Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshoobaroo
Sadly, sports cars under $80k are just not popular enough anymore to fund development by one company. The only ones that sell enough to do so as the Mustang and Camaro, which aren't even sports cars really.
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Two or three years ago I read a really good article about Mustangs, Camaros and Challengers in one of my trade magazines (yes actual paper). It broke down why they are so popular and made so much sense. The reasons that the American Pony cars continue to be inexpensive and flood the market are pretty obvious when viewed over the big picture.
The numbers are as close as my memory allows but should be at least reasonably accurate. All three makes were within such close margins that they can be lumped into one without skewing things to badly. Keep in mind the data would have been from 2014 0r 15 but it probably hasn't changed much since the same applies back to the late 60s..
Top trim performance models
Approx. 3% of production
Sold at a loss if not dealer marked up
Majority of buyers are 40 to 60 year old males in professional positions
Entry level performance models
Approx. 30% of production
Sold at a margin of 2 to 4% but frequently discounted for deals
Majority of buyers 20 to 30 year old males in entry level professional or technical positions
Base models (with some added packages)
Approx. 67% of production!!!!!
Sold at a margin of 5%+
Majority of buyers 20 to 50 year old females in all types of occupations
So, when people look at these cars, only see the top end performance versions and don't even notice all those base models running around they miss the point of what is actually keeping them on the market. If people stopped buying the base the whole lineup would be gone in a flash since there would no longer be the income to warrant building the performance ones.
The lack of sub $80K sports cars is a direct result of not having a dozen or so versions of the same car to reach across a broad enough range of demographics to bring the numbers up. In the past many sports versions of cars shared a platform with one or more appliance level models and this kept costs down but this has pretty much died out with dedicated platforms for sports and shared for everything else (yes there are exceptions). Al this leads to is that companies need to do joint ventures in order to keep costs reasonable. Even that isn't a new thing though.
The other thing is that even those listed "Pony" cars are all plummeting in sales numbers over the last two years. The general public is just losing interest in them and performance cars in general.