Next year may be your last chance to buy an American car.
Not the brand. The type.
Arguably, there is only one company still selling American cars. Big, rear-wheel-drive cars with nothing smaller than a V6 under the hood – without a big price. Or at least a price that average Americans can still manage.
That company is – was – FiatChrysler. Which company just merged with a French car company, Peugot, that specializes in small-engined, small cars.
And electric cars.
Peugot just announced something foreboding, if you can read between the lines – and if you are a Deplorable who esteems big, big-engined non-electric American cars like the Chrysler 300, the Dodge Charger and Challenger.
These three (and they’re basically one – because they share a common platform) sell well even though they are old. In fact, they probably sell well because they are old. And are the apotheosis of what’s new . . . like the current crop of being forced-down-our-throats small-engined and electric cars that couldn’t do a burnout without the assistance of a JATO rocket.
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The last major update of the 300/Charger/Challenger platform happened more than a decade ago, when it was still feasible to build American cars – and sell them to average Americans. Today, it is possible to build cars that are similar to American cars in layout – large, rear-drive and available with big engines. But they come with a luxury car badge.
And a big price – which most Americans can’t afford.
This price reflects the cost of low production/high margins – as opposed to mass production and low margins.
And the cost of compliance.
It is very difficult to build lots of big cars with big engines and sell them at modest prices to lots of people because of Uncle’s fuel-efficiency billy stick, which punishes any car company that dares to build big-engined big cars with “gas guzzler” taxes. These taxes are designed to make big cars with big engines harder to sell to lots of people, because most people haven’t got lots of money to spend on cars.
A luxury-car company like Mercedes can make a go of selling 800 or so S-Class sedans (on average) per month because MB can charge – and get – six figures (to start) for each S-Class.
Low production – high margin.
