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Succeeding Suzuki, Chinese Cadillacs and ton-up Teslas…here’s what you missed.
- Suzuki’s 84-year-old CEO Osamu Suzuki is sticking around for another year, but many are worried about his lack of a succession plan. At the same time, Suzuki has been reaping record profits.
- What do Acura and Cadillac have in common? Both are banking on China for increased growth. GM is planning to build more models locally in an effort to increase Chinese Caddy sales by 40 percent.
- Brabus will build the all-new Mercedes S-Class Pullman. The Pullman is expected to cost $1-million and feature armor plating and a limo-style passenger compartment. Despots, place your deposits now.
- A stolen Tesla that split in half after a crash will be studied by the auto maker.
- Labor unrest in South Africa is disrupting automobile production in the country, specifically for GM and BMW.
6 Comments on “While You Were Sleeping: July 7th, 2014...”
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I really have no basis for thinking this as I have no real understanding of the Chinese economy, but part of me thinks that investing in luxury cars there will be akin to investing in body-on-frame SUVs in America in the early 2000s.
Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Do GM, Ford, or Toyota do these types of investigations regularly? With so many more cars on the road I would think it would be more difficult and the crashes a more common occurrence.
What you need to know in order to put this in perspective is that the top 20% of Chinese consumers is bigger than 100% of American consumers.
That means that China has a USA full of rich people (by Chinese standards), to our a USA full of people across the economic spectrum. Even I’d the rich Chinese aren’t all that rich by American standards, their top 20% probably looks a lot like the whole US market in terms of buying power.
Income inequality in China is dramatic, of course, but if you’re selling luxury goods in China, you can just ignore the majority of people who are just thrilled to have upgraded from a dirt floor home to one with a real floor and a modern stove. Selling to the majority of Chinese would be a much harder problem for an American or Japanese company.
A USA-sized population of rich people (by Chinese standards) is a pretty attractive target market. The sheer size of the Chinese population makes it so, despite the income inequality.
It’s about time we got a new Sonderklasse Pullman. The old ones were getting stale. I hope the new one has frikin’ lasers.
Wouldn’t the Chinese luxury car market prefer long wheelbase Cadillac sedans instead of a coupe?
An Art and Science design Cadillac has more curves than Chinese model.
Ouch dude, it’s gonna take a whole jar of salve to treat that burn.