Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed with the analyst portion of the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) One moment please for the first question. And our first question comes from the line of Patrick Archambault of Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Patrick Archambault – Goldman Sachs
Hi. In the US, clearly, luxury car sales have been taking a pretty big hit in line with the overall economic outlook, I guess. Can you just maybe give us an overview of mixed trends throughout the year, how you saw them develop in the various regions? And then, if you could layer on top of that, maybe how you’re positioned in terms of lux, non-lux, in those various regions, that would be helpful as well.
Mike DiGiovanni
Well, I would say that, clearly, the luxury market, to some extent, experienced a bubble just like the housing market did. We saw that as housing pressures peak, the stock market was peaking. And there was a lot of deals after 9/11 on vehicles, especially on luxury cars in terms of low cost leases, and so on and so forth. And then on the leases we saw, what I would call, a bubble in the luxury market. So that answered your first question.
We think we’re seeing a return to more normalcy in the luxury market worldwide. We think, going forward, that manufacturers, to protect their brands, are going to be more careful to their line production with demand going probably -- be more respectful of more strength at leasing standards, credit standards, and so on and so forth. In the US, we were hurt more in the west and northeast because of their higher leasing areas.
Your second question in on, again, in terms of trends across the world. Clearly, the segment that is growing the fastest belongs to -- the sweet spot, if you will, in the global segmentation is vehicles the size of our new Chevy Cruze, which is coming in the stream shortly in 2010, which we’re already -- is going to be in Europe before then and in some of the markets. And everything we’ve done -- so that’s becoming the sweet spot. And the reason for that is that, emerging markets, people want to move up to somewhat larger vehicles. Okay. So they’re moving into the Cruze-size vehicles.
On the other hand, with the slowdown in some of our recent energy price increases we had, we are also seeing a growth in that segment in more mature markets as well, as people are more careful about affordability. So we think that -- we think the Chevy Cruze is going to hit the sweet spot because it’s a roomy vehicle. It is much more roomier, larger trunk capacity. It has a much better fuel economy than the Cobalt for GM in the US that’s replaced them in 2010. We think that’s what -- we think that’s going to be a very strong growth market. It’s also the -- one of the reasons we picked the E-Flex Volt to be a compact sized vehicle.
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