It'd be nice if they had a strategy of having a cheap car for new college grads or high schoolers, try to get them into their ecosystem early on. Then bigger and better vehicles for when they get older and have more income.
But I don't know if it worked. Toyota did the Scion thing and found they sold to old folks instead. And these days no one wants to wait in life to have the better things--they'd rather have it now. Even if it takes financing.
And since many have shown that they are happy to roll negative equity and keep on buying... why would an OEM change? The OEM tends to worry about this quarter's sales, not a decade down the line (most of the execs will be elsewhere by then). Only when sales drop do they care. And these days, by focusing on higher profit margins, they can get by with lower unit sales. If people will buy no matter what, then dropping the lowest profit models and focusing on the money makers is just straight capitalism.
