The January 2006 issue of Car and Driver has an article on Winners and Losers for 2005. The following quotes are from a Losers list: (the list is not all inclusive, just what I thought was interesting):

* At the start of last year, GM had a 301 day supply of Chevrolet SSRs.

* VW of America offered a $10,000 discount on "its not selling at any price Phaeton luxury sedan."

* And the best, Maybach, Mercedes Benz offered hotels and resorts, a $50,000 discount, and then promised the same amount to dealers who kept demos for 5,000 miles.


And we thought the Crossfire was discounted! The list also referred to a number of cars that the manufacturers are no longer building for 2006, the XFire was not one of them. At least the car was not canceled. The length of the contract with Karmann is immaterial if the cost to buy out the contract is less then the loss DC is suffering on building the cars. It appears DC may be making a profit somewhere.

Also, don't forget the GTO. One dealer I talked with, in Dec 04, Jan 05, had 38 of them and couldn't give them away. GM discounted them to $25/26,000. I bought the XFire instead after paging through GTO forums and seeing all the problems the owners were experiencing with the cars.

With several people looking at resale value, and the current deep discounts, I just thought I would toss this out. It appears C was not the only manufacturer forced to deeply discount halo/specialty cars las year.

Just my .02...too cold in North Texas to wash the car.

John