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OldAlias
Nov 2, 2013

Nebakenezzer posted:

How is this possible? It's the same goddamn stores, embedded in a vast parking lot

it depends what you mean exactly by outdoor mall. I tend to think of something like plaza st. Hubert in Montreal which has some oddities like that discount prom dress store



it’s good if properly embedded into a city - a major problem planners have with developing this sort of poo poo today is myopic zoning laws preventing mixed use development (shops in condo buildings are often just lip service to the idea), and mandating parking lots such that these places become little islands of concrete connected to nothing else

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The Muppets On PCP
Nov 13, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Nebakenezzer posted:

How is this possible? It's the same goddamn stores, embedded in a vast parking lot

they're a lot cheaper to operate largely since you don't have to heat/cool a giant indoor space plus the stores tend to be more upscale than stuff at traditional malls


OldAlias posted:

it’s good if properly embedded into a city - a major problem planners have with developing this sort of poo poo today is myopic zoning laws preventing mixed use development (shops in condo buildings are often just lip service to the idea), and mandating parking lots such that these places become little islands of concrete connected to nothing else

yeah they're still utter bullshit and way less efficient in terms of tax revenue and resource usage compared to a regular downtown

The Muppets On PCP has issued a correction as of 23:58 on Dec 10, 2017

OldAlias
Nov 2, 2013

Montreal also has one of my favourite ghost malls, Decarie Square, which is home to Dollar Cinema (2.50 for a show, 1.00 for anything else). these pics don’t quite give it justice, like the random detritus and those $1 stores have some weird stock from 2000





Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

etalian posted:

It's pretty hilarious how the US mall concept was created by a immigrant who wanted to create the natural organic feel of European cities like Vienna and Paris.

If you consider a french-as-hell name Chevrolet is "the heartbeat of America" it fits very well

For a long long time in North America, GM truck ads had Bob Seager's "Like a Rock." I heard the song on an oldies station about a year ago, and GM unintentionally pranked themselves again, because the song is about a old man who's best days are behind him remembering how he used to be

Automotive brands are going though similar problems as retail. Essentially, there are affordable cars, richer cars, and a very large space in-between that used to be gravy for lots of manufacturers, we'll call it 'near-luxury.' A few things have happened in those markets in the past few decades. For one, Lexus (and other Japanese manufacturers) entered the market in a big way. In the 1980s, St. Regan, free market messiah, was very protectionist to the US car market, restricting the Japanese as to how many cars they could import. While not the cause of this move, the Japanese did the rational thing and went upmarket (for better profits on each car.) Lexus in particular when they launched the LS400 was daunting to the old European players, because it was essentially the best car in the world, built with the quality that formerly had been a province of Mercedes-Benz - at two thirds the price of a MB.

So the top guys (ze Germans) lowered their prices (and sometimes their quality) and by the ends of the 1990s had "full lines of vehicles" - IE cars stretching the full length of luxury *and* near luxury.
Meanwhile, the Japanese, Lexus particularly, became really great at offering good value for money on the near luxury market. These two trends basically killed the marginal near luxury marquees: Mitsubishi offered some goddamn car in that line (the Dimante?) as did Mazda (forget its name but it had some very weird, innovative engine in it) Oldsmobile, Saab, and Mercury. Acura has struggled ever since they made a car that was just too good - and then stopped making it. Infiniti exists still because it can bogart stuff from Nissan and Renault. Lincoln because a high trim level on a Ford Expedition after spending two decades as a high trim level on the Ford Crown Victoria.

Anyway, I don't think anybody's getting misty eyed about this. I just want to point out this is very similar to what happened to retail - the marginal players get squeezed out when the market shifts and goes south. Anyway, I'm not trying to troll y'all with tales of creative destruction, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of issues that circle around retail also circle around cars.

The biggest one is will be a shocker to the thread: people not having money to buy cars, which guess what, is concentrated in younger generations. Car makers have been wringing their hands about it since I've been in university: nearly all car buyers are still boomers, and the amount of younger people buying (new) cars keeps declining. They've tried a lot of things over the years, and this has resulted in - Boomers buying hip and kooky cars marketed to young people. The two brands that stick out for me are Scion and Mini. Both in theory targeted "the Youth"; both became hits among the boomers. Now, thanks to the post 2008 economic catasterfuck, there is actually *some* recognition among people that it's not those drat irresponsible youth and their cellphones and their electric music moving them away from cars or "all youth live in trendy urban areas and TF have no need of cars" - it's "oh poo poo these people cannot afford to buy new or used cars anymore, they are too poor."
Obviously it's still mostly a bunch of sundowning handwaving that amounts to "gently caress you got mine" but there is some recognition among younger car enthusiasts (and some even not so young) as to what is up.

Another key factor is - financing. Naturally, because people don't have the money, they can get financing instead. The subprime auto-financing sector has been growing at a pace (if not as a size) like subprime mortgages did before 2008. This continuing of consumption via debt will not be at all familiar to readers of the retail apocalypse

The third is that there are still a lot of vulnerable nameplates and manufacturers. Auto Manufacturing is a very globalized industry, but in a North American context at least, exists can be swift and brutal. Pontiac is dead, Suzuki is gone from North America, Mitsubishi is here only because the head office in Japan refuses to give up (actually if you check out Mitsubishi they went through a hilarious bubble all their own, deficit financing everybody who could fog a mirror, then have their resale values crash when those marks customers couldn't pay.) Honda is actually a bigger company in North America than in Japan, so despite being in a good position, they are surprisingly vulnerable to North America bed-making GBS threads. Mazda is not the dynamo it used to be. GM's remaining brands are actually pretty strong, with the exception of Buick, (another 'near-luxury brand') that will likely take a bullet to the head soon (I think the only reason it survived the 2008 catasterfuck is that Buick is no poo poo big in China.) Everything under FCA should be viewed as vulrenable.

Funny story: Chrysler/Dodge were the hot domestic auto-makers in the late 90s early aughts - so naturally the CEO used this to negotiate a takeover by Mercedes-Benz. He got a huge payoff (along with all of those dumbass financial talking heads talking about what a awe-inspiringly brilliant idea the 'merger' was, much like the Warner Brothers - AOL 'merger'.) Chrysler/Dodge, meanwhile, was mismanaged from that point on. The Germans were hilariously cheap in developing new products for Dodge that didn't synergize with old technology from MB - which on the whole was not a good match for Dodge. MB sold off Chrysler/Dodge for cents on the dollar in the mid-2000s to a venture capital group named Cerberus. They obviously wanted to sell off all the useful assetts and then scrap it, but the 2008 economic catasterfuck derailed that ambition. Dodge declared bankrupty, and quite likely would have been liquidated at this point had the Obama Admin not stepped in with emergency financing. Their rationale was simply that Dodge going Chapter 7 would bankrupt many second tier suppliers, which would like cause GM to liquidate (having also declared bankruptcy) and possibly bankrupt Ford as well.

So the Government arranged a deal that sold Chrysler/Dodge to Fiat. For $1. Really.

Fiat now owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. Since the sale, they've tried to make those brands work for them in a global context, not the least of which means returning Fiat and Alfa Romero to North America. (That's a tale in of itself, but suffice it to say Fiat is actually one of the smaller of the global auto conglomerates and is afraid of Korean and Chinese competition undermining its cheap stuff, which of course is a very big deal for the nation of Italy.) Anyway, Chrysler is exactly the sort of 'near luxury' brand that's going through an extinction event, not to mention Dodge itself, which is well positioned in several products but struggles to be a full line maker. (After years of dog-fuckery by previous owners, Dodge has given up selling small cars.) Ideally, North American products should be sellable in Europe and Asia, etc, and that is a uphill struggle when your best known cars are a full-size pickup, a big minivan, and the car Walter White drove when he fully embraced his villain persona.

PS> Telsa stock value is assessed as the same as Ford - and Telsa doesn't understand how to make cars as well as say, the old Chevy S-10 plant did. Ford's CEO was forced to step down despite earning 10 billion in profit that same year because he didn't do enough to make Ford more like Telsa so there's that aspect as well

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

I know, :words:

Mo_Steel
Mar 7, 2008

Let's Clock Into The Sunset Together

Fun Shoe

Nebakenezzer posted:

If you consider a french-as-hell name Chevrolet is "the heartbeat of America" it fits very well

For a long long time in North America, GM truck ads had Bob Seager's "Like a Rock." I heard the song on an oldies station about a year ago, and GM unintentionally pranked themselves again, because the song is about a old man who's best days are behind him remembering how he used to be

Automotive brands are going though similar problems as retail. Essentially, there are affordable cars, richer cars, and a very large space in-between that used to be gravy for lots of manufacturers, we'll call it 'near-luxury.' A few things have happened in those markets in the past few decades. For one, Lexus (and other Japanese manufacturers) entered the market in a big way. In the 1980s, St. Regan, free market messiah, was very protectionist to the US car market, restricting the Japanese as to how many cars they could import. While not the cause of this move, the Japanese did the rational thing and went upmarket (for better profits on each car.) Lexus in particular when they launched the LS400 was daunting to the old European players, because it was essentially the best car in the world, built with the quality that formerly had been a province of Mercedes-Benz - at two thirds the price of a MB.

So the top guys (ze Germans) lowered their prices (and sometimes their quality) and by the ends of the 1990s had "full lines of vehicles" - IE cars stretching the full length of luxury *and* near luxury.
Meanwhile, the Japanese, Lexus particularly, became really great at offering good value for money on the near luxury market. These two trends basically killed the marginal near luxury marquees: Mitsubishi offered some goddamn car in that line (the Dimante?) as did Mazda (forget its name but it had some very weird, innovative engine in it) Oldsmobile, Saab, and Mercury. Acura has struggled ever since they made a car that was just too good - and then stopped making it. Infiniti exists still because it can bogart stuff from Nissan and Renault. Lincoln because a high trim level on a Ford Expedition after spending two decades as a high trim level on the Ford Crown Victoria.

Anyway, I don't think anybody's getting misty eyed about this. I just want to point out this is very similar to what happened to retail - the marginal players get squeezed out when the market shifts and goes south. Anyway, I'm not trying to troll y'all with tales of creative destruction, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of issues that circle around retail also circle around cars.

The biggest one is will be a shocker to the thread: people not having money to buy cars, which guess what, is concentrated in younger generations. Car makers have been wringing their hands about it since I've been in university: nearly all car buyers are still boomers, and the amount of younger people buying (new) cars keeps declining. They've tried a lot of things over the years, and this has resulted in - Boomers buying hip and kooky cars marketed to young people. The two brands that stick out for me are Scion and Mini. Both in theory targeted "the Youth"; both became hits among the boomers. Now, thanks to the post 2008 economic catasterfuck, there is actually *some* recognition among people that it's not those drat irresponsible youth and their cellphones and their electric music moving them away from cars or "all youth live in trendy urban areas and TF have no need of cars" - it's "oh poo poo these people cannot afford to buy new or used cars anymore, they are too poor."
Obviously it's still mostly a bunch of sundowning handwaving that amounts to "gently caress you got mine" but there is some recognition among younger car enthusiasts (and some even not so young) as to what is up.

Another key factor is - financing. Naturally, because people don't have the money, they can get financing instead. The subprime auto-financing sector has been growing at a pace (if not as a size) like subprime mortgages did before 2008. This continuing of consumption via debt will not be at all familiar to readers of the retail apocalypse

The third is that there are still a lot of vulnerable nameplates and manufacturers. Auto Manufacturing is a very globalized industry, but in a North American context at least, exists can be swift and brutal. Pontiac is dead, Suzuki is gone from North America, Mitsubishi is here only because the head office in Japan refuses to give up (actually if you check out Mitsubishi they went through a hilarious bubble all their own, deficit financing everybody who could fog a mirror, then have their resale values crash when those marks customers couldn't pay.) Honda is actually a bigger company in North America than in Japan, so despite being in a good position, they are surprisingly vulnerable to North America bed-making GBS threads. Mazda is not the dynamo it used to be. GM's remaining brands are actually pretty strong, with the exception of Buick, (another 'near-luxury brand') that will likely take a bullet to the head soon (I think the only reason it survived the 2008 catasterfuck is that Buick is no poo poo big in China.) Everything under FCA should be viewed as vulrenable.

Funny story: Chrysler/Dodge were the hot domestic auto-makers in the late 90s early aughts - so naturally the CEO used this to negotiate a takeover by Mercedes-Benz. He got a huge payoff (along with all of those dumbass financial talking heads talking about what a awe-inspiringly brilliant idea the 'merger' was, much like the Warner Brothers - AOL 'merger'.) Chrysler/Dodge, meanwhile, was mismanaged from that point on. The Germans were hilariously cheap in developing new products for Dodge that didn't synergize with old technology from MB - which on the whole was not a good match for Dodge. MB sold off Chrysler/Dodge for cents on the dollar in the mid-2000s to a venture capital group named Cerberus. They obviously wanted to sell off all the useful assetts and then scrap it, but the 2008 economic catasterfuck derailed that ambition. Dodge declared bankrupty, and quite likely would have been liquidated at this point had the Obama Admin not stepped in with emergency financing. Their rationale was simply that Dodge going Chapter 7 would bankrupt many second tier suppliers, which would like cause GM to liquidate (having also declared bankruptcy) and possibly bankrupt Ford as well.

So the Government arranged a deal that sold Chrysler/Dodge to Fiat. For $1. Really.

Fiat now owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. Since the sale, they've tried to make those brands work for them in a global context, not the least of which means returning Fiat and Alfa Romero to North America. (That's a tale in of itself, but suffice it to say Fiat is actually one of the smaller of the global auto conglomerates and is afraid of Korean and Chinese competition undermining its cheap stuff, which of course is a very big deal for the nation of Italy.) Anyway, Chrysler is exactly the sort of 'near luxury' brand that's going through an extinction event, not to mention Dodge itself, which is well positioned in several products but struggles to be a full line maker. (After years of dog-fuckery by previous owners, Dodge has given up selling small cars.) Ideally, North American products should be sellable in Europe and Asia, etc, and that is a uphill struggle when your best known cars are a full-size pickup, a big minivan, and the car Walter White drove when he fully embraced his villain persona.

PS> Telsa stock value is assessed as the same as Ford - and Telsa doesn't understand how to make cars as well as say, the old Chevy S-10 plant did. Ford's CEO was forced to step down despite earning 10 billion in profit that same year because he didn't do enough to make Ford more like Telsa so there's that aspect as well

This post owns and is cool.

Back on the retail side I'm curious how much of retail may swap to the new Target model of buy online and pickup locally. The worst part of shopping is wandering around and waiting in lines with the exception of specialty shops where the whole point is to go in and see weird poo poo, but if you're buying batteries and diapers and soap and light bulbs and cereal and a 6 pack of socks you might not want to wait 2 days for shipping and might also not want to roll out of your car to go get it.

Also bulldoze all malls and replace them with solar farms or something.

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006


anybody at all interested in how the american auto industry got to where it is should read crash course by paul ingrassia

anyone interested in the industry probably already knows most of whats in there but its the first account of the entirety of the industry ive read that covers p. much everything and spares no one their deserved blame

Proust Malone
Apr 4, 2008

what was this Acura that was too good?

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Ron Jeremy posted:

what was this Acura that was too good?

They made a car for a long time called, appropriately enough, the Legend. It was kind of a larger, luxurious Accord, built in the best Japanese tradition to be nearly indestructible.

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
What are the defining differences between "luxury" and "near-luxury"?

Womyn Capote
Jul 5, 2004


Shame Dan did the Bal Harbor Mall and didn't even mention its right next to the best nude beach in the country.

Volcott
Mar 30, 2010

People paying American dollars to let other people know they didn't agree with someone's position on something is the lifeblood of these forums.

General Dog posted:

What are the defining differences between "luxury" and "near-luxury"?

Twenty thousand dollars.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

General Dog posted:

What are the defining differences between "luxury" and "near-luxury"?

You ask a mouthful there.

Two words, 'sport' and 'luxury' are abused to the point of meaninglessness in the car industry. Pretty much every vehicle that isn't a full-size van is described as those two things. That said, I'd argue it has to do with if the car was actually engineered to be an expensive car from the start, or if it was made to be more expensive by options and branding.

Take the LS400 for an example of luxury. The engine it used was a 4L V8, famous when it was introduced as it was the first car engine that cost more than a billion dollars to develop. It was rear wheel drive. I think it might have shared its platform and drivetrain with one or two other cars, but they were all similarly expensive. Making really high quality cars with bespoke components, etc, costs a lot of money, so it costs a lot of money to buy.

Then take other cars, which cost like a luxury car but often are built from humbler components, the Lincoln Navagator for example. It uses the Ford Expedition fullsize SUV platform, which is derived from the F-150 pickup. I've no idea what the most basic F-150 is, but compare that to a modern Navigator, which probably costs around 4x that, and you're getting an idea of the profit margin a luxury truck can get for its maker. Sure, the Navigator has a fancy V8, different trim and interior, maybe even built on a separate line to higher quality control standards. But it is still the same basic vehicle, just one sold at a huge markup. I see the near luxury market as being that - mass-market components being sold at premium prices. During the last automotive winnowing in the early 1980s, supposedly Ford kept out of bankruptcy thanks to the Lincoln Town Car. Made on the Crown Victoria platform, but selling for twice as much.

And of course, you can find all sorts of overlap in this screwy Venn diagram - makers that mostly sold re-badges but did a few bespoke models, and luxury car makers using mass market stuff for their cheaper offerings.

Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 17:54 on Dec 12, 2017

Proust Malone
Apr 4, 2008

Nebakenezzer posted:

They made a car for a long time called, appropriately enough, the Legend. It was kind of a larger, luxurious Accord, built in the best Japanese tradition to be nearly indestructible.

Isn't the current RL/RLX the same thing? Luxury trimmed Accord?

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Ron Jeremy posted:

Isn't the current RL/RLX the same thing? Luxury trimmed Accord?

Good question, I had to check wikipedia. It says they are separate platforms.

gently caress me the Legend was a bespoke platform as well

BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy
i like the car posts

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

i like the car posts

Thanks! I think I have one or two more posts that keep with the overall theme of the thread if it sparkles for everyone.

Ansar Santa
Jul 12, 2012

I never thought about it this way, but I guess it was ultimately Obama that killed Mr. Chekov.

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006

Sidakafitz posted:

I never thought about it this way, but I guess it was ultimately Obama that killed Mr. Chekov.

actually private capital killed chekov

chrysler was owned by cerberus capital management after daimler needed that dumpster fire gone and cerberus had no idea what they were getting into. they thought they could asset strip and kill it but there are far too many laws keeping the auto industry extant and they reluctantly had to keep chrysler alive

they cut every corner they could to make their cars as lovely as possible and in developing new ones they baked in the poo poo deeply. the 2011 jeep grand cherokee was one of the last cerberus chrysler and it was the terrible design of the gear selector that killed chekov (his was a 2015 model)

Proust Malone
Apr 4, 2008

bring it back to the point of this thread. why has car retail not eaten poo poo like the rest? statutory monopoly? shifting focus to service?

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006

Ron Jeremy posted:

bring it back to the point of this thread. why has car retail not eaten poo poo like the rest? statutory monopoly? shifting focus to service?

right now there is a bubble in financing which has been driving record sales for about three years plus ofc cheap gas and suvs have enormous proift margins so the money trees are healthy as poo poo. for domestics this is the best its been since the late 90s

ofc the last time they were in this position they were all bankrupt within a decade so you know how that goes

either way none of the domestics are going anywhere until gas goes up and fracking has kicked that can a lot farther down the road than i imagine even the wildest dreamers wouldve dared to dream

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012
Good thing, I prefer to buy Japanese.

Malcolm XML
Aug 8, 2009

I always knew it would end like this.

LastInLine posted:

actually private capital killed chekov

chrysler was owned by cerberus capital management after daimler needed that dumpster fire gone and cerberus had no idea what they were getting into. they thought they could asset strip and kill it but there are far too many laws keeping the auto industry extant and they reluctantly had to keep chrysler alive

they cut every corner they could to make their cars as lovely as possible and in developing new ones they baked in the poo poo deeply. the 2011 jeep grand cherokee was one of the last cerberus chrysler and it was the terrible design of the gear selector that killed chekov (his was a 2015 model)

Lmao jeep is the most profitable brand in FCA and is the one thing keeping them alive after they sold off Ferrari

cerberus failed because Daimler asset stripped Chrysler for their platform: Daimler was in deep poo poo in the 90s and Chrysler had some great platform engineering so they just took that and left Chrysler with trash garbage. cerberus took over in 2007 and guess what happened soon after? they took the bailout to dump the auto arm in 2008 but kept the profitable financial arm and broke even when they sold that

Malcolm XML
Aug 8, 2009

I always knew it would end like this.

Nebakenezzer posted:

If you consider a french-as-hell name Chevrolet is "the heartbeat of America" it fits very well

For a long long time in North America, GM truck ads had Bob Seager's "Like a Rock." I heard the song on an oldies station about a year ago, and GM unintentionally pranked themselves again, because the song is about a old man who's best days are behind him remembering how he used to be

Automotive brands are going though similar problems as retail. Essentially, there are affordable cars, richer cars, and a very large space in-between that used to be gravy for lots of manufacturers, we'll call it 'near-luxury.' A few things have happened in those markets in the past few decades. For one, Lexus (and other Japanese manufacturers) entered the market in a big way. In the 1980s, St. Regan, free market messiah, was very protectionist to the US car market, restricting the Japanese as to how many cars they could import. While not the cause of this move, the Japanese did the rational thing and went upmarket (for better profits on each car.) Lexus in particular when they launched the LS400 was daunting to the old European players, because it was essentially the best car in the world, built with the quality that formerly had been a province of Mercedes-Benz - at two thirds the price of a MB.

So the top guys (ze Germans) lowered their prices (and sometimes their quality) and by the ends of the 1990s had "full lines of vehicles" - IE cars stretching the full length of luxury *and* near luxury.
Meanwhile, the Japanese, Lexus particularly, became really great at offering good value for money on the near luxury market. These two trends basically killed the marginal near luxury marquees: Mitsubishi offered some goddamn car in that line (the Dimante?) as did Mazda (forget its name but it had some very weird, innovative engine in it) Oldsmobile, Saab, and Mercury. Acura has struggled ever since they made a car that was just too good - and then stopped making it. Infiniti exists still because it can bogart stuff from Nissan and Renault. Lincoln because a high trim level on a Ford Expedition after spending two decades as a high trim level on the Ford Crown Victoria.

Anyway, I don't think anybody's getting misty eyed about this. I just want to point out this is very similar to what happened to retail - the marginal players get squeezed out when the market shifts and goes south. Anyway, I'm not trying to troll y'all with tales of creative destruction, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of issues that circle around retail also circle around cars.

The biggest one is will be a shocker to the thread: people not having money to buy cars, which guess what, is concentrated in younger generations. Car makers have been wringing their hands about it since I've been in university: nearly all car buyers are still boomers, and the amount of younger people buying (new) cars keeps declining. They've tried a lot of things over the years, and this has resulted in - Boomers buying hip and kooky cars marketed to young people. The two brands that stick out for me are Scion and Mini. Both in theory targeted "the Youth"; both became hits among the boomers. Now, thanks to the post 2008 economic catasterfuck, there is actually *some* recognition among people that it's not those drat irresponsible youth and their cellphones and their electric music moving them away from cars or "all youth live in trendy urban areas and TF have no need of cars" - it's "oh poo poo these people cannot afford to buy new or used cars anymore, they are too poor."
Obviously it's still mostly a bunch of sundowning handwaving that amounts to "gently caress you got mine" but there is some recognition among younger car enthusiasts (and some even not so young) as to what is up.

Another key factor is - financing. Naturally, because people don't have the money, they can get financing instead. The subprime auto-financing sector has been growing at a pace (if not as a size) like subprime mortgages did before 2008. This continuing of consumption via debt will not be at all familiar to readers of the retail apocalypse

The third is that there are still a lot of vulnerable nameplates and manufacturers. Auto Manufacturing is a very globalized industry, but in a North American context at least, exists can be swift and brutal. Pontiac is dead, Suzuki is gone from North America, Mitsubishi is here only because the head office in Japan refuses to give up (actually if you check out Mitsubishi they went through a hilarious bubble all their own, deficit financing everybody who could fog a mirror, then have their resale values crash when those marks customers couldn't pay.) Honda is actually a bigger company in North America than in Japan, so despite being in a good position, they are surprisingly vulnerable to North America bed-making GBS threads. Mazda is not the dynamo it used to be. GM's remaining brands are actually pretty strong, with the exception of Buick, (another 'near-luxury brand') that will likely take a bullet to the head soon (I think the only reason it survived the 2008 catasterfuck is that Buick is no poo poo big in China.) Everything under FCA should be viewed as vulrenable.

Funny story: Chrysler/Dodge were the hot domestic auto-makers in the late 90s early aughts - so naturally the CEO used this to negotiate a takeover by Mercedes-Benz. He got a huge payoff (along with all of those dumbass financial talking heads talking about what a awe-inspiringly brilliant idea the 'merger' was, much like the Warner Brothers - AOL 'merger'.) Chrysler/Dodge, meanwhile, was mismanaged from that point on. The Germans were hilariously cheap in developing new products for Dodge that didn't synergize with old technology from MB - which on the whole was not a good match for Dodge. MB sold off Chrysler/Dodge for cents on the dollar in the mid-2000s to a venture capital group named Cerberus. They obviously wanted to sell off all the useful assetts and then scrap it, but the 2008 economic catasterfuck derailed that ambition. Dodge declared bankrupty, and quite likely would have been liquidated at this point had the Obama Admin not stepped in with emergency financing. Their rationale was simply that Dodge going Chapter 7 would bankrupt many second tier suppliers, which would like cause GM to liquidate (having also declared bankruptcy) and possibly bankrupt Ford as well.

So the Government arranged a deal that sold Chrysler/Dodge to Fiat. For $1. Really.

Fiat now owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. Since the sale, they've tried to make those brands work for them in a global context, not the least of which means returning Fiat and Alfa Romero to North America. (That's a tale in of itself, but suffice it to say Fiat is actually one of the smaller of the global auto conglomerates and is afraid of Korean and Chinese competition undermining its cheap stuff, which of course is a very big deal for the nation of Italy.) Anyway, Chrysler is exactly the sort of 'near luxury' brand that's going through an extinction event, not to mention Dodge itself, which is well positioned in several products but struggles to be a full line maker. (After years of dog-fuckery by previous owners, Dodge has given up selling small cars.) Ideally, North American products should be sellable in Europe and Asia, etc, and that is a uphill struggle when your best known cars are a full-size pickup, a big minivan, and the car Walter White drove when he fully embraced his villain persona.

PS> Telsa stock value is assessed as the same as Ford - and Telsa doesn't understand how to make cars as well as say, the old Chevy S-10 plant did. Ford's CEO was forced to step down despite earning 10 billion in profit that same year because he didn't do enough to make Ford more like Telsa so there's that aspect as well

most of this is garbage. automakers love the luxury badge engineering (infiniti, Acura, Lexus, audi) since they can reuse the big outlays in platform engineering and then sell the same car for 2-3x the price. audi for example keeps vwag afloat.

Fords ceo stepped down because unless automakers shift hard and fast to dealing with the one two punch of electrification and autonomy they will have a lot of stranded assets. he was a good ceo but the new one is better.

Daimler used Chrysler to turn the flagging Mercedes into a literal money spinner in the 2000s.

they then dumped it when they no longer needed it.

stuffed crust punk
Oct 8, 2004

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Baloogan posted:

im p much a luddite and i use amazon prime

aren't you literally a video game developer

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

This is a truck



So, in the early 1970s America got hit by the first gasoline crisis. At the same time, environmentalism had become a mainstream concern - President Nixon (!) saw this, and wanted to make it solid Republican territory. To that end, the first measures to restrict auto emissions, and to try and encourage the increase fuel economy were enacted. The former, after a shockingly lazy start from domestic automakers, (to the point that Soichiro Honda several times embarrassed the domestic automakers by making their cars emissions compliant after the domestics declared it literally impossible) has been an enormous succsess. Air quality in cities went way up, and last I read, the California standard - SULEV - for tailpipe emissions is 99.99% less than what a late 1960s car would put out.*

This is a car



CAFE, not so much.

CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) was I think initially a well intentioned idea - but one that in the long term did a lot to gently caress up cars in North America. CAFE sets averages for a automaker to meet across its fleet. T Now, the whole idea of the average was to allow automakers to be able to subsidize the gas guzzlers in their lineup by selling more extra efficient cars - a move that basically had to happen because domestic automakers made most of their money from big cars, and if you threw them into the new fuel efficiency pool right away the shock might kill them. he first year it was implemented, it set the CAFE average at 18 MPG. Next year, 19 mpg. CAFE introduced a separate ratings for light trucks that same year, with 17.2 for 2wd trucks, and 15.8 for 4wd. Back in the 1970s, obviously, most people actually drove cars, and the people driving light trucks did so because they used them for stuff, so making such a distinction wasn't unreasonable. But, this of course, created an artificial distinction in light vehicles - and one got to be less fuel efficient than the other.

So guess what happened:



Of course, compared to the barge in the second photo, mileage went up.



The two dramatic upticks in economy naturally happened under twin fuel crises. The downward movement of light trucks in the late 1970s (and the cars going flat) was fuel prices returning to 1970 levels - before the revolution in Iran and the subsequent price spike. The 2008 catasterfuck and the speculation driven energy price spike before it also got economy higher. Looking at that chart, it looks like CAFE saved domestics from their own worst excesses when energy was cheap (Like basically the entire 1990s.) CAFE if we're talking positive also moved gas guzzlers from relatively cheap to mostly expensive. Luxury Trucks, that old familiar blasphemy of the 2000s, were created partially because of CAFE. An expensive gas-guzzler doesn't drive down your average that much, and if it does, it's like having too much money in your wallet: a expensive vehicle with fat margins can easily pay those CAFE fines the law prescribes. And, it becomes another feature to distinguish you from The Poors.

To get back to the switch from cars to trucks, it'd be wrong to say this switch was **entirely** because trucks had easier standards. (I didn't realize this but 4wd trucks hilariously had their own, even softer standard until 1991, when all light trucks were lumped together.) This switch also had to do with the fact that "car" and "truck" had legal definitions, and so by gaming the definition, you could get additional benifits. The Chrysler (formerly Plymouth, a brand so sad I forgot about it in the previous post) PT Crusier is in fact classified as a light truck. Having a modified Neon in your lineup to drive your truck average way up allows you to sell more loaded Dodge Citadels or whatever.

Because of the increasing meaninglessness of the distinction between cars and trucks, CAFE was revised to include a “footprint” formula – basically saying the bigger your size, the less stringent the fuel economy standard you need to have. This was done of course with the input of manufacturers. The result is that tiny, fuel efficient cars, say, have very stringent standards to improve to in the future – but say fullsize trucks have considerably more modest goals. All of this was done under the Obama admin, BTW – in a classic triangulation move, he wanted across the board better fuel efficiency standards, and the domestic manufacturers wanted their businesses protected. The long term 2025 goals are pretty drat ambitious, I admit, but the system they are using to achieve it incentives larger cars (or more precisely, crossovers and SUVs) over smaller ones.

Take small pickups, for example. They do not exist anymore. The last holdout was the old Ford Ranger, which would have incredibly difficult mileage standards to meet in the future. In contrast, the most efferent F-150 is not as efficient as the thrifty version of the Ranger, but under the CAFE footprint, it meets all its goals and then some. Ford is apparently making a new Ranger, and Ford is going to sell it around the world – but not North America.

If you turn back the clock for a minute and imagine a different way of doing things, the flaws in CAFE become obvious. Imagine if the USA did what Europe and to a lesser extent Canada did: after the first energy crisis, install a gasoline tax to send the message the cheap energy days are over. Now Suzuki does what it does everywhere but North America: starts importing some of its cool, very efficient small cars. Then, if you wanted to save on gas, you could – buy the car that saves you gas. It's a direct market incentive, rather then this system designed to protect domestic automakers and their truck production. And it's also very clear that price spikes are actually the most effective way to get fuel economy to increase, as unless that pressure exists, there's no incentive for automakers to spend money on it. (One good thing about that mid-2000 fuel cost increase, as well as the time's expections of 'peak oil' was that lots of new engines and transmissions were engineered by automakers, retiring old designs that sometimes persisted 20-30 years – on the domestic side.)

There's other reasons, of course, why Suzuki probably would not just start importing Kei cars if they could – crash regulations being the biggest one, though how North Americans drive and where they drive are also factors. But if we're talking fuel economy, one more thing:



The Honda CRX (the two seat sport coupe version of the era's Honda Civic) was sold in a special HF, or fuel economy version. Thanks to its small motor (a 1.5L four) and excellent aerodynamics, it got 40 mpg in town and 60-70 on the highway. Now you couldn't do this today, (crash regs would frown on such a lightweight body) but this is normal steel and a completely conventional drivetrain getting that mileage. If you want more fuel economy and are flexible on regulation, it doesn't require moon tech or super-expensive solutions.

Breakfast All Day
Oct 21, 2004

Nebakenezzer posted:

gently caress me the Legend was a bespoke platform as well

of course it was, not a lot of common platforms for longitudinal fwd laying about

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006


this is a great post and all true

youre def. right about the market distortions cafe brings but id take exception only there at the end where you claim that automakers couldnt meet crash regs and stay lightweight. id argue that it is possible to stay lightweight and meet regs theres just no incentive to do so. the new miata is almost the same weight as the original and is obviously a much safer car but mazda knows that a miata buyer cares about weight whereas no one in a fwd compact sedan has any idea how much it weighs or cares. they will however care if it takes 13 seconds to reach highway speeds so the tradeoff is always toward more power than the car needs carrying more weight than it needs (and ofc playing the classification game you detailed)

the fact is that gas is too cheap for americans to care about fuel economy and every incentive is to trade off against it when it comes to size, power, type of vehicle, etc and if anyone did build a fuel efficient car in the vein of the crx hf or the geo metro it wouldnt sell for poo poo

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

LastInLine posted:

the fact is that gas is too cheap for americans to care about fuel economy and every incentive is to trade off against it when it comes to size, power, type of vehicle, etc and if anyone did build a fuel efficient car in the vein of the crx hf or the geo metro it wouldnt sell for poo poo

This is true without a doubt

Though, horrible story, I remember reading on CNN around 2008 that there was somebody fixing up and "flipping" Geo Metros

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006

Nebakenezzer posted:

This is true without a doubt

Though, horrible story, I remember reading on CNN around 2008 that there was somebody fixing up and "flipping" Geo Metros

id buy a metro in good condition without blinking esp. a convertible

a bit of trivia: those have a load weight limit of 388 lbs or about 1.5 americans

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

LastInLine posted:

id buy a metro in good condition without blinking esp. a convertible

a bit of trivia: those have a load weight limit of 388 lbs or about 1.5 americans

The convertible is legit cool now

Also, just FYI, this thread may interest you

C. Everett Koop
Aug 18, 2008

LastInLine posted:

a bit of trivia: those have a load weight limit of 388 lbs or about .5 americans

fyp

life is a joke
Mar 7, 2016
The last mall I went to was probably 5 years ago, long after malls started dying, and the place was bustling at all hours. It looks like it's doing pretty good just by doing a quick search on google, maybe some malls are ok? I'm going back to MA in a few days, maybe I'll check out old Square One Mall for old times sake - I've watched so many of that dudes vids that I'm afraid every mall is a desolate hellscape.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

life is a joke posted:

The last mall I went to was probably 5 years ago, long after malls started dying, and the place was bustling at all hours. It looks like it's doing pretty good just by doing a quick search on google, maybe some malls are ok? I'm going back to MA in a few days, maybe I'll check out old Square One Mall for old times sake - I've watched so many of that dudes vids that I'm afraid every mall is a desolate hellscape.

Canada has the same credit fueled overabundance of retail space, just like half of what America has. I've been to square one, tho, and it has an enormous theater and is a huge bus terminal besides.

Speaking of GTA malls, I think Yorkdale has managed the crunch by focusing on markets that still sell - in Yorkdale's case, clothing for richers

ClassActionFursuit
Mar 15, 2006

Nebakenezzer posted:

The convertible is legit cool now

Also, just FYI, this thread may interest you

lol yeah id drive an autozam az-1 but there are far more people wanting one than ever were made

life is a joke posted:

The last mall I went to was probably 5 years ago, long after malls started dying, and the place was bustling at all hours. It looks like it's doing pretty good just by doing a quick search on google, maybe some malls are ok? I'm going back to MA in a few days, maybe I'll check out old Square One Mall for old times sake - I've watched so many of that dudes vids that I'm afraid every mall is a desolate hellscape.

idk about every town but where i am which is a decent sized city in the midwest there used to be like seven malls and now there are two that are busy three that are empty but open and two that have been torn down and replaced with an open air shopping plazas that seem to be doing alright. id imagine thats typical and every city big enough for you to have heard of has at least one mall that still has people in it

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye



ate shit on live tv
Feb 15, 2004

by Azathoth
I like that turret.

BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy
i live near a mall built in 1980 that is kinda interesting. vintage.

https://localwiki.org/denton/Golden_Triangle_Mall

almost went bankrupt a few years ago, got bought out by some developers who put $30 million into it. i actually go to that mall because there's a pretty decent pizza place (the food court consists of two vendors, pizza and chinese) and a new local business from a french couple who sell macarons and coffee. a bit pricey but good.

otherwise it's a mix of clothing retailers that have managed to stay afloat, barnes & noble, an H&M, a sears that (i'm told) does surprisingly well (for sears), and a jumble of cell phone accessory junk stores, massage, and so on. some guy has a store that just sells retro video game stuff. still got a troika of jcpenney, macy's and dillard's. small movie theater.

a couple of things they do is only pipe local musicians through the speakers, and they rotate the stores around, like a ... mind game on the customers.

Volcott
Mar 30, 2010

People paying American dollars to let other people know they didn't agree with someone's position on something is the lifeblood of these forums.
Why would you name a mall after the place that grows half of Asia's opium.

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BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy
they say it's a nickname for DFW but i've never heard it used that way outside the context of this mall

maybe some 70s-era term used by big 'bidness in town still nursing a hangover after the JFK assassination

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