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I saw a Chevy Spark last week: Can somebody tell me exactly how this fits into GM's lineup with the Sonic? Is it just a two-door Sonic (but with two extra doors)? I applaud GM for making small cars that (on the surface) aren't lovely, but it seems like they're taking a shotgun approach - between the Cruze, Sonic and Spark, they're hoping something ends up being a good seller.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:06
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CornHolio posted:I saw a Chevy Spark last week: Maybe they're just aping Ford's Focus/Fiesta approach by offering a super-sub-compact and a sub-compact. The Cruze is big enough to almost not really be a compact car anymore, so I understand offering the Sonic, too. No idea where the Spark fits in. Maybe as a low-cost leader now that the Sonic's base price is at $16k?
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Aug 13, 2012 16:17
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The Spark is more of a Fiat 500 / iQ / Smart competitor than a Fiesta competitor.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:36
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:The Spark is more of a Fiat 500 / iQ / Smart competitor than a Fiesta competitor. I've always wondered why the Toyota Aygo/Citroen C1 doesn't compete in this segment in North America. It's cheap as poo poo, tiny enough to park anywhere, and actually has a useful back seat.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:39
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Cream_Filling posted:Maybe as a low-cost leader now that the Sonic's base price is at $16k? This. The MSRP on a base trim Spark with an automatic is just under $14k. It's a city car and gets around 30MPG in the city and it comes with a bit more space and comforts than a Scion iQ or a Smart FourTwo. A Sonic would slot in for someone who wants similar gas mileage but with an actual backseat, "real" useable storage, but also be reasonable on the highway and long trips.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:41
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That front end makes me cringe. It looks like you could cause enough damage to total it out with one good kick. Urban drivers tooling around in cars like that must be an insurance adjuster's worst nightmare.
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Aug 13, 2012 16:56
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PT6A posted:I've always wondered why the Toyota Aygo/Citroen C1 doesn't compete in this segment in North America. It's cheap as poo poo, tiny enough to park anywhere, and actually has a useful back seat. Because they're not that cheap in the US and parking spaces are usually marked out so nobody cares unless they live in NY or SF. For the same cost as one of the micro-city cars - Smart, Scion iQ, etc., you could buy a decent compact car with almost as good gas mileage like a Kia Soul or Ford Fiesta with 4 doors that can actually seat 4 adults and not be total poo poo on the highway, which is where many Americans spend the majority of their driving time. Hell, the Scion iQ actually has a higher base MSRP than a Honda Civic or even the Toyota Yaris. America is nowhere near as densely urbanized as Europe, and small size is not really a benefit so much as a serious bad thing independent of cost/gas mileage.
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Aug 13, 2012 17:00
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NOTinuyasha posted:That front end makes me cringe. It looks like you could cause enough damage to total it out with one good kick. Urban drivers tooling around in cars like that must be an insurance adjuster's worst nightmare. It doesn't look worse than the Sonic from a damage standpoint.
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Aug 13, 2012 17:38
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The IQ is a premium subcompact car, it doesn't really compete with the aygo, which is cheap poo poo ( being nothing better than the c1/108 but slightly more expensive)
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Aug 13, 2012 17:38
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Cakefool posted:The IQ is a premium subcompact car, it doesn't really compete with the aygo, which is cheap poo poo ( being nothing better than the c1/108 but slightly more expensive) Dunno, what's analogous to the Aygo/C1/108? Is the Fiesta, which is available in the US, comparably priced or is it more expensive in most Euro markets? Comparing car prices is very hard, obviously, but even stuff like the Smart, which to my knowledge is sold for very cheap in other countries, is expensive here for various reasons, with a US MSRP range of $12,490 - $17,890. Even if the Aygo hit the magic $10k mark in the US, which would be pretty hard considering current Federal regulations, I doubt sales would jump much, considering the extremely low take rates for stuff like the super-stripper-special Versa and Accent back when they were in that price range.
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Aug 13, 2012 17:50
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Cream_Filling posted:Because they're not that cheap in the US and parking spaces are usually marked out so nobody cares unless they live in NY or SF. That's pretty much the biggest thing right there. There's no such thing as "park anywhere" in most of urban America. You park in a designated spot on the curb with a meter or your park in a parking garage. Both are spaces large enough to easily fit the common american sedan so the only thing you are really gaining is a marginal ease in parking over other options. Pull two "urban" cars into one curb parking space means one of them is going to get a ticket when the meter maid comes by.
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Aug 13, 2012 17:53
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I've never seen on-street parking lines/spaces/whatever anywhere in NYC. The metered blocks have ticket printers. If it's actually a common thing in other parts of America, I had no idea.
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Aug 13, 2012 18:42
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NOTinuyasha posted:I've never seen on-street parking lines/spaces/whatever anywhere in NYC. The metered blocks have ticket printers. If it's actually a common thing in other parts of America, I had no idea. Even in extremely car-centric Calgary, you can park wherever you fit in. On metered streets, you put your money in the machine at the end of the block and it records your zone and your license plate, so a car with cameras can drive by and determine who needs a ticket. It's a pretty groovy system.
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Aug 13, 2012 18:47
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Yeah just about all the street parking in Seattle, if metered, uses pay stations that you print out a ticket and stick it to your window. There aren't really any demarcated parallel parking spaces, and even when there are they are suggestions at best. Still though, very rarely would something like a Smart or an iQ actually mean you could fit into spaces that you couldn't fit into with a more typical 'compact' car.
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Aug 13, 2012 19:07
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Cream_Filling posted:Dunno, what's analogous to the Aygo/C1/108? Is the Fiesta, which is available in the US, comparably priced or is it more expensive in most Euro markets? The Fiesta is comparable to Yaris, C3 and 208 in both size and price. The only thing you get right now that I would consider similar in size is the Fiat 500. Only in size though, it's much more upscale than the Aygo/C1/107 trio when it comes to equipment and interior etc.. Price-wise? I don't really know. Over here, the segment is full of cars like the Kia Picanto, Hyundai i10, Fiat Panda, Ford Ka, the VW/Skoda/Seat Up/Citigo/Mii triplets and so on, all at roughly the same price point. Microcars are very much not an American thing, you just don't have the same size restraints.
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Aug 13, 2012 19:17
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In pittsburgh, you park in a clearly demarcated space and pay for it or your car likely won't be there when you get back to it.
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Aug 13, 2012 20:26
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KozmoNaut posted:Microcars are very much not an American thing, you just don't have the same size restraints. It is so hard for me to not read that last word as "restaurants"
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Aug 13, 2012 20:34
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Phy posted:It is so hard for me to not read that last word as "restaurants" I was thinking more of the cramped inner cities in Europe, but I guess the cars' lack of internal space would be an issue in America.
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Aug 13, 2012 21:04
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KozmoNaut posted:I was thinking more of the cramped inner cities in Europe, but I guess the cars' lack of internal space would be an issue in America. I really think it's more that Americans want the capability of hauling many people and their luggage long distances, even if they never will. It isn't so much that most American's commutes are long highway jaunts, or our parking spaces, I really think it's that people want to have the capacity to throw four people and their luggage in their car and drive for ten hours. And most cars are just fine for that, but something as small as a Spark is going to limit that freedom.
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Aug 13, 2012 21:12
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I like A and B-segment cars for their maneuverability more than their footprint in a parking space. Being able to easily see your corners and effortlessly slot the car into a space that might require a few more maneuvers in a C/D-segment is a big plus. I can't see myself buying (any new car, I am a poor) a Spark/500/iQ since the Sonic/Mazda 2/Yaris are much more versatile without sacrificing too much maneuverability or mileage. I could see it becoming a decent fleet car, depending on how much it actually costs GM to produce them.
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Aug 13, 2012 21:26
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bull3964 posted:Pull two "urban" cars into one curb parking space means one of them is going to get a ticket when the meter maid comes by.
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Aug 13, 2012 21:37
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Guinness posted:Still though, very rarely would something like a Smart or an iQ actually mean you could fit into spaces that you couldn't fit into with a more typical 'compact' car. Except you can park perpendicular to the curb in a parallel space. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it over and over in Berlin.
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Aug 13, 2012 22:00
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PT6A posted:Except you can park perpendicular to the curb in a parallel space. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it over and over in Berlin. But that's illegal here.
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Aug 13, 2012 22:42
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If you live in a dense city that has people living in it, the tiny cars make sense. Every loving inch matters. Or you pay for long-term parking (which is a small car payment in of itself). But if you've only ever commuted into the city for shopping, than you most likely don't know how to find decent parking on the street anyway, you give up quickly and park inside a paid stall for the couple hours of shopping. Besides, if you live in a city, you aren't taking multi hour trips to places. Everything you could need is within a 10-15 minute drive. That's the point of living in a dense city.
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Aug 13, 2012 22:44
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Morphix posted:Besides, if you live in a city, you aren't taking multi hour trips to places. Everything you could need is within a 10-15 minute drive. That's the point of living in a dense city. This just isn't true in many US cities. However, Houston may just be the worst big city. In Houston, DFW, and LA you drive for hours within the city just to get places. Things are spread out, there aren't grocery stores close, and space is used very inefficiently within the city. That's at least three of America's five biggest cities where the tiny "city cars" have no advantage. Also, if you get out of town at all the speed limits are 75, where most of these sub-subcompact city cars like the iQ are very unhappy.
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Aug 13, 2012 22:57
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just for perspective, here's a typical two-way suburban street in west London at Google-Car o'clock when it isn't particularly busy.  There are wider, and quieter streets around if you look for them, but your resident permit probably wouldn't let you park there anyway.
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Aug 13, 2012 23:21
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bull3964 posted:In pittsburgh, you park in a clearly demarcated space and pay for it or your car likely won't be there when you get back to it.
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Aug 13, 2012 23:23
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Weinertron posted:This just isn't true in many US cities. However, Houston may just be the worst big city. In Houston, DFW, and LA you drive for hours within the city just to get places. Things are spread out, there aren't grocery stores close, and space is used very inefficiently within the city. That's at least three of America's five biggest cities where the tiny "city cars" have no advantage. Also, if you get out of town at all the speed limits are 75, where most of these sub-subcompact city cars like the iQ are very unhappy. Is that true in the central business district in those cities? Miami's pretty spread out (the metro area is 100 miles long, and average population density's under 1,000 per square mile; Manhattan, NYC is close to 70,000), but there's certainly walkable high-density neighborhoods, and for some people a ForTwo makes sense, and for a lucky few a pay-per-minute rental of one makes sense.
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Aug 13, 2012 23:34
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This is a silly discussion now that I think about it, because my original point didn't have anything to do with why someone would or wouldn't buy a city car in the States, but rather why the city cars we do have in North America are horrid and/or expensive compared with what's available in the rest of the world.
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Aug 13, 2012 23:44
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NOTinuyasha posted:I've never seen on-street parking lines/spaces/whatever anywhere in NYC. The metered blocks have ticket printers. If it's actually a common thing in other parts of America, I had no idea. I specifically excluded NYC for that reason. Also, NYC isn't really America :P Even if you lived in NYC, buying a tiny city car would kind of be a dumb move unless you lived waaay out in some outer borough because the majority of the time, you will be taking the subway anyway, and the major reason to have a car is when you want to leave the city or haul some stuff around. Also, considering the weird way our federal regulations are structured, I bet it's really hard to offer a budget model for cheaper than $10k, especially on what's inevitably going to be a fairly niche model with limited volume. Stuff like required airbags and such just don't scale well in cost compared to size like materials costs do. Especially when you add in the costs of insurance and such, which again don't scale well. And even then, people could pay like $3,000 more for a significantly larger and more versatile vehicle that's still pretty tiny or else get on the used market and buy a real car. As has been noted earlier, the sweet spot in America for sales volume has always been the medium to large sized sedan, and nowadays also the compact CUV (which has similar mass and power to a mid to large sedan). Compact cars have significantly smaller profit margins due to things like how prices scale for the cost of production versus asking price, etc.
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Aug 14, 2012 01:16
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Morphix posted:Or you pay for long-term parking (which is a small car payment in of itself). Yeah my parking spot in an urban metropolitan center of the united states cost me about what the pretax lease payment on a brand new BMW 1, zero money down 36 mo 12k/year lease was. gently caress that
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Aug 14, 2012 01:55
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Yeah my parking spot in an urban metropolitan center of the united states cost me about what the pretax lease payment on a brand new BMW 1, zero money down 36 mo 12k/year lease was. I paid more to park my car in a Chicago suburb per month than I pay to rent a mid sized house in NE Indiana per month.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:35
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Rhyno posted:I paid more to park my car in a Chicago suburb per month than I pay to rent a mid sized house in NE Indiana per month. $65/month for gated off the street parking for me here in KC.  I can't even imagine having to pay the crazy rates that come with living in Chicago or NYC.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:40
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fknlo posted:$65/month for gated off the street parking for me here in KC. $90 a week for an assigned space off the street that some loving prick was always parked in when I got home and it would take forever to get them out of it. Usually it was my neighbors boyfriend but in a few cases I couldn't find them so I had to have them towed. That ended with my car getting keyed to poo poo so I had my siblings come up and take the car back to Indiana. Then I got fired 3 weeks later and I needed them to come all the way back so I could move back here.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:13
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PT6A posted:This is a silly discussion now that I think about it, because my original point didn't have anything to do with why someone would or wouldn't buy a city car in the States, but rather why the city cars we do have in North America are horrid and/or expensive compared with what's available in the rest of the world.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:46
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$200/mo for my car + $50/mo for my motorcycle, starting this September! 
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Aug 14, 2012 04:48
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Cocoa Crispies posted:Are they though? I was always under the impression that car ownership in the US was way cheaper than anywhere else in the first world. It's extremely cheap, and that's because we don't tax the poo poo out of everything car-related like most European nations do. Which means that there's no tax breaks for owning a small, efficient car. So they are relatively much more expensive for what you get.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:49
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Cocoa Crispies posted:Are they though? I was always under the impression that car ownership in the US was way cheaper than anywhere else in the first world. An Aygo converted from pounds sterling to Canadian dollars starts at around $2000 less than the fourtwo coupe, to say nothing of the C1 (because Citroen doesn't sell in North America), which is especially heinous when you consider the premium that UK customers usually pay on cars compared to the US and Canada. The fact that city cars make no sense in most of North America doesn't really explain why we only get the worst value in city cars. In fact, you would think that only the cheapest ones would be able to make a go of it.
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Aug 14, 2012 05:02
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It didn't 2 years ago, the GBP has collapsed in value in the last few years. Jaguar/Land Rover continues to make terrible cars but now they are one of the most profitable car makers in the world because the way to become a successful car maker is to get your government to manipulate the currency. Some markets just aren't very competitive and car makers charge what they do because they can. The reason cars in the US are so cheap is because - It's a large market, companies can sell for lower prices but higher volumes - It's a relatively free market where car companies largely compete on an equal footing - It's a mature market with a large "capital stock" of privately owned cars on the used market. Your lovely 1.0l golf cart better be a lot cheaper than a 2 year old Impala because that's what it's being cross shopped against.
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Aug 14, 2012 05:35
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I think the Spark is going to be a good litmus test for whether or not "normal" city cars can work in the US now. It's base price is only $1,620 lower than the base price of a Sonic hatch. Though it does come with some nice features not available on the base trim level Sonic. GM's posted estimated numbers are 6 mpg better in the city and 3 mpg better on the highway compared to the Sonic. I'm really interested to see how sales shake out for this thing.
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Aug 14, 2012 06:00
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