A Good Start

Via Suburban Guerilla, this good news:

John Mathews of Universal Toyota in San Antonio has witnessed the day that auto industry executives in Detroit said would never come.

"We are seeing people who are driving $40,000 Suburbans trading them in on $15,000 Corollas," said Mathews, who manages a dealership in a state where big trucks and sport-utility vehicles rule the roads. "The last 30 days have been unlike anything I've ever seen in the automotive industry."

Even in hurricane-addled Alabama, people pouring in from Louisiana and Mississippi are popping into Treadwell Honda looking for replacements for destroyed cars. Harold Wesley, a salesman, in the midst of fielding calls last week, said he can't keep Civics on the lot -- new or used. "As soon as the new ones get here, they are sold." Wesley said the manufacturer is allocating dealers a few at a time to be fair. Treadwell's last shipment of 12 sold in three days, he said.

Nationally, Toyota Motor Corp. officials say the Corolla, one of the Japanese company's smallest and most fuel-efficient passenger cars, had 8.7 days' supply of inventory at the end of last week. In the industry, inventory of 50 to 60 days' supply is seen as adequate. Honda Motor Co. officials are struggling to keep up with demand for the Civic, of which there is nine days' supply. "Inventories are as low or lower than they've ever been for the Civic," said Sage Marie, a Honda spokesman. "They're basically being bought right off the truck."...

Healy and other analysts are predicting bleak results for Detroit automakers when they report sales results for September on Monday. Healy said large sport-utility vehicles will be especially hard-hit after climbing in the summer due to "employee pricing for everyone" discount pricing sales. "We're looking at 20, 30, 40 percent yearly declines," Healy said. The spike in gasoline prices and the summer incentives have crushed SUV sales now.

Meanwhile, Billmon points out this idiocy from General Motors:

General Motors is pinning its turnaround on a series of new full-sized SUVs -- the very models whose sales have fallen as gas prices have climbed. GM previewed the redesigned Chevrolet Tahoe and several other 2007 models last week.

As Billmon says, "...we're not talking about prudent corporate planners; we're talking about General Motors -- the same company that, at various points over the past 40 years, has bet heavily on the proposition that U.S. consumers would never buy cars made in Japan, that quality didn't matter because nobody kept a new car that long anyway, that safety could never be marketed because people don't like to think about car crashes, that the federal government would never impose auto emission standards because it would destroy the economy, and that sending private detectives to poke through Ralph Nader's garbage was a really smart way to discredit Unsafe at Any Speed."

Meanwhile, Japanese carmakers are ramping up production of small, efficient cars for the North American market.

Survival of the fittest strikes again, I guess.