mr peters tells you why trucks are doomed and it will make the motherwefers quite happy; 

 

Gas prices aren’t quite yet as high as they were back in 2008 – which was just before GM went bankrupt and Ford nearly did, too. But what happens when they do get there?

Well, probably what happened back in ’08 – again.

GM and Ford are more dependent now than they were back then on the on the profits earned via the sale of trucks and SUVs, especially the big ones. Because they hardly sell anything else. Back in ’08, GM and Ford still sold a fair number of cars – including models low and middle income people could afford, such as the Cobalt and Impala (GM) and the Focus and Taurus (Ford) as well as affordable, compact-sized trucks, such as the old Ranger (Ford) and S-10 (GM). Those are all gone now, leaving fleets of crossovers and trucks and SUVs to sell.

The profit margin on a Cadillac Escalade is north of $20,000 per sale. It is easy to understand why there’s so much money in the sale of an Escalade when you understand that an Escalade – which has a base price of  $91,100 – is essentially a rebadged, reskinned and luxed-up Chevy Tahoe, which has a base price of $60,700. Do you think there’s $30k of “added value” in the Escalade?

There’s also a lot of profit-per-sale in the Tahoe, which is a basically simple vehicle as far as new vehicles go. It has a lot of electronica, it’s true. But behind the glowing touchscreen there’s just a Tahoe – which is just a body-on-frame SUV with a relatively simple (pushrod, two-valve) V8 engine. To get some sense of this – of how much money there is in this – the 2021 Tahoe’s base price was $48,000 and there is very little meaningful difference between a 2021 Tahoe and a 2026 Tahoe. For that matter, between a 2026 Tahoe and and a 2016 Tahoe that listed for $37,280. Yes, inflation. There is that. But it also more than just that. These big SUVs and trucks are – literally – where the money (profit) is..........more..........