mkaresh

Toyota is having some trouble right now, but I personally prefer to stick to the facts. First off, it's awful that 34 people have died, but this is far from the most lethal product defect. For every person who has died from a runaway Toyota, hundreds have died in SUV rollovers. Well over 100 died from the Ford-Firestone blunder--and both of those companies are still in business. Plenty of lawyers make piles of money suing all volume auto makers for various defects that resulted in fatalities. If you think people have only died in Toyotas from getting floor mats stuck under the accelerator, think again. Second, Toyota hasn't lost $25b in cash. You might be confusing this with losing $25b in the value of its stock. But a company's market value is irrelevant unless it needs to raise money through a stock offering. Toyota's credit rating remains far better than GM's. It's nowhere near going bankrupt. They might be where GM was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. If they manage to keep making bad decisions for two or three more decades, THEN they MIGHT go bankrupt. Third, there are people within every auto company who are stupid enough to write a memo like this one.

Not unless you can get a camera into the design studio. Usually the styling is done except for detail refinements when a program is approved.

They didn't only introduce lower-line brands, they also drastically cut prices on the existing models. The price difference between a Chevrolet and a Buick shrank drastically. Olds and Buick never had a clearly defined relationship, even in the 1920s. The LaSalle went away after the war when Cadillacs themselves got cheaper. Cadillac essentially took over LaSalle's price point as it went downmarket. Through the late 1930s it was a much more expensive car that sold in much lower volumes than it did in later decades. In the end the main reason the mythical "price ladder" never existed in reality is that Chevrolet dealers aren't interested in passing their customers onto Pontiac dealers, and Pontiac dealers aren't interested in passing their customers on to Olds dealers, and so forth. So in the end each got a full line. Combining multiple brands in the same dealers is a brilliant idea if executed well. For the first time in GM's history it will have a proper foundation on which to truly differentiate its brands. With Pontiacs and Buicks in the same store--and GMC there as well--the dealer doesn't have a reason to pretend that either brand can do everything. Instead, it can point customers to the car that is truly best for them, without pointing them to a different dealer down the street.

In the end the styling will not matter much and the size will only matter a bit. After all, the current Double Cab, which shares little other than powertrains with the regular Tundra, is as large as the domestics. It's about half a foot wider than the regular Tundra, not just longer. (Perceptions haven't quite caught up to this fact.) The big variable that hardly anyone has mentioned is PRICE. Currently a Tundra costs thousands more than a domestic truck once incentives and discounts are factored in. Toyota has a history of significantly cutting prices when they want to grow sales. This is a major reason the Camry does so well--Toyota has been much more aggressive than Honda with pricing and incentives. If Toyota follows its Camry pricing strategy with the new Tundra--and investing in the new plant suggests they will--then it will hit 300,000 easily. Contractors are running a business. If they think the Toyota will cost them less in the long run--price and depreciation--then many will eventually go Toyota's way.

The Intrigue's steering was a high water mark for GM. But they had to replace a lot of columns under warranty, I believe because the splined intermediate shaft fitted for improved feel had problems. (My wife's '98 had a steering column replaced when it started binding.) Maybe this is why all their current systems feel vague in comparison?

They need to thoroughly re-engineer the six-speed shifter first. It's the clunkiest shifter I've sampled in recent memory, and I drive dozens of cars a year. A total disgrace. I'm with those who'd like to see a smooth, free-revving six paired with a good shifter. They need to truly fix the handling while they're at it. Even with the hydraulic steering the car feels heavy and lifeless.

The 325i engine is clearly under-rated to encourage people to spend the extra bucks for the 330i. No way a BMW-engineered 3.0-liter produces only 185 foot-pounds of torque.

I've driven this car as well, and will review it at Epinions in the near future. The shifter has moderate throws but is very precise with a very good feel going into gear. I also stalled the car a couple of times, but had no problem once I learned how much gas it wanted when engaging the clutch. Could use more feel here, as the review above notes. The engine feels neither weak nor strong to me, purely acceptable. It must be worked to move the car. I don't find it particularly loud, but then I usually drive a Mazda Protege5, which is very loud. If anything I'd like a sportier sound from it and more of a surge when it hits the powerband. A flat torque curve makes an engine feel less powerful tha it is. I drove a car with the base suspension--base everything, in fact. It handled better than I expected it to. Since the sport suspension isn't very sporting I expected the base suspension to be far too loose, but it's not. I'd like to see a more aggressive sport suspension. And as in nearly every GM car the steering needs to be quicker on-center and to provide more feel. The large steering wheel makes the car feel larger and less agile than it is. Most people will think the vinyl is leather. Since vinyl is more durable and requires much less maintenance, I'd certainly consider it.

I reviewed the SRX soon after it came out, and concluded that the X5-like price was way too high. They recently lowered the price a bit, which should help. My site (www.truedelta.com) provides apples to apples price comparisons for anyone interested in seeing how the price compares. I also wished for sportier handling at the time. GM puts such dull steering in its vehicles--including the Corvette. But in general I've had trouble convincing people they should even look at this car--and I live near Detroit! The hard-edged styling doesn't seem to suit the typical consumer in this segment. Probably because many are women. It seems few people get as far as sitting in one, and thus be disappointed by the interior.

I recently began conducting my own reliability research that, by reporting absolute numbers for times and days in the shop, will make differences in reliability much clearer. Instead of saying one car is "average" and another is "better than average," I'll report that the former in its first X years and Y miles will be in the shop 1.3 more times and 2.2 more days. I think people currently overestimate the size of such differences because the ratings from JD Power and CR are so vague.

The problem with Fiat was an unwillingness to follow through. The original deal might not have been a good idea, but once they signed it they should have made it work in some fashion. DCX decided that Nissan would be a money pit. Then Renault refloated it. Not that Fiat's problems were the same as Nissans, but the right people with the right approach could fix Fiat. Of course, the same could be said of GM itself.

Correct that GM could do a better job individually targeting its brands. And that its brands could be an advantage if this were done. Incorrect that Sloan's ladder ever really worked this way after the 1920s. It was never as perfect as the story suggests, and collapsed in the early 1930s when every brand needed a cheaper car to survive. Need to distinguish between myth and reality. I wrote a paper in grad school on this very topic. The charge that "all GM cars look alike" is a related issue. If you look at old magazine articles, you'll find that journalists were claiming that all the cars were looking alike as far back as the 1930s, when the move to steel bodies forced the use of common parts. The real change was that foreign producers entered the market with much different products, and that American society stopped thinking of itself as homogenous. When everyone sold a variety of apple, then people noticed the difference between the Gala apple and the Jonah Gold apple. But then other companies introduced oranges, bananas, etc. Afterwards all of the apples look alike. And at the same time, society fragmented such that many people began to want to set themselves apart from the mainstream. Import cars with obvious differences from Detroit iron were one way to do this. In sum, the big problem was not that GM changed, but that the context within which it operates did, and it didn't change with this context.

If he knows a good cut from a bad cut, sounds very good to me. Most people let waste slide because they either don't see it--just "the way we've always done things here"-- or don't have the energy to deal with it. Someone with a good eye for true waste and the will and ability to eliminate it would be very good for GM. On the other hand, most people who cut waste cannot tell the meat from the fat. I hope York is not one of these.

My father and I both pushed one of these pretty hard, and didn't detect a significant amount of torque steer. We thought it a huge improvement in this area over the DeVille. I was also impressed by the tight fits between the IP trim and IP and between the IP and the door. GM has been bragging about these fits, and they deserve to. Later the same day we checked out an Infiniti M35, and its dash-to-door fit was nowhere close in terms of gap size or precision. The rear seat, on the other hand, should be larger and more comfortable given the mission of the car. Seems this G-Body weakness survived the redesign. My full review of this car can be read here: http://www.epinions.com/content_209422093956

You guys must be able to see more in that fuzzy interior photo than I can. Such as the quality of the materials, which will be key. The sweep of the center stack into the console reminds me of the Saturn VUE, and we all know what people think of that one. By the way, I haven't been back in a while and had to create a new account. I remember some trouble with hackers about the time I last visited. A lot of account info end up getting wiped?