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312 Posts
This plant made Beretta/Corsica back in the day and most recently made the Saturn L series sedan. The capacity must be 200,000 car/year or maybe more. (GM only wishes that they could have sold 200K worth of L's)
To set this size of a plant aside to make 20K Solstice/20K Sky/20K Opel(60K total) seems odd. Especially since the price point of these cars will be sub $25K.
Must be a contract thing? Could be a state thing? Could be a union thing?
Quick look at the numbers...60,000 cars/year @ $3,000 each (GM's profit/car?)= $180MM in profit/year. Not bad. I wonder what the investment costs were? How about 1 Billion...so pay back is roughly 6 years...that's when they break even. Sounds like a losing proposition to me...unless they get more cars on the Kappa platform...Camaro? A Cadillac? A Buick? Just like the Sigma, I'm sure the wheel base and track can be increased to accomodate larger cars. This had to be designed into the car.
What about quality? The same people that put together the L-series (with door gaps the size of my finger (yes, likely related to the plastic panels). How can they adjust their thinking to put together this car with a fraction of the door gaps of the L or even the Chevy Beretta/Corsica
How many Miata's sell per year? Will small convertibles swamp the market and result in only 10K Solstices/10K Sky/10K Opel selling per year? Then will GM cancel the cars?
Many things to ponder while we wait for our cars...
RadRiv
To set this size of a plant aside to make 20K Solstice/20K Sky/20K Opel(60K total) seems odd. Especially since the price point of these cars will be sub $25K.
Must be a contract thing? Could be a state thing? Could be a union thing?
Quick look at the numbers...60,000 cars/year @ $3,000 each (GM's profit/car?)= $180MM in profit/year. Not bad. I wonder what the investment costs were? How about 1 Billion...so pay back is roughly 6 years...that's when they break even. Sounds like a losing proposition to me...unless they get more cars on the Kappa platform...Camaro? A Cadillac? A Buick? Just like the Sigma, I'm sure the wheel base and track can be increased to accomodate larger cars. This had to be designed into the car.
What about quality? The same people that put together the L-series (with door gaps the size of my finger (yes, likely related to the plastic panels). How can they adjust their thinking to put together this car with a fraction of the door gaps of the L or even the Chevy Beretta/Corsica
How many Miata's sell per year? Will small convertibles swamp the market and result in only 10K Solstices/10K Sky/10K Opel selling per year? Then will GM cancel the cars?
Many things to ponder while we wait for our cars...
RadRiv