Can the US get the same deal with car makers?
Antwerp-based Cardoen, which sells about 10,000 new and nearly new cars per year, started the promotion at the end of November and said it would run until December 15.- An Oak Lawn [IL] car dealership has started a new and unusual promotion: Buy one 2008 Chrysler Pacifica and get a second car, a 2008 PT Cruiser, for $1
- A Quebec car dealership offering a two-for-one vehicle promotion says it will help save money down the road. Girard Chrysler, a dealership in Repentigny, launched the offer earlier this week as a way to curtail a slowdown in the auto industry.
- The U.K.’s Daily Mail reports, “Desperate car dealers today stunned experts by launching an extraordinary credit-crunch busting deal — buy one new car and get another completely free.”
- To jump-start slow sales, one South Florida auto dealer shifted to an aggressive promotion. Rob Lambdin’s University Dodge in Davie has been offering customers a buy-one-get-one-free deal on select new Dodge Ram trucks.
- A Kia dealer in West Palm Beach is offering two Kia vehicles — for the price of one.
I totally fail to understand the economics on this for the dealers beyond: UH OH.
When all else fails … hope for divine intervention:
Collateral Damage 
The extent to which the state of Michigan is following these hearings and deliberations cannot be overstated.
It draws far more attention than any other topic of discussion and some variant of it can be overheard pretty much anywhere you go.
The closest second-place conversation topic is, of course, how much the Lions suck.
I personally cannot stand the management of any of the big three and completely agree they’ve dug their own graves (as did the management of most of the financials and banks).
Sadly, those graves will be filled in with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of midwestern jobs, and we therefore must, with gritted teeth, help the industry out.
Here’s why “buy-one-get-one-free” works: the dealers are stuck with inventory that is tying up their money. They need cash to pay the light (and real-estate tax) bills. Moving the inventory out — even below cost — is a reasonable move. It does, however, bring to mind the R.D. Laing comment: “Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world.”