regfootball

take away the town and country and the chrysler brand is out of business.

actually, honda's most important models are doing quite well, except the Accord is going in the toilet. I assume the Hyundai Sonata is partially to account for this. Glad the customers are figuring out the Accord ain't all that.

18 passat wagons? take out the jetta and VW is a dead brand that one would hardly expect to have 800k annual sales anytime soon.

yikes

taurus sales are rough. all lincoln sales are too. flex sales are rough.

hardly any big volume sellers.....

kill the borrego please

few models, expand on the strengths and improve to more of what people want. build it over time, keep your brand identity consistent. when that new impreza hits this summer it should be interesting.

I know, I'm crazy, but i like the Outlander Sport. In higher trim its overpriced and it has some flaws and it needs some refinement work but the concept of its packaging is appealing. I would love to see one with the Lancer Ralliart motor and a six speed. It's not a knockout vehicle. I just like that it its a simple tall light compact hatch that offers AWD if you want it. By compact, I mean similar to regular compact car. Not 'Equinox' sized compact. I would estimate they might sell about 50k of them a year once they become a known quantity.

GM should have been the defacto leader in the rollout of NAV in the automotive industry. to do that means it should have been extended to their best selling models and most accessible priced segments. Not just all the expensive models. in essence, their financial reasons for not putting them in the BU then lead me to classify the failure as a financial and management problem. and as we all know that is not at all rare to GM. GM simply never tried hard enough to make the numbers work. They did not invest enough into it and did not leverage their prior telematics superiority. EPIC FAIL.

mazda6 is a good car, they need to do something to boost sales.

ok, let me clarify. I agree with you. I am not absolving them of not doing it. I am merely telling you, that was the most prominent and widely referred to reason that was given that they did not. If you want me to demonstrate not drinking the Kool Aid then i will say what i actually feel on the matter. It was pathetic and pitiful that GM / OnStar were not leaders in NAV, here's why. With telematics already in place (OnStar), GM being the largest mfr should have been in the innovator position and been the very first manufacturer to integrate telematics with the visual screen. the fact that ford began the in car sound tech revolution is a double punch in the gut. So my opinion is this, I am less worried about GM lying or being cheesy about whether they offered the NAV screens across the board and why it took so long as I am abut the EPIC FAIL and complete loserness of it to not race to the lead and tying OnStar with Full NAV screen and complete integrations with traffic services and all of that. I would have also expected GM to offer in car wifi by now too, but again Ford beats them to the punch on that. GM also was late with bluetooth and USB. So like hyper says at like 2 grand or whatever, the NAVS are going to have a very small take rate. Ideally GM should have found a way to popularize the NAV and get the cost down fast so that they could offer it at say 300 bucks a pop where the guaranteed take would have been over 50%, and if it WERE tied to an OnStar service, would have increased the take rate on OnStar as well. I will even go a step further and say that GM should have brought lots of mobile funtionality to the market before the smartphone makers did. As far as the ROI not being the reason on the NAVs in the Malibu, yes, at the price they wanted to charge I can understand why they did it then. I just think they should have looked at it in a completely different and aggressive paradigm. But hey Red Ink Rick was in charge then...... I think another factor to consider. NAV is evolving so fast. GM maybe needed to make sure they had head units that would handle software and or hardware upgrades several years into the future. I know myself I probably would rather velcro an iPad to the dash anyways. For music and NAV.

the new ones are, that is only very recent. but that is exactly the point. to redo the auras and 08+ malibus right after they had just brought them out, they did not want to do. that's why i said they were hardly leading edge.

I've heard the Saab is so different that the car has virtually no commonality with the vectra / malibu. Saab changed so much stuff it basically became its own car.

for one, GM hung its whole hat on OnStar and has buttloads of money invested in it over years. They are not going to sacrifice putting it in their cars in lieu of another technology if its one or the other. GM has so much money and time building the OnStar brand. The other comment about the screen too low in the dash, also is completely the case. What I've read is that GM didn't feel the investment would pay off in terms of all the work that would be needed. That would include a center stack redo. That Malibu is a high volume, low margin car. Even though I thought it was entirely cheesy, I am believing that they chose not to do it because they did not feel there would be cost payback. I think the fact that they still have barely integrated OnStar old plus new NAV units also plays in. They sort of had the chance to be real innovators in that regard, to marry the OnStar with true NAV Screens. They kind of didn't become the leading edge on that. When the wagon circles back around it comes down to, it was too expensive, and too hard to do. For GM.

gotta protect the baby i guess. GMI is not the only site i have read that on. It does sound like typical GM, I'm just sayin that's apparently why they never put NAV on the car. I also saw it in motor trend before too. hell, it was probably on this site a couple hundred times too. again, it does sound like GM excuse making. but GM has built a long rep of making excuses. If there were another explanation out there would be a better way for you to debunk the credibility of that. Not just to say, 'that site is wrong'.

sometimes you have to go to the other sites if i could highlight anything with my computer for cut paste i would but instead i will just tell you to read the second paragraph which has been mentioned several times in many places regarding the Malibu, Aura,etc. Also supposedly the Malibu does not have rear armrest for some reason that is bizarre as well.

oh c'mon that is such a Croc. j/k congrats.

Maxx sold better than expected because the 04-07 Bu sedan was so ugly. the maxx was ugly too, at least you got more utility with the Maxx. I think an HHR2 would be a nice addition. Thing is, it needs to drive nice like the Cruze and it needs to have more volume inside. The current one has good volume, but lacks girth and probably with regards to future competition would need more cargo space. So if there is an HHR2 it has evolve and get larger and more useful.....despite the fact that the current one worked ok. ANy new HHR I would hope is not just a regurge of the current one. I'd like to see them emulate some different styling themes.....maybe the late sixties chevy trucks or something.

oh, absolutely you are right there, I would say that exact thing myself. what you mean there is exactly what i think every day. Our elected officials are not working in the public interest. Agendas bought and paid for are being forced down us in exchanged for increasing reductions of freedom and standard of living. Oh I know what you are saying. I am just not sure that means we give license to breed the wishing of planned harm to another individual. Even 'symbolically'. But as history has proven endlessly, violence etc. has tended to effect change in bigger events than any sort of civilized and cerebral approach at improving social structure. what he have right now in America is a bad marriage. There are major problems. And no communication, and no recognition that any side of any argument need to sacrifice for common good. No one senses that a common bond is strong enough to stay through the hard times of the disagreements. Our fiber of commitment in this country is indeed on life support and no one is talking about it. Worst part is we are so vulnerable to being taken over by outside interests who can totally jump on us when we are divided and weak.

one other key reason the current car does not get a refresh is that it is not capable of supporting NAV on its current electrical architecture or something without incurring big expense. that is why the bu / aura etc. never had nav and why they got charred for it..........

my guess is they are just filling out the current Bu on a planned term model cycle, inclusive of all prior agreements and arrangements made regarding the manufacturing plant, and labor, and retooling, and all of that. the current Bu is only stale by this time, its not been rotting. i think they could have given it some tweaks and a new interior to keep it fresh for 2 more years. But GM became believers that a 4 year life cycle or whatever is better than a 6 year. If the car is ready for another market first I see no harm in selling it elsewhere if the current model's life cycle is already short.

Just to interject, regardless of how dapper the dude may be.....that regal GS is a DAMN SNAZZY CAR. that would look just F I N E in my garage........ no worries to me on this GLOBAL Buick

I can absolutely convince my wife on a regal wagon right at this moment in time IF it were available right now. We've reached the point right now where that would be a fantastic car for us and we could put the large 3 row out to pasture for awhile. But where is it? I am guessing 3 years before they bring it here.

but that's exactly the point. your two responses. I understand what you are saying. But I just am thinking sometimes there are more deeply rooted and fundamental issues. killing and sex have parallels again here. It's not acceptable to have sex with the other woman, but it's ok to rub one out while thinking about them. No 'crime' was committed, but its not right to assume there is still nothing there emotionally or in sunsequent interaction that can contribute to harm or that is doing something wrong to you, the subject matter or any of the other important people in their life, or yours. Fantasy is not always 'no strings attached'. Every emotion has a consequence eventually, regardless of whether it is always acted upon in the moment or not. Not acting on the emotion does not always hide the end result. As far as the Communist thing, I know what you are getting at because of the free speech and all of that. I agree this should not be a crime as it was charged. But there should be an internal clock that says this maybe isn't right. I am only suggesting that the undertones that exist in people pretending, but wanting to shoot at someone because of their position in government etc. is in a way a selfish desire to undermine the democratic structure, and a disbelief and distrust of the way our country is set up and our democratic system. Again, like I said above, garbage in, garbage out. Look in the mirror and see who you voted for. Now you think you have the right to take democracy into your own hands or take the emotion to that level just because YOU, one person, are unhappy? Instead of taking target practice at someone symbolically to deal with your hate of someone or their position or political agenda, it would be far more productive to assault them in other ways, I might suggest debate on issues. Use the internet. Rally the people. Influence the political process by getting involved, etc. Build consensus among constituents to resolve things through the legislative process. I say all of this through the framework of a functional democracy, a democracy of which the respect of positions, structure, and elected officials needs to exist and trust needs to exist in the institution and the process or the whole thing comes unglued. Not one where the citizens themselves are of a mindset where they have no desire to participate with respecting the terms of agreement as well. Egypt what's going on there is slightly different. THey really haven't been a democracy. No wonder they are revolting. What i was saying was not in the standpoint of promoting communism. It was more about needing to preserve the level of respect for the democratic system so the system itself doesn't come unglued. Think of the military. If that sort of undercurrent of disrespect and channeling individual emotions unproductively were allowed to fester and grow.