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Posted by George Peterson on March 4, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Back in November 2005, a VehicleVoice Blog commented on the existence of a periodic jihad on sport utility vehicles in the USA and worldwide. The introduction of General Motors’ GMT900 SUVs – the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL, plus the Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV have set the earth-is-flat crowd wailing again.
Audi Q7 Latest Target of SUV Jihad… This Time From British – Austrian Axis
But June 2006 intro of the Audi Q7 in the USA following its earlier introduction in Europe also will be watched closely. As Audi is about the last major brand to add an SUV to its lineup, it is a fresh target for the anti-SUV crowd. The March 2006 issue of CAR Magazine is a case in point. Georg Kacher, a 6-foot, 13-inch Austrian based in Germany, writes, “Big, heavy, chunky, aggressive, unwieldy – SUVs deplete our resources, tear up the countryside and flatten whatever they hit.
So why does a company like Audi, renowned for advanced engineering enter this bad karma segment?”
Because the market is allegedly craving a mud-crawler made in Ingolstadt, and because Audi firmly believes it can add a new dimension to the SUV game.”
As with many non-USA automotive journalists and even American buff book scribes, Kacher’s loathing of SUVs is mis-directed.
SUVs respond more to customer pull than manufacturer push. After the demise of station wagons (or estates as the Europeans so lovingly call them) and the image black hole called Minivans, came sport utility vehicles. These jack-of-all-trades vehicles carry people and stuff with aplomb. Well… more aplomb today than at any time in the past when they were admittedly crude trucks with a closed in cargo area. They go anywhere, anytime, with anyone, carrying anything within reason. They come in all flavors from the late and not particularly lamented Ford Excursion to the Suzuki Vitara. Populated between the Excursion and Vitara are SUVs of every ilk. Some are suited for suburban streets only. Some are rock crawlers. Some are designed to tow horse trailers and boats.
The beauty of SUVs is the breadth of choice within the segment. The SUV buyer has the luxury of choosing between more brands and more models than ever before. Like the overall auto industry, the larger SUV segment is atomizing into smaller and smaller niche entries.
Choice is good and Audi is welcomed.
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Posted by Stephanie Brinley on February 24, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Pricing for 2007MY Suburban Follows Tahoe with a Drop in MSRP
According to an announcement from Chevrolet, a comparably equipped 2006 Chevrolet Suburban LS was $2550 more expensive than a 2007MY LS. This may well be true for the new Suburban’s MSRP, but the transaction price for the outgoing SUV was far lower than MSRP, sometimes varying appreciably from month to month. GM’s new approach to pricing is logical, whether customers can be weaned off incentives or not. If your vehicles almost never sell for full price and there is a significant difference between transaction prices and MSRP, the MSRP is clearly set above what customers are willing to pay. Moving MSRP and transaction prices closer together, in the long term, should improve the image of the brand. Some buyers will feel smart for getting the “great deal” incentives can appear to be, but others are turned off by constant loud and dramatic incentives.
While a 2006 Suburban 1500 4WD started at about $42,500, the LTZ package (which included the 6.0L engine) also added almost $11,000 to the price. For 2007, Chevrolet says the 4WD LTZ starts at $48,455. Though the trim package components may have shifted a bit, both LTZs get the bigger engine and there is a price drop between the models.
The reduced pricing strategy is supposed to help Chevrolet and GM reduce their dependence on rebates, incentives, a deal-of-a-lifetime sale periods, like last fall’s Employee Pricing for everyone and even the $5500 hundred sitting on the hoods of 2006 Suburbans through at least the end of February. Dropping the price by something in the neighborhood of $2500 can earn some goodwill as well as setting themselves up for potentially smaller rebates if they are needed down the road. Whether this really works with customers now conditioned to blow-out sales and large incentives remains to be seen.
Read on for the official Chevrolet 2007 Suburban pricing release.
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Posted by Stephanie Brinley on January 31, 2006 at 1:22 pm
With Ford and GM easily dominating the full-size SUV segment and both companies offering heavily revised and improved entries for the 2007 model year, it is a good time to be a large-SUV buyer. Beyond the updates to Expedition and the GM lineup (GMC Yukon/Yukon XL, Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban), Chrysler joins the fray with the Aspen and change is in the wind for the Toyota Sequoia soon as well. Though the sheer number of people buying full-size SUVs is shrinking in the current climate of fuel-cost concerns and an uncertain economy, there are still customers whose lives demand the level of utility that can only be found in a vehicle this large, and these buyers have lots of new toys to pick from this fall.
Ford has released much of the information on the new Expedition, which reaches showrooms in fall 2006 in two lengths. With the 2007MY, Ford buyers can go from Escape to Edge to Explorer to Expedition to Expedition XL in their search for their own “just right” sized SUV.
VehicleVoice contributor and
AutoPacific president George Peterson has had considerable experience with the Ford Expedition, having leased four in a row until he decided he was in a rut. Will the new Expedition be enough of a change to get him out of his CAR and back into an SUV? Time will tell.
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Posted by admin on January 16, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Our First Video Podcast!
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Want to see the brand new 2007 Cadillac Escalade? Through our exclusive video tour, we show you every inch and nook and cranny.
Also in this episode, learn from our resident expert how the Escalade was born and evolved into the super lux SUV it is today. And finally, we include a stop at the VIP Auto Fashion Show at the Anaheim Convention Center where we asked other car enthusiasts “What’s Your Dream Car. The answers might surprise you.
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Posted by George Peterson on December 12, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Crossover SUVs will outsell Traditional truck-based SUVs beginning in 2006. This forecast comes from George Pipas, Ford’s Manager of Sales Analysis and Reporting in a presentation in Long Beach, CA on December 12, 2005. Refer to the VehicleVoice Blog on December 8 citing a USA Today article on similar observations.
A Few Comments on What a Crossover SUV Is
Pipas’ analysis charts the meteoric rise of Traditional SUVs during the 1990s and the similarly meteoric rise of Crossover SUVs since 1996 when the first crossovers – the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 – were introduced. Of course, defining SUV categories is getting murkier and murkier. VehicleVoice (http://www.vehiclevoice.com) and AutoPacific (http://www.autopacific.com) have used the “at-a-glance” rule to define SUVs. If you can, at-a-glance, tell that a vehicle is an SUV, then by golly it is an SUV. In this way you are not confused about whether it is car-based or truck-based. (Pipas contends that only about 70% of Crossover SUVs meet this at-a-glance requirement with 30% easily confused as cars, hatchbacks, or wagons.)
Traditional SUV 2007 Cadillac Escalade – Category Expected to Decline as a Percentage of Overall SUV Universe
The auto industry thinks differently and often gets caught up in definition problems. They have variously called car-based SUVs “hybrids” (a term since adopted by gasoline-electric ‘hybrid’ powerplants) or “crossovers”. In our research, we have found that folks really have not yet adopted the crossover term and still like to refer to SUVs as SUVs. But enough about splitting hairs about what is a crossover and what is not.
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Posted by George Peterson on November 19, 2005 at 8:38 am
An article in the Saturday, November 19, 2005 Wall Street Journal projects that Toyota may overtake General Motors as the highest selling carmaker in 2006.
While Toyota (Toyota, Lexus, Scion) may not sell more than GM (Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Hummer, Saturn, Saab) in the United States, it may sell more worldwide. Toyota is concentrating much of its sales expansion in North America where it is pulling sales from General Motors and Ford. GM is bolstering production capacity in China and South America where it sees room for growth where Toyota is not yet strong.
The Wall Street Journal article is one of many recent media reports confirming the results of VehicleVoice research and forecasts by AutoPacific. VehicleVoice research shows a continuing deterioration in General Motors’ (and Ford and Chrysler traditional brands) market share in the United States under the concentrated onslaught of the Japanese Big Three. AutoPacific’s forecast of United States sales shows Toyota, Honda and Nissan increasing market share by adding new assembly capacity and models.
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Posted by George Peterson on November 4, 2005 at 1:22 pm
General Motors is getting ready to launch its new GMT900 SUVs. This lineup includes the Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Suburban, GMC Yukon, GMC Yukon XL, Cadillac Escalade and Cadillac Escalade ESV. The shorter versions will be launched in the 1st Quarter 2006 as 2007 model year vehicles. The long wheelbase Suburban, et. al. will be launched in March or April.
Early reviews of the GMT900 provided in Burbank, California (GM’s California Design Studio) and Warren, Michigan (GM’s Design HQ) prove that the GMT900s are an excellent piece of work. While they do not look too much different from their predecessors, they have wider front and rear track and larger tires and wheels. This gives the GM SUVs a very purposeful stance avoiding the undertired appearance some past GM vehicles have had. At the same time, the more prominent tires and wheels actually make the vehicles look slightly smaller even though they aren’t.
Lack of Fold Flat 3rd Row a Major Omission
To keep these comments focused on what we want to observe, lets change the order a bit.
The most glaring omission in the GMT900 SUVs is the lack of a 3rd row seat that folds flat into the floor like the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator and now the Ford Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer. The key to the Ford system is the use of an independent rear suspension that allows the rear floor to be dropped several inches providing space for the seat to fold flat. GM’s GMT900 management said they “couldn’t break Ford’s code” and it appeared that they were thinking Ford adopted IRS more for ride and handling than for interior package. WRONG. The key all along was the rear seat package.
The resulting seating package is very similar to the GMT800 SUVs. The seats, when folded, rest on top of the floor obstructing the load area of the vehicle.
GM also claimed their research showed that SUV buyers wanted a power folding 2nd row seat more than they wanted a flat folding, power operated 3rd row seat. According to ex-GM researchers who shall remain anonymous, GM’s research actually showed a strong preference for “a seat like in the Expedition in a body like the Suburban”. The real reason, of course, is investment. The expenditures for the combination of IRS and fold flat 3rd row seat has variously been quoted as $165 million or $300 million. Either number would cause a product planner to pause and clearly these very important features were pipped – not easily.
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Posted by dbarrett on June 8, 2005 at 6:23 pm
Though heavily revised for the 2006 model year, Cadillac’s largest and best-selling sedan remains as the only front-wheel-drive Cadillac. With the 2006MY, however, the entry falls in line with the current Cadillac naming strategy to wear the name DTS instead of DeVille. Sales are set to begin in fall 2005.
For 2006, styling is freshened and brought in line with the Cadillac’s Art & Science design philosophy. Specifically, new sheetmetal includes the front end, the decklid, and the rear quarter. The grille, front and rear fascias, headlights (standard xenon), and taillights and CHMSL (both LED style) are also new. There are larger wheels and tires for DTS, with standard seventeen- or optional eighteen-inch sets available.
DTS will be offered in only one exterior and interior trim level, though there are a variety of option packages. The 4.6L Northstar V8 continues as the sole powerplant, offered in 275HP and 290HP versions and mated to the four-speed automatic transmission. Though the platform carries over for the DTS, it was refined and retuned and the front cradle design is new. Buick updated its entry on this platform for 2006MY as well, also implementing a name change from LeSabre to Lucerne. The DTS and Lucerne shared an introduction at the 2005 Chicago auto show.
GM is introducing its latest advancement in front passenger airbags with the DTS (and Lucerne). These dual-depth airbags use vehicle sensors to deploy the airbag in one of two sizes and speeds, depending on passenger size, seat location, and other factors. DTS also offers standard seat-mounted side-impact and roof-rail mounted airbags. IntelliBeam automatic high-beam headlamps are also standard.
DTS gets a long list of available convenience features, befitting its place in the Cadillac lineup. These include heated and cooled front seats, heated rear seats, heated steering wheel, three-zone climate control, heated windshield washer fluid, power folding sideview mirrors, remote start, adaptive cruise control, and DVD navigation system. All GM cars will offer standard OnStar by 2007MY and StabiliTrak by 2010MY; the DTS launches with both standard.
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Posted by dbarrett on June 6, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Buick will retires the LeSabre name with its 2006 model-year lineup and replaces it with the Lucerne. Lucerne is a major change and redesign to the LeSabre, which uses the same platform as Cadillac’s best-selling sedan. The DeVille is also revised for 2006MY, and renamed DTS.
Lucerne will be the first Buick to offer a V8 in ten years, using the 275HP 4.6L DOHC 32v V8 that serves as the base engine in the DTS. The 3.8L OHV V6 carries on as the base engine, and both are mated to four-speed automatic transmissions.
Several standard and optional features, also found on the Cadillac DTS, will be Buick firsts, including Magnetic Ride Control (paired with StabiliTrak), heated washer fluid, and dual-depth passenger airbag. Not only does the airbag sense the passenger and deploy at one of two speeds, there are two sizes, with a smaller bag deploying when the car senses a smaller person or a less severe impact. Six airbags will be standard, including side and roof-rail airbags. Lucerne will also offer a DVD navigation system.
Buick styling cues adorning the conservative Lucerne include chrome-accented portholes on either front quarter panel, chrome-tipped exhaust, and the vertical Buick grille. Lucerne will be offered in three trim levels, with one intended to take up the LeSabre place and an uplevel version hoping to satisfy would-be Park Avenue buyers, as the Park has fallen from production.
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