djt81185

Thats a new one...businesses in business to lose money...Bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.

Red2.4SS/SC

pontiac has plenty of other cars that can make them the money they need to keep producing , i sure do see alot of grand prixs and grand ams same with G5's and G6's trust me pontiac sells enough they just wanted to give something back to real enthusiasts

have you ever seen a gto commercial or GTO advertisements probably not pontiac didnt market the car , but people who have followed pontiac sure knew about it

PpAzZ1101

I seriously cannot believe you guys are arguing that Pontiac had no intention of making money off of the GTO. I'm pretty sure you lost almost all credibility in my book for that one.

djt81185

Your missing the point...no business (especially one that is already losing money) is going to green a light a product that they know they will lose money on. Especially to satisfy a niche market. Economics 101... In the standard gto price where was enough margin to make a profit. After rebates caused my sluggish sales...very little to none to negative even.

Red2.4SS/SC

im sure pontiac WANTED to make money but so did microsoft on the 360 its the same thing , but is a company going to rely ALL their trust in the 360 NO , thats why they have windows and other **** , same with pontiac , i mean sure they thought it was gonna make some money , but if it didnt they knew they could make money on other cars to even out

what im saying is pontiac didnt release the GTO to save the company

djt81185

LOL u really need to know what ur talking about before u post

http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...122_410710.htm

Microsoft sells it at a loss because it makes it back + thru sales of accesories, licensing fees, live, etc.

**** wirelss controllers are 40, wireless adapter is 100, rechargable batteries, Points, etc. The money is in the accessories...without a xbox u cant sell accessories. Sell an xbox at a loss, mark up accessories...profit. Also costs come down as production continues. Many Car OEMs negotiate price cuts yearly in their supplier contracts. As a result cost to produce goes down as well.

Im not going to teach you economics. They have a plan on controlled losses offset by accessory sales.

Your method of making something when u cant make a profit even when u want to is ridiculous. Without a profit plan it aint getting greenlighted. And i highly doubt gm was planning on making extra profit thru keychain, mugs, mousepads, and pens with GTO stamped on em....


Gm is a company already struggling to make a profit. They are not gonna cut into POSSIBLE profits with a car they probably wont make money on designed for a niche market with statistically higher warranty costs due to "vehicle abuse"

Red2.4SS/SC

you dont understand anything arguing with you is worthless

MICROSOFT JUST SPENT 600 MILLION DOLLARS ON WARRANTY WORK ALONE

trust me ive taken economics , ill turn a penny to a twenty dont worry about me

shabodah

Chevy looses money on every base Cobalt sold, Pontiac looses money on every base model Solstice. It's not the loss on those vehicles they worry about, those get the customer in the door to buy other more profitable vehicles. Same type of advertising incentive as the "Free Gallon of Milk with a $20 purchase" that the grocery stores do.

Anyone remember the Buick Reatta? GM lost $23k for each vehicle sold. No ****.

djt81185

http://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20070710.html

Actually..it is allotted at 1.1billion

It is an unexpected cost...They budgeted a warranty amount and it overshot its boundary. They didnt know it was coming when they released it.

They didnt know it was going to fail at the time..if they did they would fixed it. If GM knew the gto was gonna fail...they wouldnt have released it. They didnt know consumers wouldnt be excited about the gto when they released it.

Funny still since they will still turn 4.5 billion in profit on 360 this yr...read the article.

You fail economics...and researching...and general arguements

PpAzZ1101

DJT already answered you on this one...

Microsoft makes their money on accessories, games, and subscriptions (Xbox Live). It was the same way with the original Xbox. Eventually, they actually started making profit on the hardware itself. But they view the Xbox business as a long term investment. They know they're going to make money on it. They're not just selling Xboxes at a loss just to give something back to video game lovers.

Seriously... do your research.

LittleMT

Plenty of GTO commercials have come out, I have seen several..

Evolvr2006

Off of MSN Auto's--




Yeah, GM was definitely not trying to sell as many as they could. They definitely didn't fall far short of their goals.


I do like the GTO. I know I've already said that, but it's a nice car. But before people go around talking about appealing, maybe they should not be driving a car that is, at the most, an underground sensation. A lot of people's reactions I've seen in reference to the GTO's notoriety is how similar it looks to a Grand Prix.....and that's about it. This same concept seems to be reinforced by it's poor sales.

Of course, a lot of people make ignorant comments about things when they are biased.

SK360

these people also need **** slapped.... oh the original gto did not look like the le man's and tempest's they were based off of? not that our cars have ANYTHING to do with a grand prix

and... it looks like a pontiac to me

Psykostevo

Well had they hoped to sell a lot of them I think they would have made more than 18k a year. They set production numbers and made them, they were not made on a supply/demand basis. Obviously they hoped to sell all the ones they made.

Take the Solstice for example, They made 6,000 for the first year..........once again, not intended to make much profit.

They really couldn't make more than they did. The Holden plant that made them in Elizabethtown only had the capacity to produce what they did. If 100,000 people wanted to buy GTOs you would have just seen dealers asking for markup since the supply was limited, and they trickled onto lots and stayed there.

Also, from a customer standpoint, most expect a great discount on a car when they buy one. GM left the dealers about $1,300 in profit on the GTO, so there was not much wiggle room. Some potential buyers lost interest due to them trying to hold sticker on the car, or UAing the trade to add profit. The GTO was a very expensive car to produce and get to the US, and elsewhere sells for ~$20,000 more (with a few more options that the GTO never had). When you compare it to a car like the Corvette with ~$8,000 in profit, and a cobalt ~$900 in profit, the GTO was definitely overpriced in relation to its production cost (though I know that has no relevance to market value)

xravenwingsx

that's a sweet car, sounds badass--what kind of cams? i'd give my left nut for an orange GTO. I rock one of those half the time in Forza2.

Psykostevo

I also happen to love the fact how the GTO is 2 years out of production and you can still go buy a new one at the dealer. It's sad but actually funny to me, and I am a GTO owner.

If you think GTO's are hard to sell, try selling a Buick Terraza! LOL! (Anyone who tried knows what I am talking about, the rest of you are going "WTF is a Terraza")

Ah-men!

PpAzZ1101

They hoped to sell the ones they made.... but they didn't. What's your point?




Just because there were only 6000 doesn't mean they didn't make the car to make profit. They made profit on the Solstice/Sky. Look at the dealer markup that was charged for them. If they didn't want to make profit on them, why would they mark them up???




I don't think you can argue that. "If" this and "if" that... it's a hypothetical situation. Who knows what GM would've done if they were in higher demand. You can't honestly claim to know what WOULD or WOULD NOT have happened IF the car sold more successfuly.




The 2006 GTO had an MSRP of $32295 while they were invoiced at $29550. That accounts for $2745 profit on each car if sold at MSRP. Additionally... there was a $700 destination charge on top of that... and FURTHERMORE... dealer holdback was just about $970 on the GTO. So without counting destination charge, a GTO sold at MSRP netted $3715 profit for the dealership alone (and let's not forget that a dealership usually tries to make money off of any possible trade in as well... but since that applies to any car sale, we won't consider that profit in this example deal). GM takes about $28580 for each GTO. I'm not sure of the production cost per each GTO... so I can't say how much GM made on each GTO... but I can at least assure you that GTO sales at MSRP made a nice chunk of change for the dealerships.

Not in it for profit?

thedak

Just one big one

Psykostevo

When you take the $2800 in revenue that the dealer makes as "profit", it then gets split up. ~25% to the salesman ~20% to the manager, and that leaves you with ~$1,500 in PROFIT (not counting other costs associated with the sale like clerks and finance) So if they sell at MSRP there is only a little for the dealer. Most did not sell at MSRP at the dealer.

You CAN speculate "IF" from a benchmarking perspective taking Pontiac as their own example. They made 6,000 solstice and had demand for over a hundred thousand of them, yet they did not increase production for that model year. The following year they doubled production to 12,000 to meet demand. The GTO was planned on 18k in production the first year, and it went into production late. The demand for the car was not strong, as a result they sold about 14,000 of them. The following '05 production year Production costs increased slightly, but MSRP remained basically the same, the '05 was a shortened production year due to the late production of '04 models, and the scheduled production of '06 models. They made less '05's as a result and demand fell when the mustang was released. I think they made about 13,000 '05s.

From my experience selling GTO's, the customers were few and far between, and the price was out of the range of our typical Pontiac Customer. I think had they tried to advertise to vaginas they may have sold more, but I don't think the GTO was ever a womans car like the Mustang has always been.



As for the 6,000 solstice, let's say that they made $2,000 profit on each one that's still only 12,000,000 profit in a billion dollar company. The money that dealers made as markup stayed at the dealership and Pontiac got none of. In general Pontiac couldn't sell a bottle of water to a man dying of thirst, they'd probably even have to ask permission to pour it on him for free.

PpAzZ1101

And just how much does a dealer make on any other "normal" deal then if $2800 from the sale alone is low? That's damn good by some standards.

djt81185

LOL the gto arguements are so flawed...

The solstice plant makes the solstice, sky, and the opel version...total plant output vs capacity will tell the story. Everytime i checked gm was running 3 shifts at the plant to meet demand...they were NOT limiting output. They were cranking em out as fast as they could to get money...Gm doesnt get money from dealer markups or otherwise. Dealer pays invoice to gm...gm refunds any incentives or kickbacks and whats left - cost of car is profit.

Every car produced on paper will make a profit otherwise it wont see production. Though too much production will flood market, increase inventory costs, and overal reduce profitibility

FNFAST

Someone should just make an LS2 powered cobalt with AWD...then maybe we could all get along

Psykostevo

Isn't Victory Red doing that?!! ..........................LOL! I heard he was going to name his car "The Peacemaker" just so we can stop arguing like girls.

Evolvr2006

http://ultimategto.com/monaro05.htm


Check out that page. Hit control+F and search the word "grand". See how many different times they were compared in appearance.

I'm sure if I search, I can find a bunch more people saying the exact same thing.

They should have kept the Monaro exterior styling IMO.

SK360

ok, maybe next time post something that has some RELEVANCE to what i had said...

i said... the car shares NOTHING with a grand prix except a pontiac badge, i dont care what user comments on a website say.

as i said, it fit right in with pontiac styling, and looks like a modern pontiac.

and offtopic.... finally got a videos with the headers basically same exhaust setup as the dak, except he has an X Pipe and a big cam... i still have stock cam for now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vj0r7mX-PI