Escaping The Dead Zone

The dead zone between mainstream and entry level premium is the automotive equivalent of the friend zone, an area which no brand wants to occupy. You cars are generally nicer than those of regular mainstream brands and correspondingly priced a little higher than the popular competition. Your badge isn't worth much though and therefore your sales aren't that much better than some full price luxury brands. It isn't hard to see that this is not a great recipe for financial windfall for a brand as your profit per each car sold is on the low side and you aren't doing volume either. It's an area that most brands avoid and consequently there are only a few brands that find themselves trapped in this area. Over the past few years the three brands trapped in this area have all made efforts to escape and grow their sales, let's see how well they have done.

Volkswagen: Compact 62%, Midsize 22%, CUV 7% of Market Leader

Volkswagen is the world's best selling brand outside of America by a million or two (literally) and to jumpstart its US operations the brand recently went very mainstream with its core products, the Jetta and Passat. Closest to entry premium of the trio in their last generations there is no denying that both models were cheapened both figuratively and literally as Volkswagen moved down market, cut the price of admission at retail but also made obvious sacrifices to get there. The immediate payoff was fantastic for Volkswagen as the Jetta and Passat posted their best sales ever in a then still recovering marketplace. VW's progress has since stalled against fresh competition even with VW retreating back from most of the ruthless cost cutting. There is hope though as the USDM (and China) Passat is a better effort than the Jetta and its upcoming crossover looks promising to be an even better made for America product. Here's to hoping it arrives while crossovers are still a trend.

USCC Long Beach Thoughts

The Long Beach Grand Prix is the most well known and well attended street race in the US and 2014 was no different with multiple race series filling up a weekend of racing. Saturday in particular is a full day with IndyCar qualifying and the Tudor United Sport Car race. As a big fan of Le Mans style racing I attended the race last year and enjoyed the battles on a crowded street circuit. Even with the merger and the end of the ALMS I had high hopes for this year. Unfortunately this would not be the case as the action this year was exciting but not as good as last year. The 20 car combined prototype and GT field proved too small to fully fill up the entire street circuit which eliminated some of the craziness that multi class racing is best known for. Nevertheless it's always great to see and hear some amazing racing machines up close and you can't get much closer than at a street circuit.

• The equivalence between the Daytona Prototypes and the P2 models might show just a few tenths between the two categories but the P2s were not in contention whatsoever.
• The #3 Corvette checked out early and was in a class of its own miles ahead of the other GT models.
• The C7 Corvette sounds just as fantastic as the C6 did before. The Daytona Prototype Corvettes might sound even angrier and louder though.
• The Skyactiv diesel Mazdas actually sound a bit better than Audi's R18 diesels but are pathetically slow. They look like a quick prototype but couldn't even compete with the GTs. Based on the comments from the crowd the program is negative marketing for Mazda at this point. One managed to blow up within five minutes.