Autoblog

The Camaro's on my Top 1 list.

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Very nice :)

Yeah...this question is a no-brainer really. The domestics have fantastic products on sale and coming up for sale, the prices are heavily discounted and gas is cheap. I have to have a Mazda since thats my brand but I'd love to have a GM as well if I had the money to pay for the extra insurance and monthly right now.

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I'd rather not take him up on his offer and just buy a used American car instead. The depreciation on a low-miles year-old domestic usually well outweighs his $1000, and on some models the depreciation is like 3x that of an import.
First year depreciation on the Ford Taurus Limited is $10000+...a boss would have to give me like $6000-7000 to even it up against depreciation on competing imports.
On less depreciating models $1000 might do the trick but the only I'm likely to buy would be a family sedan or something of the sort anyway, and most of the big 3's offerings are depreciation bombs.

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The Taurus is a poor example I will give you that. There are other Ford vehicles that hold their value a little better. I'm sure you could find some Tundras with awful residual value.

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@Jake B
Oh there are definitely imports that depreciate badly too. It's just that cars (especially family sedans) is a real weak spot of the Big 3, and being able to sell cars profitably is an important part of making them successful again. They've always (well, until recently anyway) been able to build profitable trucks, so the real work has to be done on their cars-it's not like Toyota's even going to bother plowing money into the Tundra at this point so the Big 3 should be able to keep a decent lead on trucks.
I'm just pointing out that one of the things making their car problems such a huge uphill battle is the depreciation on the bread and butter family sedans (and if possible, their profitable luxury sedans-the depreciation on Lincoln and Cadillac sedans compared to imported luxury sedans is just not acceptable). At this point even the Taurus was IDENTICAL to a Toyota it'd be harder to sell the Taurus just because the Toyota would have depreciation on it's side. A buyer might still buy domestic, but if they see that a one year old version of the domestic is half the price of the new one even if they bought domestic it's not going to be a new car. Then the unsold new car will end up going to a fleet where it's driven for a year then sold to another buyer for half price.
I have nothing against domestic cars at all-I'd be happy to drive a Ford Taurus, other than a slight overuse of hard plastics the car seems very competitive. It's very reliable (even gets recommended by Consumer Reports), has decent power, and gets good mileage for a car it's size. But if people can buy 2008's for $16K it doesn't matter how competitive the car is-who's going to buy the 2009 for $26K?
Obviously, fixing those UAW contracts is going to be a big help, since part of the reason why the Big 3 kept pumping out cars that didn't sell was because the labor was paid for whether or not they built the cars. But no matter how I look at things it's going to be a long and hard battle that's going to require serious self-control on the part of the Big 3 to not just beat the competition in quality, but to be able to beat them from a depreciation cost perspective too. It's honestly gotten to the embarrassing point where a Hyundai of all cars can have better depreciation than a lot of the sedans from the Big 3. They're going to have to use every last ounce of self-control and just refuse fleet sales AND push out improved new models (so they don't suffer from the oversupply of used versions)-and they have to be so greatly improved that they justify the cost over their OWN used models. Toyota isn't the biggest problem at this point, it's the huge glut of their own used cars really messing up the supply and demand on the new cars. I've talked to tons of people about buying a domestic car, and even if they believe that newer domestic cars aren't unreliable crap (many people had unfortunate past experiences) the depreciation means they mostly buy used domestics.
I've seen a bunch of comments where people here post about how they love their domestic cars-which they purchased USED at a huge discount, and how they're much better values than imports. But the problem is that the Big 3 need people to buy those cars new at full price. Buying a used domestic at a huge discount is easy-but if you really want to support them right now, you've gotten open up your wallet and bite the bullet on that huge depreciation. There's really no way to make it not hurt either-some people say if you drive it into the ground the depreciation isn't a problem-but the Big 3 need people to keep buying their new cars every couple of years to recover!
A lot of domestic fans here talk about how other people are traitors for buying Toyota's, but I don't see a lot of them putting their money where their mouth is and buying a brand new domestic at near full MSRP. Where are the people bragging about how they're helping the big 3 because they paid $31,000 for a Ford Taurus Limited? Or $29000 for a Chevy Malibu LTZ? They don't exist because nobody ever pays even close to full price for a domestic, and that's the problem right there.

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I'll take the grand! :)

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I do.

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1000? are you kidding? the fact that anyone thinks this is a good idea, is why they are failing. The only people that like american cars, are either really old, or into classic muscle cars. Old people don't buy many cars, and muscle car fans just don't have the numbers to support these brands.....unfortunately. :(

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dsharp, if that was the only demographic who bought American cars, there wouldn't be even a quarter of what was actually being sold month-to-month. Maybe if you actually went and sat in a few, you'd realize there are some very good cars out there.

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sat in them? I do. I want American cars to be better, but the fact is that the economy right now is just exaggerating what has been happening for a long time. the big three have been losing ground for years because American cars have generally not been as good as their competition, and that sucks! I know American cars are "quite good" but they are not "quite good" enough. And back to driving them, when you compare something like the GM allstar malibu to its competition, and you drive them all, I'm sorry, the malibu loses. It just doesn't feel as tight and as well built. I will give huge accolades to chevy for stepping up, but they aren't there yet. On the more luxury end, drive a 3-series and then a CTS, its much closer, the CTS is actually a bit nicer as far as comfort, but that 3 series smokes it on a curvy road.....my point is quite treating Americans as stupid "oh, $1000 bucks? ok I'll do it" idiots, and make better cars, we all know its in the cards, just do it!!!!

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thats funny, quite, excuse me on that :)

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exactly... the current model line up seems pretty good (maybe not from chrysler, but gm and ford definitely) that an incentive like this should be appealing.

really, if you are looking for a new car, the only reason you wouldn't consider this kind of offer is that would hate american cars, since now you cannot justify that imported cars are way better than domestics.

the american cars have finally caught up with the competition, tho it took them some time...

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I can honestly say that there is nothing that the Big3 have in the US market that I would buy right now. Even if the guy gave me $5000, there just isn't anything I'm interested in buying from these three.

Some small, fun, efficient, maybe a hatchback, well styled, etc.

Ya, I know, the Cobalt SS is a good buy, but I'm just not a fan of the looks of it. The Focus is a joke in the styling area, IMO. And Chrysler doesn't even offer ANYTHING near what I'd like.

As I've said many times, if Ford gave us the Focus RS, I'd be waiting to buy one, with or without this guy's $1000. But that just doesn't seem to be happening.

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I agree with ack154, there really is not an american car that I would really want enough to make $1000 worth it. I am not saying they don't make good cars, just nothing is attractive to me. The cars I would consider are to expensive that 1k would not put a dent in how much I would spend.

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I take that back, if he considers a mazda suppoeting domestic companies, then sign me up for a Mazda 3 hatch/wagon. (I will get over the goofy front for the 1k)

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