regfootball

BUT THEY HAD KUNG ZHU!

cliche, unoriginal, 'lets tack an eggcrate on an Aston or a Chrysler Firepower'

considering that the dual mode and 3.6 was being readied for production last spring in the now defunct cadillac vu.....er, saturn vue, i am guessing that there is not much more work on the powertrain needed to get it into the XTS. GM needs a model or 2 to write off the cost of developing that 3.6/dual mode and the XTS appears to be the survivor to that role. it has the transaction price to bear that.

we need to look ahead to the 2013/2014 time frame.. 200hp and 200tq should not be unreasonable, and by that, i also mean with a somewhat flat torque curve......

hang in there. re: the toys r us bit, i actually need to finish up an app with them for seasonal work, it might be too late, but maybe we can share stories........if that materializes. oh, and yeah, the alcohol budget is actually higher these days. survey, who drinks more these days? LOL

i sure as hell don't blame you. i hit 40 and all of a sudden am fairly worthless. I don't have a nice ass or rack, and i am not an extrovert, and there was not money in my family to jump start me with wealth. the price of everything goes up but magically the wages decline, unless your job goes bye bye. then you have no wage. the company i was working for, privately owned, turns out the owners got sued by many people they stiffed, because apparently the fam was funneling to much money to their fam trust funds and not enough back to the business to cover operating loans etc. and hundreds went jobless. but truth is it does not matter if its private business or public, the motivations have reached a level of stench that makes me ill and insists on corporation at all costs with no regard for society as a whole. i am fairly convinced that most businesses these days only give back to the community for either tax or marketing advantages. and if they do give back, they actually do so in a manner that risks putting their own employees out of work too. the only way to go about fixing the corporate influence and to break up the wealth is to go full assault on breaking up the companies. of course, that would starve the political parties of their funding...... its fairly sad, i have no words of encouragement for the up and coming generations. all i can say is 'watch your backs' and be leery of anything that requires you to continually be the ones to have to invest in something. education, training, investing in stocks, time, anything that asks YOU to give, be leery. if i were just starting out these days i think i would just be a waiter or bartender at a nice restaurant or bar. and then i would find a cheap place to live. if you can marry into wealth, try for that. gain your assets that way is probably easier than through work and education.

honestly did anyone think the volt was NOT going to get it? PR depts i am sure coordinated all this stuff. post election, the IPO, the COTY announcement, the mpg announcements for the Cruze Eco and LaCrosse...... There was probably a major conspiracy involved to get all that to time out. Probably something on the level of a Soros sort of operation....... which is fine. maybe this means GM is figuring out why stupidly it matters more about spin than substance. if GM makes more $$$$$ instead of toyota because of it, i am fine with it. I recently caught wind that somehow the Hyundai Sonata turbo and Mother Theresa were separated at birth. which explains their ability to solve the world's issues with compassion, humanity, and fuel efficiency. The Kia Optima is said to connected to the Dali Llama (sp) somehow..... new sonata is an 011.....

what i found reading on the saturnfans website about those opel stereos is that they have power, but for some reason the electronics are such or the speakers are such that they do not make use of all the power and the volume is restricted so you can't extract what the system is actually capable of.

curiously the IPO is hitting about the same time as this announcement.......

if its like the astra w/ advanced audio there will be a menu sort of thing that takes you into an EQ where you can really tweak the sound more to your liking. My guess is there is a range of adjustment on the sound, but that the speakers are still not 'top tier', and that the system itself is so restricted to the volume it can put out. but i bet the sound is at least clear once you tune it in, that is more clear than most in car audio systems. i supposed you probably can't do like i did on the Kizashi I looked at recently. i told salesguy i wanted to be alone inside the car that had the rockford fosgate setup and then i proceeded to get the rear view mirror shaking and the windows rattling......with a stock setup. My guess is the Regal is tuned more for classical and jazz clarity than it is for juvenile bass exhibitions.

what i find bizarre and am absolutely livid about. why work has to be 'feast or famine'. to me, its mismanagement of the highest order and of course I say this having been out of work for quite some time. i meet ex coworkers for lunch and they are all working on 2-3 month contracts and mandatory 25% unpaid overtime. places fire full timers with benefits and simultaneously cycle in temps for assignments the full timers were doing. In your situation I am guessing its probably just hard to find qualified people. But also the deadlines are set in such a way that you pretty much have to crash it. I think with better managment the work could be spread out to more folks and deadlines negotiated better possibly too. Basically they know they can abuse the workers so they do. I think that sucks. DOing what I do / did, they could employ 20-25% more people. The work is there, they are just milking an employers market as long as they can. We need to move toward a workplace that can spread the work out so we have lives outside of work, and so more folks are working, and so its not an all or nothing, economy crippling proposition. off my soapbox, signed bitter and pissed off. take care of yourself and manage the stress. live for yourself a little more. no one cares what anyone did for a living when they turn you to ash or put you 6 feet under in a box.

harmon kardon or not?

yeah, why no interior shots? hey if there is a deeply discounted 200 with the new pentastar rotting on the lots next summer, loaded for 20k or so, that would be a nice car to rack up speed in.......

they'll probably fix that, its just taking them FOREVER!!!! isn't the ES Lexus' biggest seller?

go drive one......you won't want a fusion, or a cruze, .....

that 200 logo looks like cheese. not digging the sonata grille morphed onto this sebring, but remember its higher purpose is to introduce that same look now so the public is familiar with when it is more nicely integrated on the all new 200.

Cadillac CTS v6 perfectly fine in comparison to the popular Infiniti G37. Most BMW 3's and C-Class only have 6 cylinder. I have actually seen 3 live CTSv's in the wild now. They are the sex on wheels. CTSv will still beat the Germans on the track. Cadillac v6 outperforms the northstar v8. why miss it? CAFE won't let you have a v8 anyways. THese days there are not a whole bunch of folks who get hung up on the v8 in mainstream lux models.

suzuki' existence here is almost entirely dependent on that car. they got the car right, it just seems they can't shuffle the deck fast enough to get the support behind it. Suzuki needs to bring the Swift here ASAP. I would ditch the Equator, and find a replacement for the Grand Vitara. The SX4 is not a bad rig, but the freaky front windows is a deal breaker. SX4 is almost a Fit replacement, they just erred on the design of the car in ways they should not have. Creative, focused, targeted marketing could at least propel the sales of the car to the 25k level, and if they brought the Swift they could sell 10-20k of those. For a brand on life support, that would be progress.

people seem to forget, cadillac's business model is based on many dealers, all who depend on a certain amount of volume, units, and a customer base that is not used to AMG class pricing. And for all the dip$h!s that seem to not get that the luxury class price levels are being redefined due to the recession. there is a lot of opportunity in the non stratospheric price points, because the ultra rich are looking for stealth luxury cars to not be gaudy about their wealth in, and in general people don't buy cars with their HELOC money anymore either. The bubble will burst on overpriced cars also. BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Jaguar will beat each other up for fewer and fewer buyers. A lot of the ultra rich will actually buy more expensive cars to feed their egos even more, but Cadillac can't get any of those people in the next 5 years anyways. Truth be told the jury is still out on whether both Buick and Cadillac will survive. Cadillac needs to hang on to some of the expectations of their past buyers, and that is not pricing in the level of the S class. A CTSV at 60 and change is quite a car and is a decent enough flagship .....for now. Cadillacs ultimate judgement day is coming soon, perhaps 2014, 2015......the ATS will be here, the CTS should be new, we'll see if the XTS is a flop and the 'flagship' Caddy should be almost on arrival. We'll find out if the SRX survives. In addition to that, we'll see where GM's commitment level is for other new models.

once you drive one, the exterior starts to look better, the exhaust cutout highlights help. it's not a 'looker', but at least it looks aggressive. it's unique, and these days a unique inexpensive car that is fun to drive is rare. i am not sure i would ever purchase one, when new altimas are going for 16 grand. but a good lease deal would alleviate trade in value fears, and would minimize the cost of 3 years of a better than typical driving experience in this segment. i know this seems like a bizarre comparison, but its not much more price than a Cruze, or Jetta, and its got more room and more zoom. the mpg is not as good as the compacts, but i think its tweener size and sportiness hit a unique place in the market that it deserves to at least have a cult following.

see, i think the GS will be more what folks call basic sports sedan. and i think there will be an AWD GSX with a twin turbo v6 that will be the big performer. most boomers looking for a nice near lux car to ride off into the sunset though, a base 4 cyl coupled with the pleasing interior should be popular and be a large chunk of the Regal sales.

anyone think its not just coincidence that they released the EPA figures for the Eco, right about when the IPO may take place? keep in mind one thing regarding the eco......12.5 gallon fuel tank as opposed to the larger one.....

those were all things I liked too. great writeup. I have to admit the epa figures on the Eco have me thinking now the Cruze would be a nice replacement for my Cobalt. I had been keen on that Outlander sport but the epa figures on the Eco are about 25% better which is enough of a difference to me to possibly stay sedan. It's also the same amount better than a Subaru Legacy CVT which was another option I had been thinking hard about. It improves on the Cobalt in vastly every way, and also still has the small car charm to it.

that new outlander sport is pretty nice. i liked the one i drove last week. Its a more quality piece than that new Sportage.

I've heard the Sonata is the world cure for morbid obesity. is the handling good enough to say it's a true 'sport sedan' or is it merely 'tight, taut, and quickly responsive'. I always found the old Astra to feel that way. in other words is the handling a step above the median midsize sedan bunch. The Astra had a uniquely German interior smell. Does the Regal smell different inside than the typical north American offgassing smell? I liked the smell of the Regals I sat in on the showfloor.