regfootball

nice!

none of the good product is left. stuff that is left to sell is like the SX4 base sedans, 2 wheel drive Equators, odd color Kizashis, etc. "98% will continue to be parts and service operations" I'm sorry but something smells. I still think this is more of a hiatus than a permanent departure. Get rid of financing problems.

Checked one out! Obviously, can't drive it. But here is what I thought about it. Strong looking, has presence. Sort of predatory in the front. Large car. Very much cabin rear. Inside, very well done. If you have been in a CX-5, and have seen the pictures of the new interior, then you have a very accurate idea of what it is like. It is like a combination of a BMW interior and an Accord or other similar Japanese car. I would say the interior is better than the new Accord and pretty much all the others, despite some hard plastic that manages to avoid looking cheap. Ergonomics appear to be spot on across the board, especially the memory seat locations, the steering wheel controls, and the media interface knob by the shifter. That is why the screen is not so big. The screen should be bigger to keep up with the Jones' though. Climate controls might be too low for some. All touch points are excellent. Except the seat feels like the padding is thin and inadequate. The shapes of all the seats are very good, even if the padding seems lacking. There are packaging issues though. The rear bias cabin, while making for a drivers cabin, does short some room in the back. There is seemingly less space in the back then you would think for such a big car. The front seat back if not far enough forward will whack your knees. The big difference between this and say, a Malibu is that the floor pan is perfectly shaped and the seat base is high enough to get your feet as far forward as possible. The trunk is compromised also. The floor is high and the deck is low. It's somewhat deep, but not as much as you would think. Overall the cargo space seems like it may be limited in what and how much it can hold. The girth of this car is impressive though. Lots of satisfying cabin width, front and rear. Side by side the new and old 6 do not seem much different at first glance. So the family resemblence is good. It might take awhile for some to see the new details and the differences between new and old.....is it enough change? Wish I could drive it! Mazda really needs to advertise this car. It deserves promotion, the market needs this car to stop people from buying so many of the other milquetoast competitors! It will be interesting to see if people decide they can get something more than ordinary as an alternative to the 'mainstream'. This car will answer the questions of whether a) Mazda con convince the public it will survive in numbers and b) that people can fulfill a basic car need and go outside the bland vanilla and still get that....or are we forever stuck with Camry's?

we should be glad they make one!!!

I am not sure why people are lambasting the new Malibu and its powertrain. I found it excellent. Smooth, good power, the car as a whole is more refined than the Accord and Altima. The 2.5 is nice, people need to get over it.

lots of small town dealers that exist to sell pickups and impalas but would never ever sell a volt. i would not expect them to pay for the volt tools.

Saturn Vues were still bringing good dough used last I recall. Crossovers in general if they have AWD bring nice money regardless of brand. One advantage with the Captiva over the Vue.....6 speed auto. Mazda5 is a MINIVAN THOUGH!!!!!!! Captiva is less gaudy than the Equinox. Equinox is still more SUV in aura. CRV's and RAV's are more like the Captiva's feel.

OnStar really blew a huge opportunity to become the global leader in in car entertainment, safety, and information. Now it looks like Google wants to take over the roadways. OnStar, due to its originating telematics really established a brand that introduced useful technology into cars. Had they expanded that into music and entertainment like ford sync, and used the brand to begin to offer all sort of other in car services, they would have been unstoppable.

it does exist!

MMMMMMMMMMMM brownies! whoa whole lost post to rewrite, the ZDX is not bad looking really, it's just overpriced by a large margin. THe ZDX should have been the crosstour. Nissan styling is consistently bad, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's like toyota shoppers who don't want a toyota think the nissan styling is high design. Saw and sat in a new 14 Mazda6 yesterday. Definitely NOT ugly.

Joe, when i was selling, i sold one of these to a couple that drove down from the I think it was Bemidji area to buy it. It wasn't a 99, but it was the same body style i think. We got like 5 grand for it. And the thing was not prime. But they got financed! Those old real SUV's like the Trackers and Sidekicks and early XL7's really can bring nice coin if in good shape. They are rare birds. 8 is too pricey for this one though. I see she doesn't get the part about where when you put money into fixing a car it's pretty much out the window and hardly affects it's market value. The market is what the market is. This one might get 5 grand at a dealer. In fact, saying it has a rebuilt engine in some cases cuts the value on it. People do not like to invest in cars that already have a motor go out. It makes them think the motor is a bad design and prone to repeated failure.

renting cars was always expensive and rare because of the liability and damage issue. that is why if you're under 25 it's tougher to rent a car. and renting is like it is in housing. People tend to think if you are a renter, you don't care, and are more prone to trashing the place. It's human nature. If you own it and have vested interest in it, you'll keep it up. If you rent it, who cares? Someone else will take care of it. The way the govt is going, maybe zipcar use will become part of what is given out too. Zip cars are a good idea for urban dwellers but it conceals a larger problem. Car ownership is too expensive now to begin with. So decades ago, when people could own a car to get to their job, they were able to. Now it's more reality. $h! pay, high debt, bad job, no future, and housing and other bills take all your income. Volt type cars would be good for a Zipcar. Short trips, plug it back in when you get back. That's not to assume that everyone should own a car or would want to. It's not to say that it should be a society that 'requires' everyone to own a car. But it does highlight how expensive it is in comparison to everything else when the economy has been so horrific and shows no signs of ever being healthy again. It's been a trend to have some population move to cities into condos and stuff. It's a bit romantic, but the cost / benefit of it really is not the strong argument aside from not requiring you to own a car if you are one of the people that work in a downtown. People tend to think all the jobs are in a downtown. No they are not. And then there is for everyone who may have a trendy urban condo, there are as many old houses being boarded up with weeds in the yard in those same cities maybe a mile or two away. There are plenty of stories out there of people being dissatisfied with the living downtown in a box thing. Many had never lived in condos before, and dislike it. Many don't like the density. Your exodus would be bigger for those groups if they wouldn't lose their ass on selling their property. Just listening on the radio yesterday. One of my downtowns here, they closed the Macy's finally! After the 20 year agreement with the city on a loan just to subsidize the place was up. Macy's had paid the loan off of course, but probably was still losing their ass on the operation of the store. No business! Now the city will probably dump a ton more money into more 'development' that won't be market supported. People might buy a 20 oz pop over noon hour, but don't shop at nights and on weekends. You even hear stories of traffic exodus from cities on the weekends out to the shopping centers because even though some new retail gets built, people who live in these condos and such prefer to get in a car and go to the costcos and malls that are outside the trendy urban centers. A lot of people would like to think its a huge mass movement to the cities proper. That is a hyperbole. It's not to the level that is stated. ANd usually once people get that out of their system, if they are having kids they usually give up on the romantic nature of being downtown and look for the first opportunity to get out to where the good schools are.

No brainer! Zip founders make out like Bandits, Avis does the expected and gets in ground floor on a new type of rental biz. At a minimum, Avis knocks out a small but significant new competitor.

still think Mitt as GM CEO makes a hell of lot more sense than Akenson, plus now he's got right to work going on Michigan, we may see some progress. But Mitt actually would rather hang at Costco and buy toilet paper now anyways.

That's just the Midwest, though. Different market in So Cal, AZ, TX, Florida and other milder climates where there is more acceptance of RWD.... Yes that is true however, you can tell over history how pretty much any automaker that wanted its line to sell consistently across the entire 50 and through each month of the year ultimately had to add AWD to their most popular models. BMW, Merc, Infiniti etc. Another recent case in point was Jaguar, adding AWD to the XK or whatever. Hyundai will be required to add it to EQuus and Genesis if they want to move more of them where its wet. I do understand how in CA or AZ etc. the benefits of RWD will be more sought after and more appreciated. But if there were an overwhelming demand as such, then makers who do the bang up business in those states would be a lot more concerned with having more RWD models (toyo, honda, etc.). And cars that offer AWD and promote them as such do make them available FWD or RWD only in that case the buyer saves some dough. Point being that between coupes and cars with limited drivetrain options that cannot cover the wet and cold states well, will ultimately have regional success with certain models. Add to that the big push for all the handling benefits of AWD and all its new trickery, you can see they are not just pushing that for weather issues. Lots of buff book articles talk about the AWD hot rods that can apply that power at the track so much better as well. How about a twin turbo v6 all wheel drive corvette or camaro? That would rattle some traditionalist cages.

Other than the Camaro and Mustang what coupe sells in greater numbers. I can not think of one that even reaches 50% of the sedan sales of a similar model. The Camaro is also Polarizing too as not everyone loves it either but it still sells. On one hand, Mustang buyers (and a few Camaro buyers) are 'renewable'. They actually first off have the means to make the purchase, a new one, not a run out used one. But then they actually trade up to another one. I think Mustangs have a lot more loyalty to that than Camaro buyers. And the demographics of both generally are not super wealthy, nor do they flip cars often (generalizing). I still think the Camaro's current sales are due to the fact that it was off the market so long....that and it's over the top styling were a magnet for a group that had no Camaro available for a long time. That drought and the style was able to attract people who maybe hadn't bought a new car in 10 years or more. And its a segment that is probably graying some. Lots of 40 and 50 somethings re-living the old days. And after this Camaro I am not sure they will be buying another one. I still don't see a ton of younguns in new Camaros. Almost totally white older people, mostly dudes. Now of course part of that is that young uns don't seem to have or spend money for anything but smart phones these days as they all must still live in their parents' basements. (sarcasm but the point is the under 30 set simply is not loaded and in general can't buy a lot of new cars either). I cannot for the life of me think of many other coupes that can be called volume sellers for any brand. G37/35 and the BMW 3 seem to do somewhat ok. But those are lux cars too. I drove through the VW lot today. It is pretty shrewd what VW did with the Beetle redesign. They essentially restyled it to make it acceptable to more genders and more ages and in effect created the perfect coupe and Golf 3 door replacement at the same time. Sales are up, and it should reach many more buyers for a long time. Now you know why VW really doesn't try to market the regular 3 door Golf hardly, and also the Beetle is partially why we don't get the Corrado here, that and the fact that the Corrado is a......COUPE. Coupes don't light up the sales charts, look at all the sedan Jettas that get sold. I will be very interested to see how the Elantra coupe sells.

nice color! almost NITRO YELLOW!

Where i worked about 90% of the sales were used, all makes and models, all prices, but was also part of a dealer group that had 2 massive Ford / Lincoln stores and Chevrolet. All the used was available to sell to anyone at any store. In general, and speaking overall based upon inventory sold in all the stores the used was very typical and consistent. Once you subtracted out Mustang sales, there was very little RWD business at all on the car side. When there was a car that was available that had AWD or RWD available, in most cases people were looking for the AWD version. However, some cars did draw in buyers. For example, I sold a RWD manual Mercedes sedan. One major reason it sold was the price was cheap. Usually if people were willing to go RWD on a car that both were available, the price had to be substantially lower to get them to bite (the same was true for pickups). The Chrysler 300's and Dodge Chargers were a car that people didn't really care much about if it was RWD, but at the same time, those cars had to be cheap to move them. G35 coupes seemed to have their stalkers, especially for ones with sticks, but that was also usually young punks or bad credit, or both, and they often were strokers. These are people who simply could not buy / cannot buy. You don't make money off these folks. The G35 sedan AWD's drew a lot more attention. Audis of any kind with quattros were unbelievable magnets and attracted many more buyers than just about any other German piece I could imagine consistently. The AWD Mercedes sedans did well also. BMW's were spotty, they did have their fans. But that mostly people looking for 10+ year old BMW's on the cheap.. If we had any newer BMW's then people wanted those to have AWD also. They expected it. We had a 128i M manual that went unsold for several months and after several price drops and ended up getting auctioned because the only ones who were interested were young punks without the credit or old 'car guys' who wouldn't pull the trigger but wanted to test drive it. Even Crown Vics and Grand Marquis ended up rotting on lots, winter or summer, unless the price was so low that you lost money. I had a pretty good survey of what sold not only at my dealership but also the big brothers. One of our Ford dealers was top 20-25 in the country. The whole group sold several thousand new and used vehicles a year. I'd say I have a pretty good idea of what the general population likes to see for affordable cars at least in a typical midwest state.

Not all FWD 4 cylinder sedan. There will be some RWD and larger V8 coupes but they will not be cheap. Price will help limit the market is what the companies are looking at at some point. The prices will rise over the next 10 plus years to the point it will be difficult to afford anything with a large engine unless you have the means. The Chevy SS is a perfect response to this. It will be available to the 10-20k buyers who want a RWD V8 car. Between that, a Camaro, a Corvette, and a couple Cadillacs, the v8 market will be amply covered, at least as far as GM is concerned.

Part of why manufacturers are rushing to turbo fours is the entire block + cylinders and heads is a lot less expensive. Two less pistons, 8 less valves, one less head, two less camshafts. Once the manufacturers learned how to tame the NVH of the four, got turbos semi reliable, get the needed power, mpg, then the added cost for a turbo vs. all that extra hardware is pretty cost effective. I am sure that is how the bean counters look at it. No way GM would ever move to turbo fours unless they could justify it versus the more popular engine options. But in the end it will be as you say, the advancements will filter to the 6 cylinders also and make a great alternative to v8's.

Chrysler 300 and Charger with pentastar get like 300hp and 30 mpg with 8 speed auto and provide a driving experience very close to the hemi, which uses like 25 or 30% more fuel.

CTS coupe is a striking car, but it still doesn't overcome the fact that is only has 2 doors, which is why it doesn't sell much. RWD too, I think i maybe had one customer ever that was looking specifically for a RWD car when I sold. ALmost exclusively people looking to fill the basic need of transportation wanted a car they could get around in winter with much easier. One of the most frequent questions I got was, 'it's front wheel drive, right?"

The Chrysler CVT's are among the worst of CVT's out there. THere are some cars out there with livable CVT's.