GM says the car will likely and the company would like to begin production in Asia, since the market for extremely tiny cars in the United States is currently about the size of the Tata Nano. That's OK though, say GM officials, since two-thirds of car sales come from outside the United States anyway.
But could this car sell in the States? Not right now, I'd say. As our guest writer "Anal_yst" pointed out in this excellent post, the market share of small cars has done nothing but plummet in the last 30 years. Here's the graph he compiled:
On the other hand, I should point out that of the 10 most popular cars
bought through the Cash for Clunkers program, only one was an SUV.
Leading the C4C purchase pack was the diminutive Ford Focus, followed
by a raft of small, fuel-efficient cars produced in Asia. So it's
possible that we're bending that curve you see above. Either way, it's
nice to see GM trying to compete with emerging market auto makers,
because it tells me that somebody is serious about making GM an auto
company that's thinking globally and long term.
Unfortunately, the author is pretty wrong about what people bought with C4C. The gov't cooked the books by dividing up a lot of not so efficient vehicles into sub classes while not dividing up efficient ones.
Normally, vehicles are grouped by product name, like Ford F150, when reporting sales. The gov't. divided F150 into something like 5 different categories - reducing its reported numbers.
Edmunds.com researched it and came up with different results - which the gov't. did not dispute. Here were the results when normal sales reporting was done.
1 Ford Escape
2 Ford Focus
3 Jeep Patriot
4 Dodge Caliber
5 Ford F-150
6 Honda Civic
7 Chevrolet Silverado
8 Chevrolet Cobalt
9 Toyota Corolla
10 Ford Fusion
While more efficient cars did well, one cuv led the pack while pickups were #5 and 7.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/07/autos/cash_for_clunkers_sales/index.htm
As for a cheap little cars selling here, the author ignores gov't. vehicle requirements in the US that greatly increase auto cost. They include both environmental and safety regs. For instance, a modern VW Rabbit, wighs more than 1000 lbs more that one form 1975 and gets worse mileage. Most of that weigh is safety regs. Of course, that added weight, requires more horspower but also has to meet environmental rules - thus increasing the cost even more. Places like India and China have no requirements, thus can have lower vehicle costs.
Fascinating, thanks for the update on the C4C info. As you know, ed, I'm no fan of C4C and long thought the program probably would have stoked sales of SUVs rather than small cars. I'd like the govt to respond to the Edmunds data, and it sounds that while they didn't comment on the re-done numbers, they agreed merely that their methods might have led to some double-counting for some cars
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/07/autos/cash_for_clunkers_sales/index.htm
Sorta. It was actually undercounting of some models that boosted ratings for others.
Please also note that the current trend is toward so called CUVs - no frame like an SUV and lighter, but still rather high and large. They still get worse mileage, a lot in some cases, than regular cars. Like SUVs they are today's equivalent of the station wagon.
Of course, GM and Ford pickups are still huge in sales and did well under C4C when not diviided into s bunch of subcategories as the gov't. did.
The reason that Jeep Patriot and Dodge Caliber did well under CRC is because Chrysler was offering huge rebates on top of C4C rebates.
By the way we own an 06 Corolla and 08 Focus, both of which replaced other small cars. I'm not fan of gas guzzlers but I do get annoyed when the gov't cooks the books to fit their narrative, as with the C4C results.