Think due to the vestiges of snobbery against American brands that is common on these boards...while that was the case in the past, things have clearly changed. Of course the performance gap is completely closed (and in many ways surpassed by American cars) and next gen the "quality gap" will likely be closed as well.
Companies are dynamic entities, and its obvious that GM and Ford are taking advantage of the Euro car companies' focus on things like diesels and fuel efficient vehicles with turbos. The sad thing is Tesla is eating their lunch in the most innovative electric front, and American car companies are not subject to as stringent displacement, pollution, noise, efficiency regulations and thus can pump out a small number enthusiast halo cars. When you think about it, due to relatively short travel distances in Europe, small, all electric models would have been perfect for that market, and the EU governments would be able to invest in the huge infrastructure required for charging stations (not to mention much of Euro electricity comes from nuclear/renewables). It's shocking that the European car companies, on their very own home turf, completely missed this opportunity. Making it even worse, Tesla doesn't own much intellectual property..their batteries/tech are primarily sourced from Asia, thus its vendors do all the R&D spending while the Euro manufacturers spent all this money on what they thought was the future, only to find themselves 5+ years behind Tesla.
By moving away from its performance roots BMW got caught in the middle, where it is unable to effectively harness electric tech and bring Tesla competitors to market in scale and due to the billions poured into a mis-guided i-strategy (which is STILL not formulated), left very little on the table for innovation on the performance front.
Ironically, Tesla build quality is similar to the current gen of American cars, but people overlook this as the benefits far outweigh the weaknesses in many consumers' minds.
I think a rear-engined 'vette is super cool, I would totally consider it, and it isn't surprising to see GM continue to pounce on the performance and market advantages currently in its favor, at BMW's and many other brands' expense.
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Originally Posted by TXSTYLE
All of these "car guys" around here and somehow only 3 of us are interested in this seemingly amazing machine? Hmmm...
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