Yahoo Autos Cadillac Escalade Offers $10,000 to Keep Customers “in the Family”
General Motors is offering as much as $10,000 in discounts to current Cadillac Escalade customers to keep them comfortably in the seat of the brand’s high-profit sport-utility vehicle, rather than wandering off and buying some other luxury SUV like, say, the hot-selling Lincoln Navigator.
Bloomberg obtained a memo that GM sent to dealers that shows the $10,000 markdown is a nationwide offer for lessees of the 2016 Escalade, while owners of that vehicle are being offered $7500 off a new model. The promotion runs through May 31, and it applies to all trim levels of the 2018 model.
GM spokesman Jim Cain confirmed the discount to Car and Driver, calling it a “private offer” to owners and lessees of the 2016 Escalade. Although analysts have pointed to the hot-selling Navigator as a likely reason for the move, Cain said it “doesn’t have anything directly to do” with the archrival SUV and is instead intended to “keep Cadillac customers in the family.”
“Certainly, Lincoln has done a good job with the Navigator picking themselves up off the floor with their new design,” Cain wrote in an email. “But their market-share gains are coming at the expense of Mercedes and Land Rover.” Cain pointed to J.D. Power market data that shows Cadillac (and Lincoln) gaining market share in the first quarter, while Mercedes, Land Rover, and Lexus declined.
Bloomberg, however, notes that the latest discount follows a $5000 conquest incentive that GM offered to Lincoln vehicle owners in November, when the redesigned 2018 Navigator first hit dealerships.
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The SUV segment has been a boon for automakers for the past several years, with low gas prices and a generally improved economy fueling sales. The large vehicles carry high profit margins, and strong sales of the SUVs have helped pad the companies’ bottom lines. Through the first three months of 2018, deliveries of the Escalade were up 17 percent, to 5035 units. During that same period, sales of the Navigator jumped 63 percent, to 4062 units. The 2018 Lincoln Navigator has a base price of $73,250; the 2018 Cadillac Escalade starts at $75,990.
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