By SN
Saturday January 16, 2010
Consumerist Jan. 16, 2010:
Back in the early ’00s, I saw Smart cars zipping around my neighborhood in France and thought, “Europe is so weird! They’d never sell those in the US.” But I was wrong. And the relative success of tiny cars like the Mini Cooper and, the Smart fortwo has led to the inevitable. The world’s cheapest car, India’s Tata Nano, is coming to America and Europe in about three years.
The Nano sells for about $2,500 USD in India, and will be more robust and safer before it shows up on the American and European markets. But it’ll still be tiny, and cheaper than a base-model Hyundai Accent, currently the cheapest new car on the US market.
FYI, the Hyundai Accent lists for about $13,000, so will they price the Tata Nano for less than 10 grand?
#39-pedro
Thanks for the help, I like your interpretation better.
Wow I really struck a note F-Series comments. You guys really are touchy. Trucks are great, if you actually do work with them. God knows I’ve gone through a couple in my life (construction, oil field servicing) but most of them are for show. For the 1/2 dozen or so times a year that I need I can rent it from Budget on a weekend rate of $20.
I have friends who are field geologists and ranchers down in Longview Alberta (beautiful country, worth the visit). They all special order stripped down trucks and vans because upholstered heated seats and makeup mirrors are a moronic waste of money.
BTW, you guys always lose when haul out the socialist shit. You can learn a thing or two from Cap’nKangaroo.
#42-qb-you guys always lose when haul out the socialist shit.
The socialist label works just fine. You can muddy the waters by using the liberal, democrat, or progressive label, but what’s the point?
Socialist is accurate and offers clarity to the problem and how to defeat it.
Dodd, that’s why you always lose. At least pedro brings game.
Lose? What “exactly” have I lost?
#42 “For the 1/2 dozen or so times a year that I need I can rent it from Budget on a weekend rate of $20.” Exactly.
I’m not saying anybody has to own a specific type of vehicle, but the move away from very large vehicles means their cost will rise substantially. That makes me happy. If you want a 9500 pound grocery getter you should pay through the nose for it.
#37 Everybody is impacted by large vehicles because the extra gas they use drives up the price. The American car companies insisted on overproducing these relics and ran themselves into bankruptcy. Where did that bailout money come from?
The story of huge American cars losing market share to nimble foreign cars is now decades old. No socialism necessary to explain this one.
The Tata definitely does seem to fall under the same sort of catagory as did the Yugo. I remember this car, and I loved how the seats appeard to be covered with old beach towels.
I do think the US manufacturers are not serving the smaller car market well. I see so many of the little Honda Fits (heh) and Toyota Yaris and the like these days. The only cars the domestics seem to have in this size range are in fact, imports as well. The same thing happened in the 70′s, and led to the rise of the Japanese automakers in the USA.
Ah, some things never change.
chris,
I think the west has lost it’s competitive edge because of waste, pure and simple. We’ve had it pretty easy for so long and productivity was relatively high so we could just coast hoping it would last forever. I work in IT now and I see the same thing, people complaining that “foreigners” are taking their jobs. I see people who got lazy and had it easy for too long.
There’s a gulf there now and we have a lot of companies and employees geared towards a factory mentality even in technology jobs. They are doomed. The big 3 automakers are competing against companies that don’t have a factory mentality and that’s why they are stuck.
I was lucky enough to get a tour the Toyota plant in San Antonio. The employees I talked to liked their jobs, worked hard, are treated and paid fairly, and felt they could make a difference at work. Years ago I did a short stint with GM – it was world of difference. A ingrained command and control structure.
It’s the “factory mentality” that’s easy to replace with low cost foreigners.
I think when people call someone a socialist it’s generally because they are on the wrong side of the divide and they don’t know how they got there. And they don’t know how to get out.
#48-qb-I think when people call someone a socialist it’s generally because they are on the wrong side of the divide.
Using your example the Toyota plant are pure capitalist. The US car company workers who expect things to be given to them if they work or not are socialist.
The US car companies should never have received a bailout and allowed to fail. From the ashes better car companies would have emerged.
Too big to fail is a destructive socialist policy.
#49 I can’t respond since I’ve been labeled an evil socialist.
qb, let me respond to #49 then.
Big Japanese companies are actually much closer to socialism than big American ones. Japanese government administrators “retire” to work as executives in export industries. The government helps fund, aka “pick winners”, specific product lines that are deemed most competitive. The network of parts suppliers for the car companies is designed to employ the maximum number of people. That is socialism.
It’s hard to generalize backward from the auto industry to American business as a whole, but I will try.
First is that American business doesn’t want to be guided by the market. Luxury SUVs are not for everybody. They are high margin, so that’s what the Big 3 wanted to make. Instead of making what the market would accept they jammed SUVs down the throats of consumers with the connivance of government(accelerated depreciation for big vehicles).
This is pretty much the same thing that happened in banking and insurance. A few high margin products(sub-prime and CDS) became the big profit center.
By chasing the highest profit products the firms became too brittle to adapt to a market change, high gas prices and credit contraction respectively.
Second, top management of US companies often don’t act in the interest of the shareholders. This is mostly about how compensation is structured, but it is also the CEO as hero myth. Every Leveraged Buy Out where management helps is essentially a theft of the company from shareholders. It generates huge fees for executives and PE investors, but only by hollowing out the company.
Bankruptcies are even more hinky. There is a growing trend of corps entering bankruptcy with large amounts of cash on hand. The reason, once again is to get more fees and screw the shareholders.
None of this is related to socialism. I see much closer commonalities to modern Russia. Government revenues and corporate assets are being systematically looted for the benefit of a small slice of the population.
The most dynamic parts of the world economy today are actually much closer to socialism. Screwy, isn’t it?
Just to be clear: F-series pick ups are made by Ford which did not go bankrupt and did not take bailout money.
chris,
Yup, Toyota has had a crap load of money thrown into it by the Japanese government. They’ve built a good company and they’ve had “socialist” help! Organizations of various types fail and succeed. Why not be good at government and private business? To consciously fail at one (as so many in the US seem to want) means you’re more likely to fail at the other.
Cap’nKangaroo, you are right. Ford does have game.
#51-chris-American business doesn’t want to be guided by the market. Luxury SUVs are not for everybody. They are high margin, so that’s what the Big 3 wanted to make.
Big 3 made them because people want big vehicles. This is why you see so many on the road. If they didn’t few would pay the inflated cost and just buy smaller.
The market was being served until government got on the “green kick” and began manipulating gas prices in an effort to force people into smaller cars.
#54 Each of the big 3 were producing thousands of vehicles in excess of demand before the ’08 gas price spike. They chose to make the number of cars and type that, if sold, would allow rosy financial predictions. It didn’t work out like that.
I haven’t heard anyone blame the government’s secret green agenda(remember Bush was still in)for the run up in oil. I don’t think it’s supportable. My read is that investment banks were getting crushed by bad mortgage backed debt, and they squeezed the commodity markets too hard to try and get back on top.