Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Thursday, April 17.
Cadillac's longtime struggle to attract younger buyers may finally be bearing fruit. For real this time.
Cadillac brand chief John Roth said in this story by Lindsay VanHulle that the average age of the luxury brand's customer was 58 in 2015. Today, it's closer to 54 or 56. For the Escalade IQ, the electric counterpart to Cadillac's full-size SUV franchise that recently went on sale, it's even younger — that average buyer is just 48.
"That's an excellent customer to have in your portfolio," Roth, vice president of global Cadillac, said of the longevity that customer will have in terms of repeat business. "It's really amazing to watch luxury goods that are able to reposition themselves younger," he said. "We've shaved off roughly four years of age demographic, which is really another data point that tells you we have a really healthy brand inside General Motors."
Cadillac's attempts to win younger buyers have been epic over the last 20-plus years. In 2002, it used Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" for its much ballyhooed "Break Through" ad campaign, which ended about four years later, not long before the Great Recession pushed GM into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the time, "Rock and Roll" was already a 30-year-old song — not exactly the kind of tune the younger generation would gravitate to. By the way, at the time the Cadillac CTS starting price was $29,990.
Click here for one of the "Break Through" ads
Meanwhile on the tariff front, this story by Urvaksh Karkaria highlights how Nissan Motor Co.'s vast amounts of available U.S. manufacturing capacity could actually become an asset amid President Donald Trump's tariffs on imported light vehicles.
Karkaria's story says output at the Japanese automaker's assembly plants in Smyrna, Tenn., and Canton, Miss., tumbled 13 percent last year to 525,583 as Nissan cut production several times to manage an oversupply of key models, including the Rogue crossover and Frontier pickup. That's only about half as many vehicles as the two factories have the capacity to build, he wrote.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
Interactive map: Auto manufacturing sites in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico
"Tariffs are a headwind, but at the same time it's a good opportunity for Nissan to accelerate localization," Nissan Americas Chairperson Christian Meunier said in an interview at the New York International Auto Show.
In another story from the New York show, one of Kia's senior executives said the impact of tariffs on his brand and its dealers won't be as difficult to bear as long as consumers keep buying cars. Kia America COO Steve Center said every manufacturer will be affected differently because their supply chains and assembly footprints vary.
"In our case, it's manageable," Center said April 15 at the J.D. Power Auto Forum ahead of the New York show.
Finally, the show also yielded news about Volkswagen's hybrid strategy in the U.S. Volkswagen of America has decided to introduce standard gasoline-electric hybrids in the U.S., new CEO Kjell Gruner said in this story by Jack Walsworth. The automaker has not sold hybrids in the U.S. since the Jetta hybrid sedan, a low-volume model, was dropped in 2016, even as more and more Americans embraced them.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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