Word: suv
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Then a white parks-department SUV pulls up on an access road that winds alongside the river. Park Rangers are a notorious scourge of BASE jumpers, confiscating equipment and prosecuting for trespassing. Fillipino contemplates what would happen if the president of a BASE rig company were busted for an illegal jump. He foresees trouble with his bankers, he imagines the bad publicity his business would garner, and he says he's not going. There are some risks he is simply not willing to take...
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...
...want to wait for the next recession in the U.S.? Consider buying Japanese auto stocks now. The economy there is bad but not getting worse. And Toyota, Honda and Nissan are well positioned to benefit from the next hot vehicle--the car-SUV hybrid. The bell ringer in that group is the Lexus RX300, which has seen sales explode 150% this year. It's built on a car frame, not a truck frame, yet sits above traffic, satisfying the No. 1 reason consumers give for buying an SUV. Swapping U.S. for Japanese car stocks isn't unpatriotic...