I couldn’t agree more. The new Tucson is pitifully small – tonight I had to stop off for shopping on the way home. Four of us in the car and the dog in the boot. One shopping bag on the rear seat, one wedged over the tunnel bump between the two rear seats, bottles pushed under the front seats. And this was until recently the biggest vehicle available. At £46,000 ish you would think it would be the car to aspire to ….
How MB treat their inventory and suppliers changed in the retail industry decades ago. Can you imagine going into a supermarket shopping for food and finding nothing you fancy or empty shelves, doing the same the next day and many more customers doing the same ?
Also don’t see Aldi, Lidl etc going to a ketchup manufacturer and requesting 10 different versions of tomato, 6 brown and 4 different mayonnaise. They just ask for the average and the best qualities and then haggle over price and quantity. If I recall with some models MBO had around 25 variants on the scheme.
If MBO claim is true that they are the biggest fleet owner in Europe (630,000 cars or 12% of the market) they should have a lot more influence over the manufacturers. All most people want is an average equipped vehicle with a low AP and a premium model for those that want to contribute more. So more models with less variants for us and simpler production for manufactures. If the manufactures don’t want to fall in, then part ways. VAG group would not want to lose 12% of their sales and see 12% going to Ford or another brand making the loss hurt more.
The big retailers also have a penalty points system with suppliers where if anything goes wrong in the supply chain, rejections, returns or customer complaints the supplier gets penalised and funds are deducted from the invoice. MBO should do this when we get bad service from a dealer or lodge complaints, lose cars to retail customers.
What I am getting to is the choice of vehicles is down to a lack of business ruthlessness but on the flip side reflects their lack of care for customers as well.