I just used entire market share as a figure of speech. I figure, heck, if someone came out with a car that was in all ways better then current offerings and was significantly cheaper, well, with no other market changes they'd own the entire market of people looking to buy turnkey minuses. Logic would dictate that the buyer purchase the best car for the best price. If any car industry has folks doing research before they buy, this is it.
Of course, from my own industry I can speculate on reasons which may or may not be true, I'm just drawing comparisions to what I do for a living. We make specialized lifescience/pharma equipment that we sell for a tidy profit. Sellings prices are $50k and this is the norm for the industry.
For the last 12 years the industry has been populated by small (<50 people) companies that are engineering and scientist heavy building and selling this stuff. Along comes a large lifescience company. The large company buys one of the small engineering companies due to the fact the the product is synergistic with the other lines they have.
In doing this they decide to lower the price of the product that used to be $50k. In fact, they lower it below what they can produce it for and sell it to everyone, picking up the profit elsewhere in the parent company while getting their name out there.
I can still compete in the market with my offerings, but it is tough. Net result - large company is willing to change the playing field to suit its needs, profits are not necessarily the main goal, as it is mine. They get pentration, brand recognition, which will pay off later. My job is to hold on during the rough ride.
I don't think Superformance is going down this road, but this is just an example of how profits might not be the immediate goal. Heck, I don't even know if the car is going to be produced - doesn't matter a lot to me I've got mine! ;-) I'm just babysitting a sleepy 3 year old with a little time to write!