regfootball

i understand peter's frustration, but he really at this point is preaching to the choir and his writing has gone to the place that none of the people he is trying to wake up will get it. people still are in the 'consumer reports says toyota makes the best cars', 'my uncle has a 17 year old camry that he has never changed the oil and it has 876,000 miles on it and we just put a new clutch in it last week', etc. yada. and i still believe at the root of this anti detroit and anti American sentiment.....basic racial profiling. those smart asians like to hole up in an office and spend 80 hours a week engineering their way out of a concrete vault with really great math because you know those asians go to school a lot and they get good grades and so they do a really good job making nice reliable cars for us American consumers. Just for us! Anything they build is so much better. Much better than the inefficient people who work at GM and Ford, you know, all the high priced middle managers that work their and get overpaid and all the union people who sit on their asses or don't show up for work and make 264 dollars an hour. I shouldn't have to pay for their health care or salary and dammit they should work 12 hours a day for free with no breaks and no heat just because its my car they are building because dammit, my job sucks too and i only make 120,000 a year working from home writing reports...or making multi colored pie graphs on powerpoint........well ok i do facebook all day with my other at home coworkers but that's besides the point, i have to go to a work meeting at the Florida resort this weekend. And those Germans, they really design all the fashionable cars, they are EUROPEAN you know. Everything from Europe is cool. It doesn't matter that my German car is in the shop a lot, German cars are better because they are so chic and they drive them at 120 miles per hour on the autobahn and all those people over there have such cool accents. Honestly, though, if the govt wants to help GM, the best thing they could do is ante up some dough to redo all the interiors on a lot of their cars and give them grade A++ plastic and knockout designs at any cost. and a few six speed trannies and some new engines. Honestly that would be the quickest way to chip away at all the negativity. I still believe interiors is right up at the top in terms of what makes someone's opinion of a brand. If GM for example put VW level or better interiors in their chevys, then that might finally start to get people turned around.

any carmaker that wants to lead the world in volume needs to be a huge player in the US. Toyota got that. Hyundai is trying now for that. VW so far is not. They have a market a little cornered on the hip and urban crowd. However, in order to bust it in volume, and there are only so many hip urbanites, VW will have to go the way of Toyota and Hyundai and start fleet dumping and saving themselves by zero and making your payments when you lose work. And also if they flood the market like a grand am then their perceived value will nosedive which will piss off the current VW bangers who still stick with it because its hip, even if their car is in the shop 6 times a year. So expect a day when its not impalas and G6's being advertised used by the truckload for 149/mo 72 months 6.9 apr see fine print for more details. I am surprised VW really wants to go this way. And really, VW wants to be number one but they don't even have a decent aluminum 4 cyl non turbo in their core product here in the US. If VW wants to be mainstream here, then they need to pony up with some decent non turbo, non premium gas, non diesel, non iron block 4 bangers. remember when mits tried to whore its way to market share? Is this what VW wants to do?

LOL nearly everyone i know who's owned a VW recently says the same thing. How does VW plan to take over the world without repeat buyers?

that really could be totally why the SRX went fwd, that and its 9-4x counterpart. sharing platforms.

well for now. the mini SUV crossover thing is on its way!!!!

and its ugly and feminine and overall yuck. but it will still sell since its a toyota.

like a mini? -had to-

in defense of the SRX. cad is targeting the poster child for luxury crossovers, the Lexus RX which we all know is a puffy camry. i don't see the hot selling RX needing a sigma platform to get the sales it did. all that said, why the last SRX was praised so much was its chassis and handling. why they would $h!can that foundation is beyond me. i do know the SRX was a fuel sucker. although if the new SRX is portly, changing the platform won't really give it much better mpg. basically the SRX changes were for style and to entice chick buyers who didn't like the wagon look of the last SRX. they felt changing the vehicle but keeping the name would help, name recognition. BTW, anyone think the 9-4x will end up as a buick?

i am glad this backlash is occuring.

lemon pepper tilapia. MMMMMM

the mid 90's GM wagons. the notchback cutlass salon and 442 / centurys of around 1980.

scan the lots and ads right now, the CTS and MKS are extremely discounted. a mazda6 will almost never see much of a discount. its a great chance to get a much better car (CTS or MKS) at a UJS sedan price.

the aztek turned over 100k recently. its at about 101.5k as of this evening. GM is unreliable? WTF? Here is the history on the vehicle. Oil changes on average every 3000-3500 miles. A couple air filters. No plugs or fuel filters yet even. I did brakes and tires with alignment at about 70k miles. Yes, OEM tires went to 70k. A bit noisy, but they made it. Brakes only needed pads and the discs needed to be turned. Radiator and tranny fully flushed at 50 and 100k. OK, here are the defects so far. Some electrical part fixed under safety recall. Never affected vehicle operation. Both front wheel bearings replaced under warranty. ............... struts could stand to be replaced but its not entirely needed. Battery might be suspect but batteries are after 5 years. Fuel pressure regulator? this is it folks. we beat on it, just gas it up and go, its survives without much love and its been way reliable. And GM vehicles are supposed to be 'unreliable'? In the FWIW department, all my Fords that i have purchased new or a year old have been the same sort of thing. My friend is a toyota mechanic at a dealer, i always love it when he tells stories about the toyos that break down after the warranty ends. stuff like backup cameras going bad 1000 miles after the warranty dies and the pissed off customers having to shell out hundreds having to get annoying stuff fixed.

i will say this, i think hyundai is becoming quite successful at chipping away at toyota's role in the market. people bought toyos for 'reliability' and 'value'. well, CR is telling the sheep to buy hyundais now for the same reasons they told them to buy toyos, reliable non emotional vanilla transportation appliances, but they are selling cheaper than toyota and have longer warranties too. toyota should be very afraid. people will not be loyal to toyota when they can a toyota clone with less cash and more backup. since so many people this seems to be all they want. vanilla on 4 wheels and a blessing from CR telling them what to buy.

you mean the porsche touareg?

doesnt have much more features than an 010 SHO with basically the same performance at what 20 grand cheaper? XF looks nice, but apparently the legend of jaguar will live on, i.e. the shop.

i wouldn't buy something as low grade as a mazda6 when for the same money cars like the CTS and MKS may be had for almost as much with the equipment levels comparable. to me, accords, camrys and mazda6's when you load them up, get too pricey. mazda 6 is good for the class its in, but its not as solid a car as a CTS or MKS.

yes, he has done an awesome job.

you know, you might be able to tap a base level MKs. Not MKz. MKS. they are teetering close to 30k right now for a fwd one. I would take one of those over a mazda6. even a base CTS is dangerously close to 30k right now, but i don't know how you feel about rwd.

if she wants a TL, maybe you should check out a TSX. TL is 6 cyl only i think?

some levels of the fusion hybrid will be below 30k. maybe it makes sense to even look at that. the fusion gets new trannies and engines. so the refinement level should go up, even on the manual. i know i drove an 09 escape manual, which shares the engine, however i think maybe the escapes tranny is different than what was going into the fusion. i know the hydraulic clutch on the escape i liked but the shifter was notchy. the 6 speed auto on the 09 escape i tested with very good. if thats the same unit going into the fusion, its a good team. the mazda6 has style points on the others. only problem with the 6, for certain options, you really have to go up the trim level ladder, and the price can rise really quick.

oh my gosh, send them to the scrapper!

well i hope this works. buick only sells 51 cars per dealer to its blue hair set, and saturn sold 470+ i believe per dealer to its younger and more future worthy clientele.

QUOTE (Captainbooyah @ Mar 9 2009, 12:29 AM) Last I checked, about 90% of our population cannot stand Nickleback. The two guys that do enjoy Nickleback are just morons. i heard nickleback for the first time a few weeks ago. who listens to that garbage?

start ups are not expected to make money right away. after a while, sure. how long should have saturn been given? it is fact that saturn brought customers to GM they would never have. still do, even now. I know MANY people who won't touch chevy, BPG, etc. but will buy a saturn or like them. Saturn dealers sell more cars per dealer than any GM brand. Best customer experience. Yet, GM kills them. Will the press turn on GM and in 3 years we'll be reading, (when BPG ultimately has to be put under too) "why GM killed saturn, we don't know". GM has to do this now because of the economy but my guess is this seriously bites them in the ass. I was reminded about this driving home this weekend on a long trip, when 99% of the Buick drivers I saw looked like they had one foot in the grave already. GM is writing off an entire age demographic by killing saturn and tasering pontiac because i don't think chevy will neccessarily pick up all those buyers.