Breaking: The Car Market Bubble Is COLLAPSING

A plunge in Chicago kicks off more concerns over the global car business. Layoffs and plant closures keep coming as automakers are having enormous difficulties first aligning their businesses with the lack of recovery. On top of that, more indications beside Chicago pour in showing falling cyclical demand for cars, too.

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Japan trade

[shawnvines]

New vehicles are too expensive. If products go up 10x and salaries go up 2x, you have problems.

[sithcat]

Sell basic trucks for $25 - 30K and you won't keep them on the lots. Don't need high-tech, luxury trucks.

[Drone-hi]

20 minutes of complexity to say that Ford was right, the workers have to be able to buy the cars they make.

[geo]

Prices need to drop 50%, minimum and that's no exaggeration. The current prices are absurd.

[greenpumpkin]

I went and looked at a used truck today. It was listed as 30k on the website. When they added all the bs it was 36k. They "came down" to 33k. I walked away.

[AoSWill]

I don't want a screen. I want gages and dials.

[fillmorehillmore]

Maybe they can get their robots on the factory floor to buy their cars?

[terrylutke]

The real issue is lagging wage growth; in 1970 I was earning $5 p/hr as a low skilled construction laborer. To maintain similar earning power 50yrs later that wage would need to be $40 p/hr. Even given an imaginary 7X + wage adjustment for inflation over that period (which is laughable), blue collar earning power VS purchasing power has still eroded.

[williammaxwell]

Vehicles are ridiculously overpriced. Dealers refuse to lower sticker prices. But now their inventory will start eating them alive. Hey dopey dealers! Lower prices, or go out of business.

[victorcapel]

It's so weird that an economy that is built around 10 rich guys and 340 million (-10) that are in heavy, heavy debt, crashes from time to time...

[bigcrispy]

That’ll happen when a normal working man’s vehicle goes from 30k to 60k. It also doesn’t help that manufacturers are over producing top trim level vehicles that no one can get into without taking out a 60+ month loan.

[sailingbarber]

These clowns want their bailout. And they should NOT get one. But they probably will.

[OHTraveler]

It’s crazy there is no demand for a POS car that won’t last 100k and costs $50k.

[JamesBlume-ui]

We decided to drive our car till it dies; then, rebuild the dead vehicle, to last another 10 years.

[soundmind]

Life is just depressing in the US. Theyve made it impossibly hard for regular people to survive. Homelessness is at record highs. Medical care is so hard to get. Why eyeballs and teeth require seperate insurance is nuts. They are making life for US citizens unnecessarily miserable. They have cut us out from our constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness, leaving people with nothing to pursue.

[Mark_]

The problem is that EVERY company thought they could price gouge during the pandemic, blaming supply chain, no workers and inflation for high prices.
Shareholders will not tollerate even the smallest loss in profits; so prices kept going up.

And now, everything is more expensive, people's wallets are empty, and new $80k vehicles are not a necessity, especially for those who were screwed by dealerships and are underwater.

[JudoStev]

Automakers stop selling affordable vehicles and are shocked when people can't afford them. How could they have seen this coming? It's not overcapacity of vehicles in general, it's overcapacity of really overpriced vehicles.

[banzaipiegaming]

It's not just that the vehicles are overpriced, but that they are also worse in quality and design than a couple decades ago. If it costs more to fix any component of the vehicle than it costs to make it, that is shit engineering

[Yoloswag-jgxv]

Demand is there but the prices are too high for too long.

[not_nostradamus]

Back in the 1970's a new car cost was 25% to 50% of typical annual household income. Today, a new car is 200% to 300% of annual income. Therein lays the problem.