Five Issues for 2006
The Auto Industry Looks to Put a Difficult 2005
In the Rearview Mirror, But Challenges Await
December 19, 2005; Page D2
As the year winds down, it's customary to look back and reflect on the events of the past 12 months.
Well, forget about that. At least in Detroit, the attitude about 2005 is, "Thank God that's over." So in the spirit of keeping the gear selector in Drive instead of Reverse, here's a look at five issues auto-industry watchers will be watching in 2006.
GM: COMEBACK KID, OR OFF TO PALOOKAVILLE?
General Motors made a mess of 2005 in the U.S. from the beginning, starting the year burdened with too many unsold cars and trucks, and a bushel basket of unrealistic business expectations.
The wheels came off the company's North American auto business in the first quarter as rising gas prices accelerated a slump in large sport-utility-vehicle sales, and the company's been all over the road ever since. Its effort to put the spotlight on new models was overwhelmed by the Employee Discounts For Everyone summer sales promotion and subsequent sales collapse. Drumbeats of doom on Wall Street -- where a senior analyst from Standard & Poor's said last week it's no longer far-fetched to think GM could seek bankruptcy-court protection to shed its massive healthcare and pension burdens -- haven't helped sell cars, either.
What's surprising in light of all this is that GM executives, starting with Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner, sounded cautiously upbeat about the coming year during conversations at a holiday reception last Thursday.
Mr. Wagoner was careful not to make predictions of returning to profitability. But he and other GM executives sketched out a scenario in which things get a lot better than they were in 2005. For starters, GM isn't planning to repeat the crash effort to cut a glut of overstocked vehicles, which GM executives say forced the company to cut production by some 250,000 vehicles -- representing a roughly $6 billion hit to revenue.
Second, GM executives expect that during the first part of 2006, they'll be building and shipping a lot of their new, large SUVS, such as the re-engineered and restyled Escalade and Chevy Tahoe. That should be a lot better for the bottom line than slashing production.
Third, North American marketing chief Mark LaNeve says he's ready to go on the offensive in the large-SUV market, with ads that will call out Toyota for selling a large SUV with worse gas mileage than the new Tahoe. Overall, Mr. LaNeve said he's determined in 2006 to stick to his strategy of promoting GM's much-improved vehicles and boosting the images of GM's brands instead of succumbing again to corporate-wide giveaway programs.
GM executives were optimistic in late 2004, too. And the company faces a list of problems too long and daunting to repeat here. But if GM can get its U.S. sales-and-marketing act together, and not resort to fire sales and huge rebates to move metal, no one will be happier than rival auto makers.
FUEL ECONOMY
The post-Katrina surge that pushed gasoline prices briefly above $3 a gallon changed the debate about fuel economy in the auto business. The coming year will show whether that change is long-lasting.
Japanese auto makers such as Honda and Toyota have long traded on a reputation for making more-fuel-efficient cars. Detroit's auto makers, with their near-constant griping about federal fuel-economy standards and their reliance on big SUVs, allowed themselves to get painted as fuel-efficiency knuckleheads.
This year and next will offer a live-action test of whether American consumers are prepared to vote with their wallets in a big way in favor of more-efficient cars and trucks. Toyota plans to start ramping up production of gas-electric hybrid Camry sedans, aiming to sell 30,000 or so. Ford will be pushing ahead with plans to expand its hybrid lineup, and GM by late 2007 is expected to launch gas-electric versions of its large SUVs. In the interim, GM plans to offer a version of the Saturn Vue with a so-called "mild hybrid" system that improves fuel economy by 15% to 20%.
The big question for 2006: Will hybrids that look like ordinary cars start to sell? Or are hybrids a niche -- a status symbol for people who want the world to know that they are technology-forward Greens?
The Toyota Prius, which advertises itself as a high-tech marvel with its distinctive design, has been a sell-out smash. But certain other hybrids, notably the gas-electric Honda Accord, have been comparatively sluggish sellers.
"The next two years will be interesting," says GM's Mr. Wagoner. "More people will have more sizes and shapes of hybrids."
LUXURY CARS GO BOOM
Luxury-vehicle sales have been outpacing the broader market for some time, and that boom is likely to continue. Why? Because luxury-car makers are broadening their model ranges, says Jim Hall, a vice president at automotive-consulting company AutoPacific. For example, he cites the forthcoming U.S. version of the BMW 1-series compact, now sold in Europe as a hatchback priced below the 3-series lineup. For the U.S., Mr. Hall says the car will be offered as a coupe that will stir a chord among people who remember the classic BMW 2002. (BMW hasn't said when the U.S. will get its 1-series, but the smart money's on 2007.) There also will be more cars offered at prices above $100,000.
SWARMS OF SMALL CARS
The success of the Mini and Scion will inspire more car makers to offer more comparatively small cars in the U.S. market. Toyota is gearing up a version of its Yaris small car, sold in Europe and Asia, to replace the unsuccessful Echo in its lineup. Honda plans to launch an Americanized version of its Fit subcompact. Nissan will get into the act with its Versa, which slots in below the Sentra in size and price. BMW's Mini brand, which helped launch this wave of small-car enthusiasm, will expand its lineup. GM's Chevrolet division will push to expand sales of its Korean-made Aveo.
"Every manufacturer wants pocket image cars," says AutoPacific's Mr. Hall, calling the Mini and Scion wakeup calls for other auto makers.
The difference between today's sub-subcompacts and the small cars of the 1970s: "These could be small cars that aren't cheap," he says.
SUVS: ARE THEY THE NEW MINIVANS?
This has been a tough year for what auto makers call "traditional" sport-utility vehicles -- SUVs that ride on rail frames and suspensions adapted from pickup trucks. Ford, which rode the SUV boom of the 1990s to record profits, now projects that in 2006 sales of traditional SUVs such as the Ford Explorer will be surpassed by sales of so-called crossovers -- SUVs that are really unitized body cars underneath.
So does this mean Americans have turned against SUVs? Not exactly. Ford sales analyst George Pipas pointed out during a recent presentation to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit that among the new breed of crossovers, the most successful are those that look a lot like an old-fashioned SUV. (Examples are the Lexus RX330 and the Acura MDX.) Ford's own Escape compact crossover leads its segment and looks like the Explorer's little brother. Ford's larger Freestyle crossover looks like a station wagon -- and hasn't been as big a sales success.
AutoPacific's Mr. Hall argues that even the big-SUV market, which has suffered a double-digit sales decline this year, is a long way from dead. He argues that some of the decline in large-SUV sales reflects "deferred purchases" as consumers wait to see how fuel prices sort out.
Long term, GM and other auto makers will field more of what Mr. Hall calls "postmodern SUVs," crossovers that are every bit as big as the large traditional SUVs of yore. To catch a glimpse of one of these, check out the Mercedes R-Class, which is longer than a Cadillac Escalade.
Large SUVs could wind up in the same gallery of the automotive museum as tail fins. But they could also wind up like minivans. Minivans had all the buzz in the late 1980s. Then the buzz faded, consumers told social-trend watchers that minivans bored them rigid, and SUV sales exploded. But for all that, minivans remain a substantial segment of the market, one in which companies such as Honda, Toyota and Chrysler do very well.
汽车业观察人士明年关注的5个问题
岁末将近，人们照例要对过去12个月中的大事小情做一番回顾。唉，这次还是免了吧。至少在底特律，人们对2005年的态度是“往事不堪回首”。
本著将变速档放在“前进档”而非“倒档”位置的精神，这里还是要探究一下汽车业观察人士2006年将关注的5个问题。
通用汽车试图重振雄风
通用汽车(General Motors Corp.)在2005年可谓流年不利，新年伊始即面临著沉重的轿车和卡车库存负担，以及一大堆不切实际的预期。
今年第一季度，不断上涨的汽油价格加速了大型运动型多用途车的滞销势头。通用汽车的员工级折扣夏季促销行动以及随后发生的销售滑坡情况转移了人们对该公司推出新车型的注意。
有鉴于此，通用汽车以董事长兼首席执行长瑞克?瓦格纳(Rick Wagoner)为首的一系列高层管理人士在上周四纷纷对公司来年的前景表示谨慎乐观就有些出人意料了。
瓦格纳小心翼翼地避免对通用汽车明年是否能扭亏为盈一事做出预测。但按照他和通用汽车其他高层管理人士的描述，该公司明年的经营状况将显著好于今年。首先，通用汽车明年将不必像今年那样因削减过量库存汽车而蒙受巨大损失。
其次，通用汽车的管理人士预计，2006年上半年该公司经过改型的Escalade和雪佛兰Tahoe等大型运动型多用途车将大量投产并推向市场。第三，通用汽车的北美营销负责人马克?拉尼夫(Mark LaNeve)说他已做好了重拳出击的准备，该公司将打出广告说，丰田汽车(Toyota)的大型运动型多用途车比新型Tahoe的每英里耗油量要大。
燃料经济性问题
汽油价格在卡特里娜飓风过后飙升至每加仑3美元以上，这一事实改变了汽车行业有关燃料经济性问题的争论。人们明年将看出这一改变是否是长期性的。
本田汽车(Honda Motor Co.)和丰田等日本汽车生产商长期以来一直以生产燃料经济性高的汽车而闻名。而美国三大汽车生产商由于一贯对联邦政府制定的燃料经济性标准抱怨不已，并且在产品结构上过于依赖大型运动型多用途车， 因此他们心甘情愿被人看做是燃料经济性方面的矮子。
从今明两年的车市将看出，美国消费者是否已准备用钱包投票来表达他们对燃料经济性强的轿车和卡车的偏爱。丰田汽车计划大幅增加油电混合动力型佳美(Camry)轿车的产量。福特汽车(Ford Motor Co.)将加紧推进其增加混合动力车型的计划，而通用汽车预计将在2007年底之前推出油电混合驱动的大型运动型多用途车。
2006年的一大问题是：那些在外形上与普通轿车已差别不大的混合动力车会有怎样的市场表现？丰田汽车将其混合驱动的Prius轿车宣传为一个高科技奇迹，这款设计独特的汽车卖得相当好。但其他一些混合动力汽车，尤其是油电驱动的本田雅阁(Honda Accord)，销售情况却并不理想。
豪华轿车热卖
一段时间以来豪华轿车的销售势头一直好于汽车市场的总体表现，这一良好势头预计还会持续下去。原因何在？汽车咨询公司AutoPacific的副总裁吉姆?霍尔(Jim Hall)解释说，这是因为豪华轿车生产商推出了更多车型。
他举即将面市的宝马1系列紧凑型轿车的美国版为例来说明这一现象，这款汽车在欧洲的售价低于宝马3系列轿车。霍尔说，这款车将在对经典的宝马2002型汽车念念不忘的美国消费者中引起共鸣。
小型车大行其道
Mini和Scion这两款汽车在销售上取得的成功将鼓励更多汽车生产商在美国市场推出小型轿车。丰田正在加紧推出其Yaris牌轿车的美国版，以取代市场反响不佳的Echo牌轿车。Yaris牌轿车目前只在欧洲和亚洲出售。本田公司计划推出其Fit牌紧凑型轿车的美国版。日产汽车(Nissan)也将携其Versa牌轿车加入这场角逐。宝马的Mini牌轿车将推出更多车型。通用汽车旗下子公司雪佛兰将把更多它在韩国生产的Aveo牌轿车卖到美国。
运动型多用途车卷土重来
“传统型”运动型多用途车今年一直处境不佳，这种车脱胎于皮卡。在上世纪九十年代借著运动型多用途车的热销而获得了丰厚利润的福特汽车现在预计，福特Explorer等传统型运动型多用途车2006年在销量方面将被所谓交叉型车所超越，这种运动型多用途车使用的是轿车底盘。
大型运动型多用途车有可能像汽车尾翼一样进入汽车博物馆，但它也有可能重复小型货车的命运。小型货车在上世纪八十年代末曾十分畅销，随后它在消费者眼中失去了魅力，代之而起的是运动型多用途车。尽管如此，目前市场上销售的汽车中仍有相当一部分是小型货车。
