The financialization of basically everything has made it very tough to actually sell things.
What you can buy is very different than what you can finance. The latter is stupid to engage in most of the time; even Real Estate is dumb other than by the necessity of the fact that you need somewhere to live. Those who argue otherwise -- give me your personal example, and unless you managed to buy something out of foreclosure during the latest crash, you're almost certainly wrong in terms of your "believed" appreciation. In point of fact you lost money in almost every case in purchasing power, and in many cases you lost it outright in nominal terms.
When it comes to vehicles this is especially stupid because they have a life-cycle that is much shorter. Yes, many people need transportation but feasting on other's stupidity down-stream is a MUCH better option fiscally. But that stupidity is why you see all those $50,000 trucks running around. They have a much higher margin for the manufacturer and this makes their stock price go up, so as long as they can find some hinky way to get people into them and to take the financing, part of which is stoked by our interest rate environment on a global basis, it continues.
The other thing this has done is destroyed the "basic" model. Does anyone actually believe there's more than $15,000 worth of hardware between a 6 Sport and a 6 GT (prior to the turbo, of course)? Same sheet metal, same drivetrain end-to-end. The differences are cosmetic. People say "oh but there's more capability with radar cruise, blind-spot monitors, etc" and my riposte is that for under a grand I can buy more computer power than there is in 10 cars and a monitor big enough to fill my living room wall. Anyone who thinks that "higher trim" model differential isn't 80%+ profit is out of their mind and once again, if you can manage to find a way for people to be able to "finance" that then you can kill the models without it -- and they have.
The CX-5 is in the "niche" where people are being shoved. The Miata is an enthusiast product but so long as it sells enough to be worth the cost of running the line Mazda will probably keep it. I sure hope they do. But the rest are another matter, and what's worse is that getting rid of the stick in other than the "enthusiast" trim level for the "3" and completely on the "6" has rendered the cars vehicles I will never buy in the future. Explodo-transmissions are one of the ways manufacturers force you back into either the service department at a ridiculous price or, even better for them, back into the showroom. Nope.
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