Message from @sexytortoiseloverboy
Discord ID: 477154708683882508
What's it called when a foreign company steps into a market, and then takes a competitors vehicle, slaps a different bumper on it, and tries to pass it off as "competition" against the same vehicle?
Not joint venture vehicles, just complete mooching off the others production
Ok you're pretending to be retarded with that one
Its a serious question: What is the purpose behind the Suzuki Equator? It fools no one into thinking it's actually a Suzuki.
Practically no one bought them
Ok
You own Suzuki
You want to introduce a pickup truck to the market because people in North America like pickups
The problem is if you design a pickup for North America, and you're Suzuki, it will probably reflect the sales of your other vehicles.
So it's not worth the gamble
So you approach a company, say Nissan and offer a deal to rebadge one of their vehicles
Nissan finds it to be an acceptable deal and you have business
Now you aren't in the hole for engineering something, as suzuki, for a continent, that will probably sell like a Suzuki
The fact that X amount only sold doesn't matter
That's after the fact
But it's not your pickup, and the quality of Nissan's pickup gets placed on you.
Or, people see through your bullshit and just go buy the Nissan instead.
The average yokel probably doesn't know he's buying a Nissan
I'm pretty sure the average consumer is a bit more informed than that
Go ahead and tell the middle aged mom driving the infinity that she owns a Nissan
Infinity and Nissan are not a comparable example
They're different markets
Luxury and entry
Rebadging comes in all different sizes
Suzuki and Nissan shared the same market
Not to mention the example of rebadging for brand loyalty
You weren't getting a 'better' product
I mean, you were getting a better product
You were getting a better suzuki
You had different prices and incentives on them
All of this seems like excessive overhead and logistics, just to place a bet that people would be tricked into not realizing their truck was made by someone else, who sells it for the same price or even cheaper
Well it is
Yes, that's why I don't get it.
It's probably safe to assume that in that specific vehicle instance Nissan was well covered in whatever the terms of the deal were and Suzuki was taking a risk
Suzuki most likely did this to get their name out there in the truck market
And it didn't work
And it was probably better they didn't try to design some truck for North America because they would have been assed out
it's highly expensive to design vehicles and a lot cheaper to make some deal with another company; I believe the term "1% of something is better than 100% of nothing" somewhat applies as quite often it is not economically feasible to produce a vehicle for a certain market area, yet there are sales to be had within it by your brand
sure, your profit margin is minimised, but it's still profit
not to mention if you as a brand can cover every class of vehicle, you are more likely to get people into the dealerships
I don't really understand why someone would hate it, this seems to be more of a case of not understanding the purpose for it.