Quote:
Originally Posted by Tcoat
You guys really need to stop thinking that this forum (or any sportscar one for that matter) represents "most people".
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It certainly doesn't represent "most people." But the fact that they imported more autos just supports what we're saying. When I went to test drive my car, the salesmen were talking about how they couldn't move the autos, but the manuals they got were practically driving themselves off the lot. There were too many autos and too few manuals for the unusual demand mix for this car. It could be that there was still a higher demand for autos than manuals, but still not enough manuals to meet the higher manual demand than they were expecting.
And although I haven't tried to buy one lately, I suspect that's still the case in the used market. If that's true, then it would be more difficult to unload an automatic, because there are simply more of them out there to choose from. If I'm in the market for an automatic, and there are 5 of them out there for every buyer who wants an auto, it's going to be more difficult to sell than if there's only 1 manual for every manual buyer. Those 5 automatic sellers are going to have to compete on price to keep that one buyer from just buying someone else's car, whereas the 1 manual seller has a lot more power in the negotiation. Even if you have 5 automatic buyers looking at 5 automatic cars for sale, they still have somewhere else to go in a weird musical chairs game, whereas that one manual buyer doesn't. It's either buy this car at this price or don't.
That's oversimplifying it, but it illustrates the point. There may not be a higher demand for manuals than automatics, but there is a higher demand
than usual for manuals, which the manufacturer didn't build for. That should make the manual at least a little bit easier to sell.