Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Obama: Stop selling pickup trucks
In Minnesota last week, Mr. Obama lectured car companies to start investing in smaller cars. “You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” he declared. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money.” It’s the height of chutzpah for a wannabe executive with no business experience to think it’s his prerogative to tell carmakers that they need to “understand the market,” especially because it’s obvious Mr. Obama is the one who doesn’t understand consumer behavior. In the first seven months of this year, Americans purchased 3,170,109 small and midsized cars, which is an increase of about 10 percent over 2010. Sales of pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans outpaced smaller cars by almost 500,000 vehicles and are up 11.5 percent over the previous year. The Ford F-series pickup is the most popular new vehicle of any class in 2011, outselling the most popular compact car, the Chevrolet Cruze, 2-1. Mr. Obama should be telling automakers to reinforce success, not to unilaterally downgrade expectations...more
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I'll stop buying a pickup when Obami figures out how I can pull my 25 foot stock trailer with a Chev Blaze.
The real "problem" here is that, truth be told, people are unwilling to pay the prices posted on those econoboxes. The automakers would be fools to invest in products that the public either does not want or cannot afford.
Here's a good column from Eric Peters on the matter of the Volt, and the lack of sales thereof:
http://lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e84.1.html
Of course, all this is a sop to his base, which is oriented to profit off of forcing consumers to make choices they would not otherwise make. The fact that it gives him a chance to take a swipe at supposed suburban profligacy and imaginary rednecks is just a nice little plus. None of them get rural life other than to make it the butt of jokes, but that's not new, either. These boys never stray too far off the Agenda 21 Pastures, because those pastures stand to make them fat.
Post a Comment