Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Detroit knows. The buyers are clueless.

So do the customers go for the $5000 cash rebate, seeing that as gas money? ( I'm guessing, not yet.) Do the sub-compacts, the gas mizers all of a sudden find a bigger audience? (I'm guessing the sales are down all across the board except for the luxury cars .)
The tax cuts that came on stream got squandered last month on those damn bedding plants forcing consumers to carry home the loot in the old car. So sad.

> The buyers are clueless.

Agreed. I mentioned to my mother-in-law last week that 90% of the cars advertised on TV are SUVs, pickups or luxury models: the ones, of course, with the most dizzying range to choose from, and with the highest markup for the dealer.

My guess is that someone wanting a Mini, or a Prius, or a Focus -- or, you know, a 'normal-sized' car -- already has a model in mind. Throw that in with the fact that the markups on said models are relatively small by comparison, and you can imagine the wailing and tears from dealers forced to sell something that doesn't have a 5L engine and run at 12MPG.

But if it's a choice between overweight or obese -- and again, pickups and SUVs are advertised far more than minivans, presumably because the kind of people who buy minivans are also less likely to be dazzled by commercials -- the choice is abundant, and the cream to be skimmed is plenty.

I'm not surprised that the model names become a blur. 'Get me a Suburban Yukon Expedition': sums up SUV culture, really.

> Do the sub-compacts, the gas mizers all of a
> sudden find a bigger audience?

I think it takes some time for a new price level to fully sink in because it might always just be volatility. The used car statistics do show compact cars holding their values better than midsize and midsize better than full size. (SUVs prices have been holding up well until just recently).

The fact that gasoline is getting all this media attention and that Toyota now runs commercials advertising their MPG is going to raise the level of awareness of this aspect of the vehicle buying decision. Many buyers probably would forget to or be unable to factor in the cost of gas even at the old price and never even thought to factor in the risk that a large SUV could become very expensive to drive and lose resale value. Some recent news articles on this topic have quoted recent large SUV buyers as having to limit their driving and regretting their purchase.

Isn't Denali an anagram of denial? "Wheels within wheels sahib".

There must be a joke here about SUV's, the Yukon and drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. I can only get as far as pointing in its general direction.

Yeah, well, "Dodge Ram" is one the biggest oxymorons of all time.

Yeah, well, it's still a killer badass name. I defer to the wisdom of Zippy the Pinhead:

YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI YUKON XL DENALI

I don't have time to comment right now - I am going to go down and pick out a new Yukon Denali XL and save a bunch of money and help the economy and make our country more fuel efficient with a new clean burn engine built to handle it.

I wonder if they have an armored version - I might take a drive to the mid-east.

I am so excited that there is a great deal going on now!

nick writes:
> My guess is that someone wanting a Mini, or a Prius, or a
> Focus -- or, you know, a 'normal-sized' car -- already has a
> model in mind.

Neither a Mini nor a Prius does much for a family of four. So if you don't like SUVs, would prefer to buy a car, but have tall kids, you might well *not* have a model in mind. Ironically enough, the closest thing we could find recently to our dream car (which is I guess a 1997 Accord station wagon that's been in a time warp) was a Chevy Malibu Maxx. The gods love to insult us in this way, I guess. (More seriously: if anybody here knows of anything station-wagony that has more leg room than our Subaru, isn't either on high springs or more than $25K new and gets something like 25 mpg combined, I'd be thrilled to hear what I've missed.)

Jonathan,

Take a look at a 2005 Ford Focus wagon with the 2.3 litre PZEV engine. I believe it meets your stated qualifications.

The 2004 Prius is a mid size car, not a compact, not a mini. In fact, it is in the same class as a Rolls Royce. A family of four would fit comfortably in a Prius.

I used to haul my fam of four around in a Honda wagon (when they were really small). No problem. But then I guess "needs" have changed.

We all seem to "need" all this space. But then, we don't "need" to do anything about global warming. That's for someone else to worry about.

More on the Prius from Motor Trend

At 106.3 inches, the wheelbase of the 2004 Prius is six inches longer than the previous model's and just an inch shorter than the full-size Toyota Avalon's. Passenger room has climbed from just under 89 cubic feet in the old Prius to more than 96 in the 2004 edition; the Prius is so spacious, it's now classified as a midsize sedan. Five adults can fit comfortably, with more than 16 cubic feet of cargo room left over in back. The 60/40 split rear seats also can be folded flat, creating a cavernous cargo hold under the rear hatch.

Check out the specs of the Prius vs. the Focus. The Prius has more room in every category except rear headroom and rear shoulder room. And those differences seem trivial.

Focus:
Headroom 39.1/39.8 In.
Leg Room (Front/Rear) 40.7/37.6 In.
Hip Room (Front/Rear) 49.4/50.7 In.
Shoulder Room (Front/Rear) 53.5/53.6 In.
Standard Seating 5
Front Side Airbag Optional
Side Head Curtain Airbags Not Available

Prius

Standard Seating 5
Optional Seating No data
Front Headroom (in.) 39.10
Rear Headroom (in.) 37.10
Front Legroom (in.) 41.90
Rear Legroom (in.) 38.60
Front Shoulder Room (in.) 55.30
Rear Shoulder Room (in.) 53.00
Front Hip Room (in.) 51.00
Rear Hip Room (in.) 51.60

I love the Ford X series (Excursion, Explorer, Expedition, ...) and I'm waiting to buy the Ford Extinction when it comes out!

Even with the $5,000 cash rebates, buyers will probably still be wasting $10,000 or more due to the SUV profit margin.

I love it when people deride the purchase of a hybrid, saying that you pay a premium for the hybrid, and you probably won't save enough on gas to recoup the premium.

How long, exactly, does it take to recoup the premium on an SUV?

The NY Times a while back had a little feature about a 16 year old girl in Colorado who was given a Cadillac Escalade by her father as her first car.

WTF?

try the aerio by suzuki

"Do they know that Denali is not in the Yukon? "

If I recall correctly, GM focus-tested the name "Yosemite" for this model.

And - under the heading of
'Never underestimate the ignorance of the American public' -
GM found that despite 100 years of the national park, and despite 60-some years of "Yosemite Sam" - the American public is generally unfamilair with (and unable to pronounce!) the word "Yosemite".

So they called it the "Yukon".

The only problem with the 2004 Prius is, they're not available. If you want one, be prepared to wait five months or more.

Jonathan - try the base or mid-line version of the new Dodge Magnum. Just a touch larger than the Maxx, cool styling, decent milage. (Even the 340 HP (!!)(not kidding) V8 version gets 25+ highway!) Base version stickers at $22K, mid line with slightly larger six-cyl is $25K.

They know that it's not in the Yukon but they're in Denial.

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

The Prius I had really not even considered. I doubt that it's really big enough for me to be comfortable in the back seat, though. The only thing that mini-SUVs have convinced me of is that higher seating and head-room is a Very Good Thing since it does a good job of substituting for added length. So a Scion xB seems more likely for this reason. Also, the Prius is pretty expensive and not easy to get around here.

The Focus is on our list of things to try. As a historically unreliable Ford product, however, I am skeptical.

A Suzuki Anything is unlikely to be our dream car. If you read my description, that was something like a Honda Accord wagon of the late 90s.

Dodge Magnums are not available yet in our area, they are a brand new model from Chrysler, and they are more expensive than most cars we would consider. To put it another way, if a Magnum and a Mazda6 wagon were the same price, I could only go for the Dodge if it there was something truly spectacular about the Magnum that isn't clear from the description.

Again, I was completely surprised by the fact that the Malibu Maxx was the best (quietest decent-sized reasonable mileage car) we have tried so far. And I swear that if Toyota had put the thing out, they'd sell a million per year. The thing that frustrates me is that the Camry (or Accord) wagon really were out there, really did sell well, and really were pulled from the American market apparently because people either preferred or would settle for an SUV. A Maxx is *not* a small car, certainly not an underpowered car, and not an uncomfortable car, but it gets better gas mileage better than like 90% of all SUVs and is cheaper too. It's far from my ideal, but a lot better than most things out there.

I barely follow car evolution, but isn't there a nice Volvo wagon and an excellent looking Audi wagon? Those seem like good Subaru wagon substitutes.