When I talk about the pandemic I’m usually focused on the sudden increase in car prices due to the shortage of chips and other supply-related disruptions. A secondary outcome of limited supply and decreased incentives was a move away from leases, both proportionally and overall. Because leases mature at a three-year delay, the industry is about to fly off this lease renewal cliff Thelma & Louise-style.
Why do you care? If you’re a car dealer, it matters because you’re about to lose potential returning customers. If you’re an automaker, it means a potential decrease in sales. If you’re a customer about to return a lease, you’re suddenly in an excellent position. If you’re a used car buyer, it’s probably not great news.
The Morning Dump today is all about looking at both sides.
Is Volkswagen’s “Scout” sub-brand really a sub-brand, or a different, unrelated company? That’ll be important for dealers. Is the Honda Prologue competitive with the Chevy Equinox EV or the Chevy Blazer EV? That’ll matter, too. And, finally, are Honda and Nissan going to work because they’re too similar or not work because they’re too different?
I know we’re in the immediate post-holiday season, and I hope you and/or your family are having a wonderful time together. And if some of your family is being a pain-in-the-boot, I hope you’re able to sneak out and read/debate this TMD.
The Lease Renewal Cliff Cometh
Leasing is a key part of the car-buying ecosystem that often gets overlooked. When you finance a car, especially now, you’re more likely to get a long loan, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to return it to a dealer when you’re done. As a customer, other than for service, your car is out of the ecosystem for as long as seven years (typically the max financing term). Leases, though, generate both repeat customers and relatively nice cars for dealers to sell as nicer “certified pre-owned” cars.
The availability of leases fluctuates as buying becomes more attractive and inventory expands/contracts. That’s normal. What’s abnormal is what happened during the pandemic. As seen in the graphic above from Cox Automotive, leases as a total share of car sales dropped from around 30% to less than 20%. This was an even bigger deal than usual.
Why? There were fewer cars produced due to, mostly, chip shortages. A lower percentage of lower production gets you a way smaller number.
How did this happen? A few reasons. Car dealers and companies can use attractive leases and discounts in order to move cars that there are too many of or wouldn’t sell at regular prices. They do this via incentive spend. There was a net increase in lease pricing during 2019-2022 due to a lack of help from automakers. High prices and low interest rates meant that many consumers were faced with the choice of either spending a lot of money on a lease or spending the same (or less) to outright own a car.
According to S&P Global Mobility, this will result in the market losing nearly a million lease returns in just the first half of 2025! That’s a lot of cars. This will impact premium automakers like BMW and Audi the most:
The premium market will take the hardest hit, with an expected 46% drop in lease returns. We expect mainstream segments to experience a decline of 39%. Most major vehicle brands will see decreases, but the range is wide—from a modest 11% drop to a staggering 81% reduction in lease returns for some major players.
S&P didn’t single out a specific automaker for worst hit. If I had to put all the candy in my Christmas stocking on the line, I’d put those DOTS on Maserati.
This is not great for dealers and car companies. There are potentially a million customers and their cars not coming back in the first six months of the year. Used car inventory is flat at the end of the year, per Cox Automotive, so that situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. With new car inventory remaining high for many brands, the incentive spigot is going to have to stay on at least through the summer.
For people who do have leases to return or are looking for a new lease, this is more good news. Assuming you qualify for competitive financing, there are going to be great deals to be had. Via Reddit, there’s a BMW dealer in Spokane trying to make that year-end quota by offering three months of free lease payments. More of this is coming. If you are sitting on a maturing lease, definitely shop around and see what kind of deal you can get. Hell, if you want an EV they might just give it to you.
If you are a person who normally stalks the CPO/used car market for recently returned, highly-depreciated luxury leases it’s going to be tougher. In general, I think the used car market is going to be rough in 2025 due to the inventory restrictions and higher incentives for new cars.
It’ll be something I’ll watch as the year begins.
Is Scout A VW Brand Or Not?
Tesla pushed hard in its formative years to allow direct-to-consumer sales over the loud complaints of dealers and dealership lobbying groups. The resulting detente, for most of the country, is that companies can sell cars directly to consumers if they aren’t competing with their own dealers.
These franchise laws get some negative attention, but today is all about seeing both sides, so let’s see both sides. Starting almost any business requires a ton of capital to build the buildings, hire the people, et cetera. If a person buys a franchise to a car dealership, a burger chain, or whatever, they should have some protection for their investment, which is to say nothing of protecting their employees.
Carmakers are the odd-man-out here, as they cannot sell directly to consumers and have had to find new ways to reach customers (car subscriptions, Hyundai’s deal with Amazon, et cetera). Volkswagen’s latest plan was to launch Scout without dealers.
Volkswag — aherm, Scout — said during its presentation last week: “If an OEM could start over again, what would they do?” One answer apparently involves selling cars directly to consumers using an app as well as brick-and-mortar locations spread around the country. These locations will not be dealerships, but rather studios and workshops, meant to display vehicles and allow for service. The actual purchase of the vehicle is to be done entirely digitally and is meant to be as easy as “ordering a T-Shirt on Amazon.”
You know who doesn’t like this? Volkswagen dealers. They’re threatening to sue, again, and the issue in California comes down to whether or not Scout is a Volkswagen company or not because of a recently passed amendment to the law according to Automotive News:
The amendment, approved by the California’s legislature and signed into law, took affect Jan. 1 2024. It bars Scout, or any new brand from an automaker with an existing dealership network in California, from direct to consumer sales. However, VW could sell Scout vehicles in California if the automaker decided to retail them through an existing VW brand, Audi, Porsche, Bentley or Lamborghini dealership.
Under the amendment, VW Group could also create a new franchise network for Scout if the automaker wanted to keep the new brand distinct from other VW Group brand dealerships.
Scout, for its part, claims to not be a part of Volkswagen:
Scout Motors, in a statement, said it has sole oversight for engineering, design, and manufacturing of Scout brand vehicles.
“The proprietary vehicle design and first-of-its-kind electric platform created for Scout vehicles have never been utilized in any other vehicle nor sold by any other automotive brand,” the company said Dec. 23. “Just as utilizing franchised dealers may be appropriate for some brands and their customers, utilizing a direct sales model best supports our customers and our strategic customer-first vision.”
California is probably the key market for Scout, so my guess is either Volkswagen is going to sue for peace or this is going to the courts.
Is The Honda Prologue Going To Outsell The Equinox EV In Q4?
I know I keep harping on this, and I’ll probably be able to answer this question in like two weeks, but I am very curious to see if the best-selling Ultium platformed vehicle in Q4 is going to be the Equinox EV or the Prologue EV. This is important! Maybe.
Based on registrations in October, Chevy sold 12 more Equinox EVs than Honda sold Prologues, with the Ioniq 5 (which is built on an unrelated platform) just ahead of them both in sales. That was with S&P’s October data. According to Cox Automotive/KBB’s November data, Honda shot ahead of both of them last month:
In November, new EV sales reached 116,072 units, marking a 10.0% increase month over month and a 13.6% increase year over year. This was the second-highest volume for the month this year, achieving an 8.5% market share. The Tesla Model Y and Model 3 held the top spots for volume, with the Honda Prologue coming in at number three. Incentives continue to help drive sales, reaching a year-high of 14.9% of the average transaction price.
Where’s the debate here? The Equinox EV, Prologue, and Blazer EV are closely related cars in that all share the same 85 kWh Ultium battery pack. Technically, the more expensive Prologue and Blazer EV are supposed to be directly competitive, with the Equinox EV representing a cheaper entry point. If you accept that, then the Blazer EV and Prologue are directly competitive and therefore the Honda is spanking the Chevy.
However, the cars are so similar that perhaps it’s better to compare the Equinox EV and Prologue? I leave this question with you and look forward to every car news writer using the same “The best-selling GM electric car was a Honda” posts in a couple of weeks.
Are Honda/Nissan Too Similar Or Just Similar Enough?
I am not going to write about it every time Carlos Ghosn talks trash about the Honda-Nissan deal. That’s a promise. Well, not a promise, but an ideal I aspire to. Is “ideal” too strong? It’s an idea I had, briefly, and am now regretting. I take it back. I’m going to write about it every time ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn talks about the deal because he’s funny and had to escape Japan in a box, meaning he has an axe the size and strength of a GT-R to grind with his ex-bosses.
Ghosn spoke with the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan this week (remotely, for obvious reasons) and Hans Greimel was there to share many entertaining moments from this chat, including:
“I can tell you, the Patrol of Nissan is a great car. I’m still using it,” Ghosn said during a December 23 online news conference hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
When asked what cars he might recommend today, Ghosn added the backhanded compliment: “By the way, you can have a great product without having a great company.”
He’s talking about the car we call the Armada/QX80 over here and the “I’m still using it” line is great because Nissan gave Ghosn a bunch of stuff he refuses to give back to the company.
It seems like Ghosn’s main issue with the Honda-Nissan-Mitsubishi deal is that there are too many similarities between the companies so, while it’s convenient for the Japanese government to prevent Foxconn from getting ahold of one of its automakers, this won’t likely result in a good deal:
“They are strong in the same fields. They are weak in the same fields,” Ghosn said. “There is duplication everywhere. So industrially, for me, it does not make sense.”
[…]
Honda, for starters, has no track record of working well with capital partners, Ghosn noted. Nissan management, he continued, doesn’t have the talent to fix things themselves.
“They are surrendering in a certain way, in panic mode, by saying, ‘Please help us,’” Ghosn said.
He’s not wrong, I suppose, but companies with similar footprints try to merge all the time (see Kroger/Albertsons). This might be a bad deal for both companies, but it’s impossible to say. At this point, assuming the merger does go through, it’s possible the two organizations actually work well together and build something that’s stronger and more competitive.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I love the stripped-down nature of the NPR Music Tiny Desk series, especially when the series features someone who isn’t normally an acoustic act. The video above is pop breakout Sabrina Carpenter doing the songs with strings and, most notably, a British guy playing a pedal steel guitar. It sounds way more country than pop. More Dolly Parton than Madonna. I dig it.
The Big Question
What’s the best thing you got (or got yourself) this holiday?
I haven’t seen many of them and I don’t think it was all that stripped down by Tiny Desk standards and norms, but one of my favorite performances like that of any kind was when They Might Be Giants covered “Bills, Bills, Bills”, which I had never heard before, either the original by Destiny’s Child or covered by anyone else. It reminded me to get out of my superannuated hipster-ish musical bubble.
Shakti with John McLaughlin tore it up on tiny desk not long ago. John is ~81 and Zakir not much younger, and they burned that little room down.
The impending used car shortage may explain why Carmax offered me $13,000 for my 2016 Mazda CX-5. The low mileage may have helped.
HondaNissan = DaimlerChrysler, and will go just about as well.
Mitsubishi just needs to give up on cars and go back to just building all the myriad things it’s actually good at.
Yes. There is no such thing as a merger. This was told to me decades ago by a partner at Silver Lake Partners.
Honda is shackled primarily to North America but doesn’t have BoF trucks – it has bugger all presence elsewhere outside east Asia. Nissan is popular in Latin America, India and the Middle East, has a full size BoF truck platform and has demonstrated capacity for EV. Mitsubishi is doing well in Asia and Oceania and, to some extent, Europe whilst also having production costs and efficiencies that Honda (especially) and Nissan aspire to. Mitsubishi also has a mid size BoF truck platform that it codeveloped with Nissan.
Whilst Nissan and Mitsubishi are financially weak and labor under questionable governance, they have the industrial capacity and technical knowledge of efficient production at scale & volume which Honda would kill itself trying to develop on it own. Such capacity with budget constraints will be necessary in BRIC markets going forward as these markets are where the growth is likely to be.
So started to watch the Sabrina video.
With the captions turned on.
OMG…
What is my biggest complaint about the Christmas Season?
Not enough Christmas Specials from the Country music industry…
I listened to George Strait’s 1986 Christmas album the other day and good luck to any of the current popular acts to top that. Although “Hag’s Christmas” is pretty good too.
I’m surprised that GM is having success with the Blazer EV when it’s both completely unrelated to the ICE Blazer and I haven’t seen a single ad for it. Meanwhile Honda pops up at least twice a day for me.
Honda will simply look at Nissan and ask, “what do you make that is better than what we make?”
Nissan better have some answers, else Honda simply takes over the Nissan plants and makes more of their own vehicles.
Might be a good time to look into the future bloated inventory. Too bad it’s Audi and BMW, though. Need a daily EV for wife that she’ll approve of, then I take over her daily hybrid, while my old car is used for medicinal purposes and large-item picks-up.
Also related to pandemic-era high prices: a lot of people that were in a lease, simply bought it out since the lease end purchase price was so low relative to the market. And with that difference vs. the trade in values at the time – that was when basically every automaker’s financial arm scrambled to make it so you had to buy the lease out first, rather than trade it in wherever you wanted, because it was easy to sell it to someone like Carvana and pocket the difference.
Plus for the cars that were produced, the shortages meant it was a gamble on what features you would actually have on a new car. Why wait, spend way more, and maybe not even get all the same equipment and features you already had on your perfectly fine current car?
This is a very good point I neglected to make. You’re right, if 2022 came around and you had a pre-negotiated buyout price it’s possible your car was worth way more than that amount.
This is exactly the scenario that my sister encountered in 2021. She bought out her lease on a Mazda Cx-5, and came out way ahead. Especially at that point in time, there were virtually no Mazdas on the lots for her to trade into.
Yup, my mom and grandfather as well. The buyout price for her Honda was like 50% what similar mileage 2017 Fits were going for. It would have been insanity to do anything else at that point in time.
Both sad and glad yesterday is over. I’m tired, and want to just relax a few days. But, more dental work tomorrow. UGH.
Frankly, I’m not happy about the Honda/Nissan merge. I get it, technically, and financially. I get they want to keep it Japanese. I just don’t and haven’t liked Nissan for a long time.
To me, it will taint Honda more than help Honda. But, it also depends. I have LOVED Honda for my whole life (though I don’t own one now). I can’t imagine Honda won’t still be Honda and do Honda stuff after a merger. They are just too Honda to not do that. It’s this that has me realistically optimistic about what they will do if they merge.
I hope Honda runs off on Nissan, I think it would push Nissan towards their previous self.
That said, I purchased my first Honda recently, an 09 Civic Si, and I don’t understand where they get their reputation from. It is one of the lower quality cars I’ve been involved with. It makes my 34 year old Jeep and 90s BMWs look like swiss watches for quality. The positives of the Honda are it has a sweetheart of a drive train, and seats are quite comfortable.
I wish these automakers luck, they have lots of tools at their disposal but they need some winners for new products like what Ford has been able to do over the last five years.
I have NEVER understood the Honda worship. Flimsy tin boxes that rusted away in a nanosecond back in the day in New England, and while not as rusty, today they just seem ugly and boring, or the vaguely interesting ones like the Si are stupid expensive and to me just not on the same page as a GTI while still being so overwrought. There was a time in the late 80s into the 90s that they made some good looking cars, but they still felt like they were made out of tinfoil.
Of course, having different products for different markets and segments is the perfect solution, that’s why Daimler Chrysler worked so well… oh… wait…
Picked up a new project car on Christmas Eve! For $2800 I drove home a 2010 VW GTi in remarkably nice condition complete with a new battery and a new set of Michelin Pilot Sports. The big catch is the thing runs like a pooch right now because it apparently had a Cobb tune, but is now missing the tuner. It did make the 50 miles back to my place without a hiccup though.
Uhh… yeah, learning experiences ahead. Oh well, with a near-mint interior, no rust, and only a ding or two on the body, the car itself was too clean to pass on at that price. I’m hoping to just take it back to it’s factory state and use it for awhile as a daily. Meanwhile, my daughter is excited we have our first car with a turbo.
Quite the story! Please keep us abreast.
Will do! It’s probably the sketchiest purchase I’ve made since buying a 2000 Jaguar XK8 convertible about a year and a half ago. From the TGTBT price to the Bosnian-seller’s fake-looking FB profile, to the Cobb-tune story, there were a whole sleigh-full of red flags surrounding the purchase. But, at the end of the evening I couldn’t resist parting with 28 of my hundred-dollar bills in exchange for a pretty sweet-looking GTi out in my garage.
The seller was pleasant to talk to in person – he claimed he was moving, mentioned buying an M5, and seemed surprised that his phone “blew up” after posting it for sale. He didn’t even mention the fresh battery – I noticed that after arriving home. My overall impression was that money wasn’t quite as big of a deal in his world as it is for a good number of the rest of us.
> my daughter is excited we have our first car with a turbo.
Your daughter is cool.
This week was kind of a blur. I went to Israel on business for a day and a half. It turned into an adventure that would have made a great “will dad get home for Christmas” movie if I wasn’t Jewish. That’s a whole other story.
Of interest here: I struck up a conversation with my cab driver about cars in Israel and it got really interesting. Their market has been flooded with a lot of Chinese EVs and range-extending hybrids. Between government incentives and the low cost of the Chinese cars… plus Israel’s relative small size and lack of suburbs… meant that EVs and range-extended hybrids were widely adopted very quickly.
Israel also leans heavily into tech so there’s plenty of charging infrastructure. The results actually did leave the government scrambling for a replacement for their very high gas tax – a tax that basically makes them pay the equivalent of $7.50 a gallon for gas right now. Now they’re trying to figure out how to replace that tax revenue. Will be interesting to watch if they’re able to impose a mileage tax.
I’ve tried to do the math multiple times, and I can never get a lease to financially look like “a great deal.” It’s probably because I’m typically looking at non-luxury cars. If you swap a luxury car every 3 years, I guess that might shake out
Same here. It’s like giving someone $3000 before you rent their car.
Aside from the deals I see on Lease Hackr where people are getting heavily subsidized deals on cars no one wants, I don’t usually see it either. But hey, when they’ve had Buick Encores for like $150/month, it is not a bad deal for a car with a warranty if you just want four wheels to get around.
Also some of the EVs and PHEVs get tax credits only if they are leased, so it seems the move is to get a lease and then just buy it out so you get the tax credit discount.
As much as I think leases are “generally” financially stupid, the ONLY way I would own an EV is to lease it. Both because of the tax credit situation, and because they are evolving so crazily fast that anything you buy today is likely to be largely obsolete in three years anyway.
But I have rather less than zero interest in owning an EV. No use case for one at all.
It only shakes out if you are either very bad at math (most Americans) or it is a *crazily* subvented one-off deal. Which does happen now and again – see those CO 500e’s. Otherwise, you are literally just paying new car depreciation and taxes and fees over and over and over and over.
I find it hilarious how many people are willing to constantly have a $500+ lease payment literally forever just so they never have a $1500 repair once in a while or have to buy a set of tires. Baffling. Doing the math of leasing now *5* new BMWs vs. keeping the one I bought new and still have is absolutely *terrifying* in Maine Excise Tax alone – and of course, you haven’t been able buy a 6spd OR RWD wagon since I bought mine back then. And the only “repair” I have had to pay for in 14 years is a new battery. And when you factor in how it’s held it’s value over that time, it has cost me about the same to own it for 14 years as just the lease payments total would have been to lease it for 3.
If most of your car use is for business it can work out for tax purposes. I worked with a commercial real estate broker (a little over 20 years ago, so I don’t know what might have changed) whose accountant told him he could write off 75% of his lease payment because of his profession. Given that he drove an Audi TT at the time, it wasn’t a bad deal, although I really doubt he drove all that many clients around in it.
Scouts will be built in South Carolina. At the moment, Scouts cannot be sold in South Carolina using direct to customer sales because of dealer protection laws. Scout is already headed to court to try and remedy this.
I personally disagree with VW Group of America’s dealerships’ claims that Scout must be sold through them. Scout is a distinct subsidiary of the international VW group, just like VGA, with its own proprietary engineering and production that does not share platforms with VW. Its funding is distinct from VW brands also, so the direct to consumer model should be legal and available to Scout, just like Tesla.
I’m sympathetic to VW dealers who’d love to have a hot new SUV/pickup product for their showrooms, but, too bad, they don’t get to force the VW Group into selling any of its other non VW brands (Bentley, Ducati, Lamborghini, to name a few) through their dealerships, so Scout should also be exempt.
Don’t know what will happen in California, but in South Carolina the issue will be resolved the way everything in the state is settled: enough money crossing the right palms behind closed doors. And when I say palms, I’m not talking palmetto, here.
Bentley, Lambo have dealers though, so good enough. It is all about NADA and the state/local dealer associations getting their beaks wet. At minimum they expect VW to offer dealers the right to buy a franchise, because you “need” a dealer.
I’m sure VW dealers would prefer VW just let them sell Scouts next to Tiguans, but ultimately the dealer cartel will be happy if VW just let any of their members take their hard lobbied place as a no-value added gatekeeper on the Scout product.
I got a yellow Porsche 911 997 Turbo for Christmas. It’s a 1:20 scale model but I love it as much as real one!
I have to agree with Ghosn – I don’t see any tangible benefit for Honda or Nissan, aside from Nissan staying a Japanese company. Nissan has a bit more diverse portfolio or vehicles, but most compete for the “it’s the only thing I could buy with my credit score” end of the market – if they compete at all. Everything else is a 1-for-1 overlap with Honda products, and Honda does everything much, much better.
I’ve worked for a few companies that bought out/merged with their direct competitors and the end result was immediate redundancy in operations and product, the realization that one group was cannibalizing sales from the other, and then a reduction of personnel and operations to better manage rampant post-merger costs.
In the Honda/Nissan tie-up, I can see Honda shedding Nissan in 3-5 years in pursuit of cutting costs, because again, Nissan does nothing better than Honda except low-credit score and fleet sales (neither of which is big money maker since both focus on lower-margin base trims).
Well here is hoping Scout (VW) decides to fight for their right to sell directly. I look forward to a day when the dealer cartel gets their back broken and I have the option to just go on a website, click the options I want, and hit “order”. I am fine waiting months. I’d have two newer cars by now if I could just do that and not deal with dealer bullshit.
The last sentence of your message says a great deal. The US retail dealer paradigm is irretrievably broken, and serves more a a barrier and impediment to sales, rather a means to facilitate sales.
No one hates dealers more than the manufacturers to whom they are shackled.
I’ve read that car dealers, insurance agents, and realtors are typically the big contributors to state legislature political campaigns. That tells a lot about how these business operate vis a vis state government.
Sure they do. They know the internet should have made them obsolete, so you get protectionist laws put in place to ensure they remain in the middle of what you want to buy, taking a cut for themselves.
I had a deposit on a Scout on day one, but then the next week canceled because I really don’t see these cars hitting the ground anytime soon. The lawsuits aren’t going to help. They already say the cars will be starting deliveries “sometime in 2027” which is a long fricking time to wait for a car to be released – not to mention by then there will be the Rivian R2, maybe the R3, and who knows what else to compete. All the while the tax credits currently on offer will probably evaporate and there’s way too much uncertainty with what will happen with a new administration in the white house regarding the economic impacts of their delusional clown car shit show of a government.
All of that is to say, if I want an EV in the next couple of years, a used R1S or a dozen other EVs will fit the bill and be cheap as hell because nobody wants them.
Well, I’m getting myself an Autopian membership renewal in two days? I assume that counts?
Yes!
For a different perspective, car dealerships are an anti concentrated power strategy, an anti monopoly thing. Diffuse the influence of the company. Reading Matt Stoller’s book Goliath was an eye opener, it’s about America’s fight with concentrated power over the last century and a half. I don’t like car dealerships, but they do serve a non obvious purpose.
Maybe back in the day when dealers were “Mom and Pop” shops, where Joe Smith Ford was a one franchise operation and you could go in and actually talk to Joe and he might advocate for you with Ford if your new truck was a lemon because he didn’t want to screw over the community he was also a part of.
But today, there is so much corporate ownership and consolidation. You think Penske or Autonation or any of the big regional dealer chains aren’t just another group of “concentrated power” just like Ford or GM?
The people who matter in those organizations don’t live in your community, they don’t care if you hate your truck. Where else are you going to go? Autonation owns half the dealerships in town. And they just raised the doc fee to $1000 after lobbying your state legislature to raise the limit. Always working for the consumer!
Which is exactly the problem, and why we didn’t used to let them get that big.
As far as physical gifts from outside my home? I only got one. A homemade loaf of banana bread. It was a very thoughtful gesture from a neighbor who just so happens to crush it at baking. I received probably 50 txt from friends and family (none of them were those spammy generic group txts, those are for the birds).
I don’t need anything material, nor do I want anything from anyone. Just knowing I am being thought of from people that live all over the world, is special. There are many people in the world that no one thinks of on the holidays. I consider myself very fortunate in that way.
e.t.a. If you like Tiny Desk, Juvenile’s episode is absolutely fantastic.
> As far as physical gifts from outside my home? I only got one. A homemade loaf of banana bread.
> I don’t need anything material, nor do I want anything from anyone.
It follows that you will gladly give me the banana bread. I’ll be over in the morning to pick it up.
Best thing I got for Christmas was a day off to relax, cooked a nice steak for me and one for the dog(to dole out in pieces), wife had a salmon, and some Red Lobster Cheddar biscuits. Watched a few movies on the tv, nice and chill.
Also yes Honda/Nissan/Mitsu are too similar, maybe Nissan brings the trucks, but their trucks are old, and Honda has never been a big truck/RWD make. They could slap a hybrid in the Ridgeline to compete with the Maverick and make bank. And people seem to be liking the look of the new Passport so think they’re already set there.
They’ve already got the Prologue deal with GM and it’s doing well. None of Nissan’s EVs are super big sellers any more, and they made the Honda E which looked sweet, and that’s more of what we need for EVs anyways.
It’s sad but just don’t see it doing well and probably Mitsubishi or Nissan or both will go the way of Isuzu in the US.
My wife bought me a pair of heated motorcycle gloves! I can’t wait to get to work and still be able to feel my fingers!
Heated gloves (or grips) are a game CHANGER!!!!
Dealer used inventory for higher end lease returns has been abysmal for months, and now it’s gonna get worse? Yikes.
Way worse, yes.
> And, finally, are Honda and Nissan going to work because they’re too similar or not work because they’re too different?
Option 3: not work because they’re too similar.
Yet, even writing that to be snarky, I feel bad because it’s taking a cheap shot at Honda. I am really struggling to see what Nissan is bringing to the table for Honda in this arraignme-, er, arrangement.
Old platforms, limp offerings, Infiniti, the Nissan Z is for Zombie. What’s the upside vs. letting it die and elbowing in for room in the vacuum?
I’m not so callous as to handwave away the human costs. I know there are assets, and even somewhere hidden deep away from the production cars, expertise at Nissan. It’s just in such rotten shape I’d be fitting my robber baron monocle and hat, waiting for it to collapse and scoop whatever’s good.
In short, why are they buying high?
They’re spending the Japanese taxpayers’ money, or close enough to it, so buying high isn’t a huge issue.
What they’re getting is production capacity, a still-respected pickup truck brand (and the Patrol SUV in the rest of the world) and a way into the US fleet market without depreciating the Honda brand (which is pretty damn strong considering how many people want their GM EV with a Honda badge and service warranty).
They’re merging now because Foxconn was looking to buy Nissan, so if they waited until Nissan was too far gone, they’d have missed out. I guess the Japanese Ministry has a little more concern over traditional makes getting bought out than England, but hey we get cool Jaguar commercials now so that’s something.