The Volt Wishes It Was As Popular As The Edsel

PowerLine did a recent article on the Volt's embarrassingly bad sales




GM sold just 603 Volts in January 2012. Its best ever month was December 2011 with 1,529 sales.  Back in July 2011 only 125 volts were sold. The car is a dramatic, epic failure, and each car sells with a $7,500 government purchase subsidy -- almost enough to by a traditional economy car (certainly enough for the down payment and a major chunk of the principle).

Searching for some perspective, I happened across this MotorTrend article on Ford's September 2011 sales numbers:

Ford sold 54,410 F-series trucks that month alone.
Plus:
19,510 Fusions
11,680 Edges
11,336 Explorers
Even the venerable Crown Victoria, a true gas guzzler, moved 3013 units that month alone!

The Volt is a sales debacle that puts the Edsel to shame, and it's on the taxpayer's dime.


There's an old joke where a business man is explaining his company's sales strategy "We lose money on every sale, but we're making it up in volume!" The joke is, of course, that you can't make up losses in volume when you lose money on every sale. Once upon a time, this was supposed to be a joke. It's reality for the Volt.

Except the reality is even worse: the Volt doesn't even have good volume.