Quote:
Originally Posted by BlkGS
It has nothing to do with MQB, it has been going that way for a long time.
GM used to be the kings of badge engineering, and while the press gave them a lot of crap for it, it made a lot of money. The GMT360 is a great example, on that platform was the Trailblazer, the Envoy, the Rainier, the 9-7x, the Ascender, and the Bravada. Same exact chassis underneath, two lengths, same motors and transmissions, and largely similar bodies. They sold the ever loving crap out of it turning huge profits.
Now say you're looking at a high risk, low reward segment, like say the entry level sports coupe like GT86. A bespoke platform that for something that will sell a couple thousand units a year will never pay for itself. But if you can partner with Subaru, split the costs, well now you're looking at a ROI being possible. Same for BMW and the Z4/Supra.
That sort of thing works so well, so why not do it for something that's mass market with increasingly slim margins like a compact SUV? Rogue and Outlander are already clones, I would expect the next gen CRV to be jointly developed too.
Here's the thing, it's not about profits. It's about margin %. The cokeheads on Wall St don't understand that as long as something is profitable it's worth doing, they see it as "not as profitable as other activities" and so see it as a negative. That's why enthusiast cars and economy cars are so rare now, the bean counters try to position their portfolios to only have high margin products, because the Wall St types see that as an improvement in profitability of operations, because their margin % is up. So a sports car that has say, 15% margin looks bad to them if they're looking at midsize SUvs and trucks with average margins of 30%, that still profitable sports car drags down their average margin, and so the coked up analysts that know nothing about actually running a business talk about how the company is struggling with profitability and blah blah blah.
It's a sad state, our financial sector wields too much power despite being largely full of nepo babies and morons.
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Agree mostly, but using your Zupra example, BMW was financially successful with the Z3, E85/86 Z4, and the E89 Z4. I never read anywhere they lost money on any of those models. Each was platform shared with the prevailing 3 series of the era. Yet, the Zupra had to be shared with Toyota (as well as Toyota and Subaru for the GT86 twins).
I still think MQB is a major factor and a level past GM's (and others) platform sharing. And platform sharing killed Cadillac and Lincoln, IMO.