From todays Wall Street Journal "Eyes on the Road" by Joseph B. White"
"The contrast between the world as seen from "Motor City West" -- the triangle in Torrance and Gardena, Calif. where the U.S. headquarters of Toyota, Honda and Nissan are located -- and the view from the original Motor City in Detroit is stark.
To cite one example, customers are buying Lexus RX330's almost as fast as Toyota can build them, while Cadillac's rival crossover wagon, the SRX, is still spinning its wheels. Cadillac dealers sold 2,283 SRX's in February, leaving 11,351 in stock, according to Autodata. By comparison, Lexus dealers sold 7,564 RX330s, leaving 7,422 in stock.
Cadillac executives said in January that they miscalculated the launch of the SRX, pushing out too many $50,000, V-8 powered versions when consumers were calling for less expensive, V-6 powered models. Fixing a mistake like that takes time and money. The other surprise is that the SRX is languishing despite rave reviews from automobile enthusiast magazines and a barrage of advertising during the Super Bowl-to-Oscars season."
Unfortunately, he's right. When I saw the first SRX units last fall, I had sticker shock when most all of them were priced at about $55K.
I agree. When I went to look at the SRX, all I could find were $56K V-8's
After I picked myself up off the floor, I decided that a GMC Envoy was the way to go. After test driving the Envoy, beginning to negotiate, I noticed a lightly optioned V-6 All Wheel Drive SRX on the other side of the show room.
