Word: suv
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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American families own more four-wheel-drive trucks than the Army--but unlike the Department of Defense, we stop buying at some point. Like now. After years of acceleration, sales of sport-utility vehicles, or SUVs, are slowing--and the turn surely signals tougher times ahead for U.S. carmakers. How soon? That's the key question. Overall, car sales are strong, and SUV sales remain fairly brisk. Just last week Ford reported record quarterly earnings (adjusted for one-time events...
...consumers the news couldn't be better. Carmakers tooled up for exponential SUV demand, and now find themselves so overstocked that they're laying on goodies to keep moving the metal. GM, which a few years ago sold virtually every Suburban at list price, has incentives on its Suburban, Yukon and Tahoe lines. Ford is offering low-rate financing on the Explorer, and DaimlerChrysler has lowered lease prices on its Jeep Grand Cherokee and is cutting production...
Here's my view: the auto cycle is nearing an end. SUV sales in the first half of the year were up 11.2%, vs. an increase of 18.4% in the first half of 1998, reports a research firm, Autodata. If the trend holds, this will mark the slowest growth for SUVs in years. That puts profits under pressure because it takes three sedans to generate the profit of one SUV...
...same assembly line--in auto manufacturing, this is akin to walking on water. The Graz plant originally made the Jeep Grand Cherokee. But when the merger talks began last year, Mercedes car chief Jurgen Hubbert spotted a golden opportunity to expand production of the new M-class suv without paying the exorbitant costs of a new factory. In an odd twist, Mercedes saves more than $70 million by shipping components from its plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., back to Europe for assembly alongside the Jeep. "There was the distinct opinion on the Mercedes side that we would never build a Mercedes...
Whether out of genuine green-heartedness or just good p.r. instincts, Ford is putting its foot on the environmental accelerator. The world's second largest car company announced Monday it would one-up governmental regulations and voluntarily reduce light-truck and SUV emissions beyond what President Clinton and the EPA require. They'll even eat the $100-per-vehicle cost themselves, allowing soccer moms and rappers everywhere to continue to tower over the road without poisoning the air any more than the rest...