regfootball

buy a new car with all the money involved and you will indeed care if you got your money's worth.

whatever the case, the cars they had on the floor, the big expanses of plastic were badly beat up and hashed, and looked terrible. not befitting of any car in that price range.

ok, made one for the dinner party tonight. right about now i don't feel so good. it was glorious, and oh so good. but this is definitely a one time deal. i think i am gonna hurl. pictures tomorrow, if i make it. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

but that's exactly the deal with the prius. even if money is a driving factor, the first cost of the prius is still far too high to be considered economical.

in the 010 prius thread you go to great lengths to justify the prius as godlike based upon user convenience and comfort factors. and then in this thread suggest that one example i use as user convenience and comfort is not a reason to justify four doors vs. two. lets weld shut the rear two doors on your prius and now lets see if user convenience matters. in other words, you just said you want the convenience of a sedan. wow. the cold example i used was one instance where the convenience of 4 doors comes into play for a lot of people. it dont matter whether its hot or cold, easy access to the rear matters for a lot of people....and you contradict yourself in the same thread. you call people who want four doors pussies but yet you say you like the convenience of it. most folks want their only car or both their cars to have the same level of user convenience and that doesnt make them pussies. hypocrit. because you apparently are a pussy too, you own a 4 door! face it, you got the prius to be a follower of that bunch and the mini to be a follower of that group too. its easy to defend any decision to make purchase decisions based upon wanting to be accepted as part of some 'in' group. i suppose that genesis coupe will be a nice group to join too, the 'my new asian coupe is better than the detroit coupe' crowd. but you just said you can't have two coupes, right. in the past you said the mini was enough for real use in other threads but your quote above seems to intimate you're not happy with it in that regard? Which is it? Are you Bill Clinton or Obama? that sports car mini 'don't pay the bills' does it. ask a honda element owner if they wouldn't mind two real rear doors and not having to undo their seat belts to let someone in.

so let's say its colder than $h! outside with snow on the ground and you want to pick your kid from school, or other similar scenario....where you pull up to the side of the curb and need the person to get in the car into the back seat fast. major inconvenience if you are in the coupe. gotta get out of the front and seat and unbuckle. gotta move the seat forward and watch someone's ass get into the back in front of your face. then wait for them to wiggle into place and then you are standing in a stiff cold snowy breeze and have to get your feet messy and back into the car and buckle up and situated again. with four doors, you stay in the car unscathed while somone quickly opens the rear door and gets in and out. not worth it, most folks say. the only reason coupes sold was a perceived style advantage. now adays there are so many good looking sedans and enough ugly coupes that 4 doors actually are more visually attractive to most folks. altima coupe or passat CC? malibu sedan or g6 coupe? stylistically and functionally its just tough to make a case for the 2 door. and that is why most of the time people want 4 doors.

magnum is indeed one of my faverit cars. i wish we sould get the 300 wagon here.

can this thread be revised to say which TWENTY FIVE GM vehicles would you get rid of?

here i thought you meant the cadillac northstar engine......... its like they havent updated it for 21 years........

i saw the new prius on the platform at the autoshow the other night. nice improvements over the current DORKY version, although the car is still the leader in dork status. perhaps only the kia rondo can have a higher dork status. anyways, the funny thing about the prius including the other current ones on the floor was that there was no one else looking at them. ditto for the new insight. the insight wasn't even on a platform and no one even cared. i think the economic bubble has people re-thinking what is true economy. everyone wants a good mpg like a hybrid, but no one wants the stigma of the green look anymore. no one wants to be targeted as a liberal greenie dork in a new time when common sense and back to basics is what its about, just like how there are people now who won't admit they voted for obama. prius and insight say radical. true economy means low overall cost on a mainstream budget. value for the buck. the only thing these cars offer is mpg. everything else is in deficit to other cars in the same price range. therefore, not a good use of your dollar when in every facet of life right now people are trying to get most value for buck they can. of course 4 dollar gas means the mpg factors in a lot more. but hybrids need to ditch the dork style and go more the way of the fusion, which is the premiere hybrid right now. real useful car. and sensibly stated. no one had any interest in the prius, which BTW has a heinous interior. the insight just simply looked like a korean knockoff of the prius. the insight's interior was more passable. i am sort of disappointed in the insight though. the original to me was the style standard for hybrids in their initial incarnation and had the most spirit. the make a prius knockoff that says kia so loud doesn't work for me. everything i have read says the new insight and prius will get about the same mpg. as quickly as it was about the hybrid, i think now it really says how much of a foolish sucker you are for getting one. maybe not so much the insight, but like i said, that simply says, 'you were too cheap to get the toyota so you got the kia looking one instead'. 'look honey, i paid 8 grand too much for a compact hatchback!!!!!' toyota is starting to get schooled by hyundai right now anyways. its amazing how fast the tide turns these days. scion and toyota are going to get rode by hyundai big time.

i sat in a new camaro at the auto show the other night. the mullets were out by the way. the interior design is way cool, but sorry, the plastic quality is a major flaw. GM really needs to get with the program. its a sales deterrent. funny though, the 'touch points' are all good (shifter, steering wheel). the manual shifter in particular, at least not running, felt silky and snick snick. another issue. mailslot windows and overall in the bathtub/lack of outward visibility. to me, trunk space was not an issue..access maybe, but for a pony car it looked fine. rear seat room did not look horrible either. seats even felt comfortable and had support, even if the cloth felt a tish cheap. interior assembly quality was quite good too. just that there is sooooo much plastic and its all that darned cheap $h!ty GM plastic. new lacrosse had acres of it too. you could just see it. i did not sit in the new stang but the dash bores me. However, for livability and material quality it seems like it may be better day to day. certainly you can at least see out of the damn thing. a couple hundred more bucks for better plastic would make the camaro a knockout home run. seriously. the cheap plastic ruins it. just like it does in the malibu too, only even moreso. but i guess if i drove the v6 manual i may change my mind. i can imagine that gearbox being slicker than........

that law would get overturned in a court pretty fast. the fact that a bunch of those fruits and nuts would try to make it law though shows you just how misprioritized that looney farm is.

if HHR goes another generation it needs to gain space utilization similar to an Xb or Soul or something like that. current HHR has way too much hood length which takes cabin space away from the vehicle. plus, its heavily contoured body carves away even more useful space. its possible to make a vehicle with more space efficiency but still has has character. i like hhr actually, but in 2010 model year there are too many other choices and it just seems dated and doesn't have a calling card. the orlando at least has enough character to generate new showroom traffic. current hhr is heavily fleeted and commercial which helps bloat its sales numbers. that, and people come in shopping cobalts and get moved into HHR's rightfully so because of the space. if the hhr was taller, wider, had a much shorter hood, and if the body panels didnt eat up the space so much, then it would survive a next gen i think. maybe the groove is a good starting point. there is no law that the HHR HAS to look like a 49 suburban in its next go round.

HHR was getting no love at the auto show tonight. Mazda5 was at least getting looks. HHR doesn't have appeal as a family hauler, where the Orlando would. Still, the orlando would be a semi nichey product. the aztek / judge dredd rear end design probably would kill any female appeal for that vehicle though. GM needs to stop making little detail f@#kups like that. that and cheap plastic. HHR is past its prime, and is probably not much time of relevance left. if you compare it to the cube, element, soul, xb, it kind of lacks utility.

800k, lol

christ. its not like i am having the whole thing myself. there's gonna be like 20 people feasting off the bacon goodness FCS. Alcohol is not healthy either ya know, in large quantity.

alright. i've got the ingredients to make the bacon explosion this weekend. also, got me the ingredients to make a couple of dips with the baconnaise. one is a bacon flavor / crab dip. the other is a bacon sour cream cheddar. dodge fan, how much of the spice rub did you use on your meat?

note the windows in front of the a pillar. similar to next gen astra.

why we can't simply have a grand am and grand prix and a solstice for pontiac? the grand am and solstice sould be on alpha. grand prix could just be on zeta. they will continue to make zeta for a long time i think. g6 sedan and coupe. g8 sedan and wagon. solstice targa and regular. then put camaro on alpha.

the only time americans buy small cars and make profit for the manufacturer is when gas is down. otherwise, people equate small to cheap. VW now apparently is doing what everyone blames US manuf of doing, cheapening the small cars for the US market. Can you blame them? Remember, VW wants to be the world volume leader. What i don't get. Why don't they just offer a Rabbit / Jetta with a decent aluminum 2.0 four cylinder here. that gets good mpg. the rabbit is already fairly cheap. VW seems to want to put the polo on kia's level. basically, VW is saying their nice new polo is too spendy to make for the US market. Heard that before?

tried the bacon salt OMG it is GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!

either way it won't drink fuel like that rdx......

A base LS with a couple props for 23595 was my first one or an LT for 27,435. either would make me giddy.

the v6 manual drinks gas in town. 17? seriously, the weight of the car must be making the engine work its ass off to get moving, but then the top gear must be geared for really low rpm. in any case, if it averages to 20 combined, that would be fine for me. 300hp and 20 mpg? nice. those mpg figures should pass on to the 2010 g8 as well.

by the way, don't discount the notion that this could simply be a marketing tactic and that the discounts won't be any better than any other time in recent history.