regfootball

i've had threads closed before that shouldn't have been. I kind of expect it nowadays here. I am surprised the new chicks thread hasn't been shut down yet considering the thick air on this site.

wow, for a minute there, the first part of your sentence, i thought you had moved to wisconsin. but there was nothing in your post about drunken vagrancy and indecent exposure in public and that, and then you said 'cider' and 'red wine'. Whew. that was a close one!

she just wants to see your name, specifications, and address, so she can stalk you.

God bless him. My condolences to your family. From what you describe, he was a strong man and great man.

this is called 'vacation' or 'consultant whenever he wants'. cut the payroll and give the guy a nice long vacation until he feels rested.

hey, maybe. if the cruze is roomier than the current 9-3, than it should do the trick.

yeah although you are right. i think the pundits are making the next g6 fwd based. Maybe the alpha spawns the next G8?

i think the interior would be fine as a saturn. i think the exterior is too roundish for a saturn. it would be a much better buick. I'd rather see the alpha pontiac based on the holden torana whatever it was (show car) be the next g6. that is sweet and more chiseled as the pontiac should be. the aura as it is now, as far as exterior, reshaped for the next gen would be fine.

meh, its ok. not as nice to look at as a 9-3 combi, or g8 wagon, or CTS wagon. a little blobbish in the rear. when do i get to fly over to BoRg3rhland to be able to tell the fine folks at GME exactly how i want the interior of my 011 Astra tailored?

nope, they're different and both good. zero tastes closer to classic coke. diet coke is a sweeter taste. both very good. zero is just better with mixed drinks.

yeah, usually the bangers for all the 'walkable communities' and mass transit and kumbaya living and all of that, don't get the transportation in midwestern winters thing. one hellish winter in fargo for Ms Pelosi or any granola banger from berkeley, and they won't be even thinking bicycle anytime from November through march.

Lexus interiors, some are pretty nice, the LS and some of the older models. But nothing stunning. So hilarious, one vehicle i came across a few of while shopping recently. Mercedes R class. Great used buys on people haulers. But let me tell you......the interiors on the R class are a major upgrade over any other vehicle you'd consider as a people hauler. Of course, I'd expect this from Mercedes. Lexus is a let down in comparison. I think Land ROvers and Range Rovers have great interiors for what they are in. The new XF Jag (wow i saw one at the dr's office the other day....the XF is easily a truly stunning car) has a cool interior. so yeah, lexus and toyota really don't measure up. go look at the tucky insides of an FJ crusier, a tundra, or a highlander. YUCK!

Love red wine. Long Island teas, dacquiris. Good beer i like also. But since my inlaws drink windsor, and since the big weight loss kick started, oh almost 7 months ago now......its nearly always Windsor and Coke Zero. Not a lot of calories. The COke Zero is far better than diet coke for drink mixing and windsor is not so harsh when compared to other hard liquors. But it will eff you up.

good and popular restaurants always hire sweet looking women because it pays off on the bottom line. and i for one, enjoy the heck out of it. as far as what blu suggests, its also similar for, do you like going into work because of the candy around there? (why yes, all those Somali babes in their head wraps working checkout at Walmart, we SOOOO hit it off) now me, i am sure at one time long ago there were probably places i went because the person behind the counter was cool or cute or a i had a thing or rapport with. Just need to go back through the brain and try to remember. The waitresses at Chumley's were always playful. I like going drinking at the better sports bar type places where the waitresses show up lots of clvg and are friendly.

Maybe this very fact is the catalyst for Obama to push nationalized health care. I am not totally for it, but maybe this really is what is the 'outdated business model' here. Maybe its not GM out of date. Maybe its our national culture of the employer being responsible for this. If other countries pick up this tab, well, no sht sherlock, you can spend more on interior plastics and R&D!!!!! I still think aside from the 'reliability myth'....that interiors is the single most area that people formulate their 'imports are better' position on. No doubt an Audi interior is WAY NICE. But cmon, that Audi costs way more than that 500 of mine that attempts to mock it. So if you are a well off person who loves to spout, of course you will spend more on your car and it will be nicer and that you will tell everyone else its better.

oh BS. the civic costs more to start and the difference at trade in time is about the same. net ownership cost for the non honda is still about the same. another myth to debunk. you simply don't make up for the extra you paid to start. those camry owners in about 2-3 years will all be finding that out. the person buying that civic used is the dumbass. not only are they overpaying for a USED car....they now own it for the the period of time its gonna take its MAJOR dive in resale, plus some repairs. How often do you need to spell this out to people. A CAR IS NOT AN INVESTMENT. it is an expense. anyone who expects to have anything of value left after owning a car is a darned fool.

what i find hilarious. the company i work for builds some housing. even some 2 mill plus condos. and i get to see all sorts of places where costs are cut to still milk huge profits out of some of them. These are people that are somewhat discerning about the quality of their units.....at 2 million bucks you kind of think they have the right nitpick if their cabinets have poor fit and finish on them. People are pickier about the inside of a 20k bread and butter sedan as far as finish and all of that than people who buy those 2 million dollar homes. Its borderline ludicrous these days the extent to which people bitch about some commodity cars. I caught up with an old buddy last weekend and he had a rental avenger. I have actually driven the sebring and at that time was not impressed. But i had to admit, aside from the hardness and grain of the cheap plastic and the dull gray monotone color schemes, everything felt pretty solid in there and it was well assembled, it even had some nice chromey highlights here and there and all the gauges and swtichgear and radio stuff was nice to look at and operate. now, they need to fix the cheap plastic, but what really impressed me was the tightness of fit of some of the interior stuff......all really nice. Precise I would even say. A level of precision that cannot be achieved in a 2 million dollar condo. Yet the car is a 17 thou rental and people will bitch incessantly about the differences of panel gaps between a slew of 20-25k cars......which is fine....but those differences do not MEAN THAT ONE CAR IS WORTH NOTHING THE OTHER TWICE ITS STICKER! Has anyone seen how awful the new Accord's interior is? The sensationalization of all that kind of stuff makes it seem like one car is $h! and the other is baby Jesus. Its this hyperbole that has gone out of control and is repsonsible for this overblown sense of the domestics being poor. THEY ARE NOT. Good God, people, wake the f-ck up! A lot of this auto ripping is even done by people on sites like this who either don't own cars, or maybe have only been driving 3-4 years and maybe have never even made their own house or rent payment to gain a proper perspective on anything. To these idiots, its a matter of regurgitating what 'temple of vtec' said about Hondas, or what COnsumer Reports said about the Hyundais. Go to the f-cking grocery store and go shop for canned vegetables. Tomatoes even. There are 10 brands and 60-100 different packages to buy tomatoes in a can. crushed, whole peeled, puree, etc. What's the effing difference? NOT A LOT. So would i let Del Monte and Hunts and Contadina and Red Gold and stuff go out of business and let them sell tomatoes from Japan and send that money back overseas? Where there are differences these days, its often misstated. For example, having driven the Vue and Forester, the Vue is a way better machine. Yes, your results will vary. But now MT calls the forester SUV of the year.....and it in no way of any kind deserves this award. Yet now i am sure we will see all sorts of hyperbole about how great it is and how crappy the Vue is. And its not true. Bottom line, do you think its important for the US to be global big shots in the auto industry, remember, we invented autos, and we are the world's biggest market. The world car market is one of the largest global product markets in the world. You decide......it is simply this. If you feel it is important for the USA to be the top global companies in the global automobile market, and if you feel it is important to have American companies provide products in its own backyard in one of the largest industries in our country, then the best recipe to keep the status of these companies solid for the long haul is to consider helping them out now. Normally i say let a failed business die, but here's why you don't here. competitive global disadvantage. GM was the corporate citizen for decades......paying generous wages and benefits and taxes. Union contracts. Health care. That was how business was done here, and GM was not empowered to break all those issues themselves. THEY HAD TO WORK AROUND THESE THINGS. What was GM's flexibility to adapt when its competition was able to flex their currency or give no interest loans to its companies or pick up its workers health care? Did GM have nearly as many tax breaks for new plants etc that Hyundai and Toyota etc had? it will majorly disrupt the economy and could turn a severely bad downturn into a pandemic failure. A lot more than letting a bunch of wall street crooks go without a bailout. The big 3 going down mean instant job losses of terrible proportions in many states, towns.....and these are working folks who pay taxes and feed their local economies. allow our companies to fail in the global arena in this product shows that we will throw in the towel and give away our economy in every other product and service and is an admission we are simply open season on every other country to take us over and drain us dry. It also shows we are not willing be leaders in the global arena in manufacturing (or anything else), and this weakens our national security. It is throwing in the towel and saying, we no longer wish to participate in manufacturing, and we have no capacity to make our own stuff and provide for ourselves if the sht comes down and we are in war bunker mode. So, what's next then.....food and agriculture? Computers and tech? Medical technology and health care? MILITARY? This all reminds of me of cities that let their sports teams leave because they say its too costly to build a new stadium. Well, they lose the team, and then they ultimately end up spending 10x the amount a few years later to get something back because they all of a sudden decide they need it back. CLEVELAND BROWNS HELLOOOOOOOO...LA/NFL. Minnesota North Stars....HELLOOOOOOO. Seattle, your Sonics are gonna happen some day. Bend over, it won't be cheap. Its more expensive to let it fail. You're giving up that business to the outsider. The government can spend the money on MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT, ASSUMING HEALTHCARE BURDENS, AND LOST TAX REVENUE or they can try to prop it up one more time before it fails. WHICH ONE WILL ULTIMATELY COST MORE? AND FOR HOW LONG? Who pays the price in the meantime? Thousands of families in average town USA? Ex-GM employees or the EX-TOYOTA employees that lose their jobs when ultimately someday toyota decides they no longer need to keep assembly lines here in America for PR purposes. GM sells 60% of its stuff in other countries and you want the US company to throw that all back and give it to someone else and weaken your position in the global trade arena? It would not be unreasonable to demand management changes though for GM or chrysler or whoever, i feel. Uncompensated. Nardelli, go put on the apron on sell plywood, you ass.

yet morons will pay 30k for a camry that will only be worth 15k in 3 years. meanwhile, that used DTS for 20k, will still be worth 10k in 5 years.

because those sort of 'achievement based' women are all about setting goals and getting what they want, and many of them consider getting a man one of those achievements, a man who is tall dark handsome, with pedigree, and well to do. these women are the silent gold diggers. yep, i think this is the case also.

you know in my recent shopping i determined the 9-3 and astra (current ones) were both cars I like A LOT. of course, the 9-3 is more posh and performs on the next level. but when i started to break it down to 'family car functionality', i found that in terms of back seat room, the astra is actually more comfortable. I can't even get in the back seat of the 9-3 and the backrest angle and headrest location is too severe. the 9-3 is wider. overall, the astra is way more accomodating in the back seat. the astra has 92.4 cf of interior space, i think the saab is 93.4. you factor in the little bit of added width (the hip room is about an inch and a half and the shoulder room is about 2 inches) its easy to see why the back seat of the 9-3 is tighter in terms of leg room and backrest angle. Now look at the wheelbases. the saab wheelbase is not much more than the astra. 2 1/2 inches i think. Now, the 9-3 is much larger aft of the rear wheels, and it has much more cargo room. So my ultimate point. Even though the current 9-3 is on epsilon and the astra is on a compact chassis, i am thinking that if the next astra's wheelbase is the same or around that 104.0 inch mark (big for a compact) it will be able to produce hopefully as much interior room as the current 9-3 and maybe squeeze out some more leg room. And I bet we see a 5 door 9-3 next version which will basically be a much nicer astra. So where does that leave the 9-1? Corsa / Fiesta sized is my guess. And super tight inside. But they better not eff up the 9-3 passenger compartment size since so many people bitch about it now. My impression is the 9-5 is large enough to carry the big sedan tag for saab, it will probably be somewhere inbetween the aura and impala in size is my guess. Maybe the size of the Insignia or larger. Hopefully a little larger. It will be large enough so that the 9-3 can go down a bit in physical size, and hopefully remain somewhat commodious. this implies the astra chassis can actually be tuned to feel like an expensive premium car on the 9-3. We'll see. If anything, it makes me want to find out how the next Astra turns out. Maybe they are also counting on the 9-4x to carry the saab car with space torch. I like room in cars, especially after having that 500. GM doesn't make large cars hardly these days, at least in terms of passenger space. I gave up looking at the 9-3 that is current, because the backseat is really not usable.

i look at every car purchase as a 3-4 year term. in that respect, considering any GM right now, you would be fine with it working a-ok for those 4 years but then no one else would probably buy it from you. cars used to be lemons by comparison to their fairly faultless performance today (especially considering how complex and safe they are and how many electronics they have). the actual differences between the top and bottom rung are fairly small (i.e. their significance is way overblown by nazi organizations like CR) and really the impact of all this data and opinion has been WAY overblown. Buying a car is not like deciding if you're gonna go through with brain surgery or not! It was so funny. When i was at a ford dealer a few weeks ago, there was a couple in there negotiating their deal on a new MKs. The car they were trying to trade....a Lexus ES. The couple was excited about getting into the MKs, because it seemed 'so luxurious' and the ES was 'not an earth shattering experience'. I was listening to the bartering, and the dealer simply was not willing to offer much for the ES on the trade. The couple had pretty much committed to getting the MKs, because they were actually saving a couple hundred a month by moving into the MKs from the ES Lexus, so they had already gave in and were toast......point was, they felt the MKs was actually a step up from the ES, and they were getting a greater value moving forward. they really wanted the deal done because they were going to take the car on a trip that weekend. Last I saw, the group was in the parking lot going over the camry, er, ES, with a fine tooth comb to try to arrive at the trade value. But i guess where i was going with this.....GM needs to convince people that even if their business is not doing well, that the vehicles still represent a value advantage in many instances, in terms of people being able to fill their transportation needs and not having to succumb to extra expense of more expensive cars which while nice, don't go easy on the checkbook.

my guess.......the US Govt is fine bailing out GM and Ford...i.e. AUTOMAKERS, but wants no part of bailing out CEREBUS, a private equity firm....with the likes of nardelli getting measured up for golden parachutes......

to me it would seem the general public would be most concerned with resale tanking, and warranty/service. I hope GM can avoid bankruptcy, because i fear that will have damaging implication for the brand(s) that last longer than what some people still knock GM for 30, 40 years after the fact now. GM has many excellent products out now, and yet still, the stigma abounds from events of long ago. Going bankrupt would only multiply those stigmas expoenentially. Whatever market deficiencies GM has these days are minor in comparison. GM is doing quite well relatively speaking in other areas around the globe, and yet in the US all we hear about is how badly GM is here. We do not ever have it said that GM is a major global player in one of the world's biggest industrial products......and if GM goes down, the US will lose that position in the world trade arena, giving it up to japan and europe. Let's see, we subsidize wall street now. We've subsidized agriculture FOREVER. But we can't loan GM and Ford etc. money to secure a chance of maintaining the US as a player in the global arena of perhaps the biggest industry in the world?...even though other countries make a habit of doing it as common practice?

surfing some tech sites, i just happened across some Veronica Belmont pages....and photos. Anyone who does not know who she is, by all means google her and tell me she's not one of the cutest women of all time.

another comment. can't they just test a basic version of this car, 4 cylinder with automatic? that would be the most popular. nobody buys a 4motion v6 passat.