u/STLA-nonymous

I will be the first to shit on STLA, but this seems like a fantastic plan.

That is all.

While I'm not going to divulge company details, I'm seeing the same general strategy of dropping big engines into expensive vehicles in the pipeline.

Sure, this lazy strategy worked a decade ago, but with $4/gal gas and American spending power tanking, our middle class customer base is getting further alienated from our vehicles. When our above median income salaries plus corporate discounts still leave our vehicles unaffordable, I don't know what that means for us.

I recently rented a cheap Kia K4 that got 30/40 MPG, had lane centering and Android Auto/Apple Carplay, all while being just $23k. The whole time I drove it, I was thinking to myself that there is no way we'd be able to do this. It was fantastic for a city car.

IMO, we don't know how to design low-profit vehicles, so all we do is throw the kitchen sink at our product lineup and use the $70k MSRP as a buffer for inefficient engineering and product planning. We should actually try to make an affordable mass-market car instead of half-assing a bloated car destined to flop (see Dodge Hornet).

I used to scoff at the idea of badge-engineering a Euro spec econobox, but I think that's what the American market might be pulling towards. The KM is great, but it's still a bit too expensive. Small, efficient cars is what Fiat and Peugeot do best. If we do it right, I think we already have the tools in the toolbox in-house to put it all together.

The financial squeeze we're all feeling is hitting our typical buyers even more than we are. If we don't figure out how to pivot accordingly, our market share is toast. Continuing to bank on gas-guzzling V8s in overpriced cars is not the answer.