| Nissan's pricepoint. Corvettes continue to sell sight-unseen. The issue is the dealership system. It hamstrings large manufacturers in today's marketplace. Dealerships simply do not align their practices with manufacturer strategy unless forced to do so. It is a vicious circle, the dealership says the Z doesnt sell so Nissan is not inclined to invest any money to grow sales, and the car doesnt sell because Nissan doesnt market/push the car effectively. Corvette and Porsche illustrate that both are wrong....hell the Z32 rollout illustrates the same. Nissan had a moment with the Z32 to capitalize on an opportunity in 1990-1991 and create a lasting cash cow for them and something that could permanently or at least long term influence their image to the consumer....they missed that opportunity and so Nissan is simply looked at as cheap Japanese cars (and whatever that image implies for the individual consumer) and so the dealer is only interested in moving volume. Not to mention the dealer's profits are deeply rooted in volume and not at all on margin. It is no wonder that vehicles that will never sell mass volume are going to get ignored. Why take up inventory space and incur the expenses of inventory-ing a Z that will not sell this month when that same inventory space can be used by an Altima/Rogue that will sell possibly 4 or 5 times this month and contribute 5x more to getting the dealership to its next sales threshold so the dealer receives more paybacks from Nissan NA on all the units sold this month? This is the built-to-sell model and it is obsolete in the networked information age. If it were not for government regulations, lobbied for by the NADA (or whoever on behalf of the dealership system), the car dealership with hundreds of cars sitting out on a lot would be as defunct as Blockbuster Video. You only need a few demo cars of each model line, and a knowledgeable EMPOWERED sales staff, to operate on the built-to-order model....which all the technology exists to do at great savings and efficiencies for the automakers. But, yet again, government getting involved in crap it has no business getting involved in, for reasons as pure as the wind driven snow as always, and the end result is another distorted market mess.
  "We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us."
--Mikhail Khodorkovsky "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
--Winston Churchill "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
--Benjamin Franklin "Government is not reason. It is not eloquent. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
"The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury."
--George Washington END THE FED
....learn why, in 42 minutes |
