteries regen braking EV assist GDI constant lean burn under mass production could own the market.
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