Cars at Costco: A Great Idea!

You know how it goes: Go to Costco for one thing, and end up walking out with $200 worth of flour, DVDs, Diet Coke, toilet paper, and beef jerky.

The whole Costco experience is about impulse buying as much as it is about bulk and convenience. Soon, as we briefly mentioned on this blog earlier, you could end up loading all that stuff into the ultimate of impulse buys: an electric car.

A Mexican company, GS Motors, currently imports Chinese cars for sale through big-box stores and has plans to do the same in the U.S.; they’re even building a factory in Mexico to build the Chinese-designed cars.

Chinese cars made a splash at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this year, but still get ridiculed for their design and questionable safety and reliability standards. That makes sales through a conventional dealer system risky, but absolutely ideal for sale in a warehouse club or box store. I love this idea! 

If the price can be kept around $5,000 to $6,000, these things will fly off the shelf faster than a Wii at Christmas. 

Costco shoppers love convenience, and if the cars are built well enough to drive them back and forth to work five days a week, people will adore them. Never mind the fact that they don’t have the fit and finish of a Honda or the zoom-zoom of a Mazda, because frankly, we won’t expect it. 

What we will expect is a noticeable drop in our weekly fuel costs and the satisfaction of knowing it’s being brought to us by the friendly folks in China, Mexico, and at Costco.

This is not to say I want cheapo Chinese cars to replace conventional domestic and import autos, but I think it would be dang cool if we had the choice of having one of each, at least until a domestic maker could offer something similar.

Would you buy a $5,000 electric Chinese car from Costco if it were available?

-tgriffith

Related posts:

• $1,000 to Woo Sedan Owners to Chrysler Sebring
• Final Episode Of Season 2 Of Top Gear Australia Out Now
• Happy about your new car smell or just delirious from the toxins?
• Diesel Cars Returning to the US Market
• A Kia that’s better than a Honda?

Related posts:

• New look Mazda3
• Mazda5: Fun for the Family
• There will be two Honda Civic’s receiving Mugen Badging in 2008
• LA 2008: 2010 Mazda3 shows its smiling face [w/VIDEO]
• CAR gets way early first drive of Mazda MX-5