BrewSwillis

It may have been repainted by some kind of shady paint shop.......Macco??.....Earl Schibe?? I've never heard of clear coat peeling off without the paint peeling off.

I wasn't comparing the 4Runner to the 300, but yeah that 4Runner has a hot interior :rolleyes: : I did however say that it was a sea of gray, and cheap feeling hard plastic......which is true.

I'll admit that I don't sit in Asian cars all that often.....almost never beyond my friend's Mazda3 and Mazda5, so I made it a point to sit in a bunch of Asian cars at the auto show......and to take special notice of the interior materials. My findings were that the Asian cars that I looked at had just as craptastic interiors as the domestics! I fully expected the brand new Camry to have a wonderful interior......and one tap on the hard dash blew that perception. It sounded as hollow as some of the older domestics. I guess the Camry will have to continue to sell on it's undeserved reputation for "quality". So I looked at some other Toyota stuff like the 4 Runner.....which was a sea of dark gray hard plastic. Not too good for an expensive SUV. One thing I didn't like about most of the newer domestic and Asian interiors, was the extreme graining of the dash plastics. They look like basketballs or footballs. Stop trying to convince us that our plastics dashes are made out of some kind of fine leather. It made me appreciate my Chrysler 300 Touring even that much more. It has very subtle graining on the dash and door panels, and the plastic pillars have a graining that looks like a tight woven cloth....which looks nice, and not as fake as plastic grained like leather. BTW, I thought the Fusion looked great, had an interior as cheap as the Camry and Accord, but the doors didn't sound very solid when you shut them. That should have been engineered a little better.

Some of the paint was bad in those years. I believe they changed the formulas to conform to newer EPA standards. I believe alot of manufacturers had these problems at some point. My parents' neighbor has a mid 90's regal that has almost no paint on it now. Check the forums at www.allpar.com . I think some people were successfull in getting Chrysler to pay for half or more for a new paint job. Good luck.

Great, just in time for the $3.00+ /gallon gas party. I wonder if Toyota will catch any heat for making the biggest trucks on the planet in spite of this energy crisis?? What do you think? That's cute. Are you practicing for an auto journalism career? I don't think the other auto journalists need your help coming up with funny little cliches. I'll bet you that this one, or one very similar to it, is actually used in a major publication.

Well, here's the next chapter. Doesn't seem like a publicity stunt anymore. If it was, I don't think they'd want this kind of attention:

It was great. I was at the Auto Show yesterday, and there was a guy standing on the spinning platform with the "New IS350".....and he was trying to give his speech abut this awesome new car.....and nobody would even stop to hear it. Usually people would stop and listen to whatever these people were saying, cause it only lasted a few minutes.....but this guy was just trying to talk to people as they were passing by, just giving a glance at this awesone new vehicle from Lexus. It was pretty funny....people seemed like they could care less..... I was one of them. I guess they were too busy trying to make their way to the Camaro and Challenger exhibits.....which were packed!! :AH-HA_wink:

Doesn't sound like Honda wanted to replace their own faulty/non-truck struts:

Toyota truely are evil geniuses. They know that the West and East coasts have, and will continue to support them to the fullest. So what can they do to penetrate the hardest market??.......the domestic (somewhat) loyal midwest and Southern truck driving rednecks??.......build their few American based plants in the South. That way people down there will say "Yep.....my brother's best friend Bobby Ray's cousin Earl works for Toyoter.....I guess I could drive a Toyoter truck since they are building plants down here". Then all they would have left to conquer, would be the midwesterners that are working for the Big 3.......and that wouldn't take much......because there probably won't be much of the Big 3 left by then.

Yeah, sorry.....I just found that too. I just posted the image link from another forum. They did a good job with the reflection on the hood though.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Oct10.html http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/05/1205/feature03.cfm http://uawlocal14.org/News/Archive%20Natio...rmanentJobs.htm

So, you like the Caliber......but not the Firepower?? I guess you're just wierd then!

You are so clever and witty. You have 68 posts on here, and about 20 of them are about cars. You can go on AOL chatrooms and talk about the stuff you talk about in most of these threads.

Well, supposedly here is one of the pictures.......however, the nakedness is covered up in this picture: Mods, let me know if this PG-13 image is not allowed, and I will remove it.

Wow. Uhhh.....good one.

He bashes Chrysler (and every other domestic brand) because they are not Toyota. I bash Toyota because most of their vehicles are lame, and I have no respect for their crooked business practices. I think the Compass is kinda lame as far as looks......so hey, have at it. However, I do like the Aspen and Caliber, and will defend my beliefs from people making claims about their cheapness even before they have ever seen one. Every car (or manufacturer) people on here don't like, some how has a "cheap interior"....even if they've never seen one in person. I haven't even said that I liked them all that much.....I just said they weren't as bad as people were making them out to be. Most people on here hated the Imperial concept.....well you could call me close minded for liking it, or you could open your eyes and see that a whole bunch of other people liked it too......and I'm not just wearing Chrysler blinders like some people are wearing Toyota blinders. In fact, I don't just like Chrysler...I like GM and Ford too. The fact that anyone finds the Firepower "thoroughly uninteresting" is beyond me. If the Firepower had a Toyota/Lexus badge on it.....I would say that it looks cool......and then I would bash it for costing $100K+.......like the Lexus LFA(?) will cost.

He's probably laughing because he realizes what a piece of crap he is driving!! :AH-HA_wink: Ha ha, .......I'm sorry, you just set that one for me. I know......this is going to be the truck to take down Ford and Chevy.......again.

According to the World Trade Orginization, the US should be able to apply duties to Japanese cars, because their government subsidizes Toyota. They have bought out all of Toyota's retirees. Imagine if the US government bought out all of GM's retirees.

Well, I can see why you guys like Toyotas. Cause you don't seem to like stylish 425 HP RWD 2 seat sports cars. Hey, that new Camry hybrid is going to get 50 mpg*.......sweet! *according to the EPA's flawed estimates

If you, as a supposed car enthusiast, cannot figure out why this vehicle should be built......then I really hope you enjoy driving your camrys for the next 50 years.

Really....it wasn't very hard to figure out. :AH-HA_wink:

I think air traffic controller is also pretty close to the top of that list.

Americans work harder than almost any country. Germany is where you want to work. I think they have a mandatory 6 weeks vacation per year. 6 weeks.....and the Autobahn??? Not fair!!

Obviously......it's not a Toyota!

There was an article out about Toyota's bad safety record not too long ago. It didn't get much press.