Replacing a 2004 Mazda 3 Hatch currently, and looked at all these vehicles and the Veloster.
- Kicks price range is considerable smaller the Kona, Soul, & Veloster.
- Kicks has more features standard the both Kona, Soul, & Veloster.
- Kona and Soul have much great discounts than Kicks at this time.
Each vehicle lies on its starting price.
- Adjust the Kicks by up $385 to cover splash guards, floor mats, and cargo mats.
- Hyundai is selling $80 lock lugs on every car and more affordable floor mats.
- 2019 Veloster has a huge artificial price increase vs gen 1 models.
- etc.
I could probably buy a Kona cheaper than a kicks with cashback, aged inventory, Boost, & Uber incentives: $2k to $2.5k in total.
However Nissan is offer 0% for 60 months, so its more competitive.
Options
- Option wise the Kicks upgrades contain no posion pills for me minus a dislike in SR trim adding the silver swoosh on the lower door.
- The Kona does not offer two tone colors in their top Model.
- Soul add on packages some times can not coexist on a model. If you want both features on the vehicle, you have to upgrade trims where one of the desired features becomes standardized by the trim upgrade, but then another option that was in one of two options on the lower model is not available in the higher model at all.
Looking over the Brazilian models, the SL(SR + Premium) interior looks classier and has more options.
Best Value Vehicle by Model
Base
Mid(Depends on Customer's definition of what Mid is)
Premium
Value
The key values in Kicks are:
- the the exclusion of the auto trans upgrade- $1k
- the inclusion collision breaking - $1k.
The other manufactures key values for 2018 have been the inclusion at heated seats, $500.
Value & Dealerships
The dealer knock on Kicks is that its optioned more like a saturn, two models each one with an optional package (4 virtual models, same as the Kicks)
The dealers at this point do not like this, small price range, 4 near fixed models. So what are they doing, buying every possible dealer installed accessory, but these accessories installed at the factory instead, such that its on the first invoice.
I just hopefully put down a down payment for a Kicks SR + Premium Package (with $385 in accessories) in Orange/Black. This and the two tone white/blacks are the highest priced Factory kicks available. These would be the vehicles most dealers buy because it has the most profit in it. There are approximately 2000 vehicles (50% S, 30% SV, 17% SR, 8% SR + Premium) that are in stock or transit currently. There is only 1 SR + Premium available in my color.
Most dealers are opting for the other accessories to get the price as high or higher than the Premium package. My gut is these other accessory packages have a much higher margin than the 1k Premium package.
Nissan Marketing
Colorization, Colorization, Colorization
The main problem I see with this is the wheels, its a 1k upgrade to get black wheels and only after that upgrade you get the option to colorize the wheels.
Not sure if the 16 inch steal wheels have a colorization option or not. There is no 17 steel wheel option. I actually would have liked a 17 steel wheel option with the plastic insert that allowed colorization (reasoning is I ate allot of alloy wheels in the m3). I would colorized then vs not doing so now. Keeping the prices models of the same, there would be more profit in the steal wheela, more up sizing in colorization, plus an option to move into a alloy wheel. Note sure what this does to gas millage, guessing a 16 steel wheel + tire weight near a 17 alloy wheel and tire however.
The Kicks is new and has not started a trend yet in the US. The profit was geared at colorization and accessorizing by corporate. Dealerships seem to be bucking this by becoming lighting, kick plate, sub woofer, and exterior option pushers. The kicks might be limited by a new dealership made base MSRP that is $1k higher than what is advertised. Note this is norm for most vehicles, but the with the kicks that $1k price point shift the bar more to the Kona, Soul, and Veloster on the low and Mid models.
Also note the target demographic is 25-35, my spouse and I both like the styling of the kicks, but we are double the age of starting demographic.
My wish list would be a bigger engine option (bigger price range) and adaptive cruise control (autonomous velocity when combined with collision breaking)