Quote:
Originally Posted by Magic Bus
Using the information below and if you were the owner of a car manufacturing company. What direction would you choose for your new 2 seat sports coupe?
2015 US car sales:
Nissan 370Z - 6,529
FRS - 9,314
MX5 Miata - 7,153 (1,000+ a month for last 4 months, probably due to new design, sales 300 or under prior months)
Nissan Juke - 23,266
Porsche Cayman - 3,064
Corvette - 28,924
If you choose to compete in the inexpensive, small/light, lower powered segment. The 8 year old 370Z is already doing a decent job against the FRS & Miata.
Notice the Juke sales basically equals 370Z, FRS & Miata combined. Nissan may have cancelled the IDX because it feared that this market was too small for another car and/or it would have just taken it's own sales away from the Juke.
I'd opt for the V6TT 400 or higher hp Z and try to keep the price point and weight as close to the current Z as possible. As I mentioned earlier, you'd still at the very least retain your existing sales. Plus you'll steal some from the other small/light competitors and this gives you a real shot of taking a chunk sales from the largest seller in the 2 seat category, the Corvette. Whether you're a big fan of it or not, horsepower does not hamper car sales one bit.
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FRS/BRZ was an engineer attempt at that. don't get me wrong, i see a lot on the road. they're neat little cars but after the honeymoon period the sales started falling off.
handles great? sure.
aesthetically appealing? sure.
got balls? not really. my cousin has the brz, he floored it and we zipped along. sure he can chirp is prius tires in third but it just didn't have the vroom vroom i like. the 2nd gear felt a bit limp.