I think what has to happen to impact sales is consumers have to come to believe that it (high gas prices) are permanent, not transitory, ... Buying a vehicle is a long-term commitment -- it's not easy to get out of it tomorrow. Gas prices have spiked in some regions in recent years and we haven't seen any significant impact on sales. |
I would say that February sales are fairly close to our expectation. |
If our market share in this category holds up, it would be the first year since 1993 that we have achieved an increase in car market share. |
If there was ever a time to try to make value pricing work, this is the time. If the economy was weak, and if you had a glut of old models, you wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of implementing value pricing. |
If you can sell 100,000-plus Fusions and 100,000 Five Hundreds, you are back in the car business, |
If you can sell 100,000-plus Fusions and 100,000 Five Hundreds, you are back in the car business. |
If you were just looking at it for the first time, you'd say, `Holy buckets! -- a 10 percent decline in truck sales. That is very un-Ford-like,' |
If you're going to be serious about trucks, and maybe after 15 years Toyota is really serious, you've got to be big in the commercial vehicle market. Something like half of our customers are using their vehicles to some extent in their business. |
In many ways, it's running counter to the way the market is taking us. |
In some cases, the full-size-truck buyer can sit on the sidelines and defer their purchase, We don't see this buyer leaving the market. |
In the New Orleans area, many of our dealers are out of business and have lost their entire inventory. |
It was a whole different dynamic then. There were fewer competitors, and the demand in this category was rising faster than the category was. |
It was the most profitable models that experienced largest increases, |
It's like the bigger they are, the harder they fall. |
January is definitely the exception, not the rule. |