Lexus is a the luxury brand to Toyota. People who buy a lexus expect to pay a premium to buying a Toyota.
Most people who go to buy a Toyota aren’t looking to shell out $60-70k. Most people who are looking to spend $60-70k aren’t walking into a Toyota dealership.
The current ‘22 Seqouia and earlier years arent that cheap to begin with. Base trim at $50k with the Platinum trim starting at around $65k. Who’s buying them? Not a lot of people is the answer. And Toyota like you mentioned is a better quality car that’ll last you longer. But people don’t seem to care.
Sure Chevy isn’t looked at as a premium luxury brand, but Tahoe/Suburban and Yukons are practically a brand within themselves because they’ve just owned this segment of the full size car market for so long. And you can argue the Denali is a brand within itself for Yukons.
Does a facelift to the Toyota to make it look like a Tahoe or Yukon mean they’re going to start selling them hand over fist? Not at $60k plus MSRP they’re not. At the end of the day the brand doesn’t speak for that price range. The sales numbers (or lack thereof) will prove I’m right.
Same thing with the Wagoneer. Or the Grand Wagoneer. Good luck trying to get enough people to spend $100k on one of those things where it makes sense you can produce them every year. How
Many Grand Wagoneers do you think they’ll sell in all of 2023?
Hard to predict in 2023, but we can take a look at 2021 and 2022 numbers.
For the Cadillac Escalade, these figures include
both the standard and extended length wheel base for the entire calendar year. I haven't come across 2022 figures for GM yet.
2020 (pre update) - 24,500 units
2021 - 40,500 units
GM has never sold more than 43,000 units of the Escalade per year.
For the Grand Wagoneer, these figures only include standard length wheel base as the extended length wheel base models are a 2023 model.
2021 Q4 - 2,585 units
2022 Q1 - 3,169 units
The way I read these figures is that even just after starting production and deliveries and not yet offering an extended wheel base model, I wouldn't be surprised if we see the total 2022 production finish with at least 10,000 units, or 25% or more of Cadillac Escalade sales.
Also, the take rate of the long wheel base Grand Wagoneer will be remarkably high in the segment because there are only a few options since manufacturers really need a 1/2 ton pickup chassis to base an extended wheel base full size SUV off of.
I think by 2023, Stellantis will be selling a combination of at least 6,000 units of the short wheel base and long wheel base Grand Wagoneer combined per quarter or 24,000 units per year which is sizable.
Also, Toyota has been selling every single new Tundra they've been producing and it's a decent bit more expensive compared to the outgoing Tundra.
Maybe it’s geographical, because I don’t know anyone who has a “backup” car in case the primary car goes down.
insurance gives you a rental to get by with if you ever get in an accident. Or if you lease a car and it goes down you typically get a loaner.
Like I said, you’re not a common buyer because you’ll wait years for the right situation to upgrade. 3-5 years is crazy to me. Sure I’d hate to have to pay MSRP when I know I can get it for $5k cheaper if I wait 2-3 years…but then again I’ll be a happy guy those 2-3 years driving the car I want opposed to be the guying driving a clunker waiting for the time to strike.
It really depends on whether you know what you're doing and how to repair/maintain your car. If you're like the average clueless car owner, then yes, your car will become a decaying pile of shit after 5 years. My track beater is a 2014 335i with 150,000 miles on the odometer with many of those miles being hard track miles. It feels as if it were new. In fact, if you drove it, you would never think there were that many miles on the car. But the cars that I care about are garaged. If your car sits outside or is parallel parked overnight in an urban area, yes, expect a 2 year old car to look like a worn down 10 year old piece of junk. You're paying the unofficial city tax right there.
