regfootball

like the exterior a lot. i've seen the interior shots and its glitzy because of the red and stuff, but in production colors the dash would look a little too trendy and insubstantial in its massing for my tastes. i think the interior design theme is too busy and would go out of vogue fairly quickly as some of its elements are already dated. overall, a nice design to look forward to. On BON i think someone posted job 1 on this thing in about 2 years from now. Like april 2010 i think.

temporary link until the mods get a more professional one up http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/13/detroit...ototype-appear/ yuck i think this classifies as 'half assed' those lambdas are a smiling..... is honda rebadging isuzus again? nice cheap dashboard. that shifter is so.....well placed.

DUD- bleh

gee, i think i said this in 'incentives in high gear' thread. no whining about this people, the economy is in the toilet, another 'bush' cycle. incentives are needed to stay in the game this year.

i could paint your diatribe on the wall and set it to contemporary jazz and it would still be blather.....blah blah blah. let's go back and review. you clearly cannot see what GM has done here. again, dike plugging. a new model for 100 million in development costs to replace a car that heavily tarnished the brand. first off, what is the biggest selling small car in europe (if not the, its one of the best)? Isn't it the astra? Oh, so the biggest (or one of the biggest) and best small cars from europe is not good enough here to sell as an emergency replacement of the Ion? Outsells the civic in europe, no? It's good enough for picky Europeans but not good enough for clannish Americans? Jesus Christ. Had GM had the cash in time of near bankruptcy, they may have been able to shorten the Ions tenure and develop an all new global small car to sell. They couldn't fit the bill and were in a process of globalizing their operations. Saturns future was uncertain. So, as an emergency effort to rid the Ion from their showroom, they federalized a few Astras to bring over here. It upgrades the product greatly and offers a segment entry that arguable is the most stylish, has euro driving dynamics, and establishes a reputation for the brand that is Astra. It changes the perception of the Saturn small car in a pretty quick order. How many Tundras (turds) did toyota sell at a loss or reduced volume until they established it in the market for growing sales? Tundra has never been and still is not a class leader but they have been able to grow the tundra brand. Besides, we've seen all the largely good press for Astra, and the euros seem to make it one of their favorites and yet its still not good enough FOR YOU. Toyota dumps Prius at a loss for image and brand but Saturn can't. half a million camrys are sold but that certainly does not invalidate how good the other mid size entrants are. If i recall, we are about 18-24 months from the next Astra. I guess 4 years ago GM should have dropped everything else they were doing and spent about 6 billion on a new Saturn, because the civic is such a cool car. which its not. and the corolla is so awesome. which its not. Saturns plastic body panel whiners will get over it. Saturn could still make one model to appease that bunch, but plastic panels never saved saturn, and never will. Honda's sheep are so many, saturn could rebadge a civic and it still wouldn't make a dent in sales. Honda could put an H on a Kia and it would still sell like it does. Why? the H. The civic was so great it cannot even beat out the mazda or VW yet it still outsells both. You bitch about the Astra not being good enough, yet the Mazda and Vw are both better than the civic and civic still outsells them. one reason. sheep. lemmings. it would be safe to say many of those civic buyers never even went to another showroom. I can personally attest to this as a friend bought one about 6 months ago. He went in loooking for a hybrid, got spooked by the overcharge, and simply settled for the non-hybrid. he hates car shopping, and wouldn't even look at any of the other cars because consumer reports and internet articles told him honda was the best. Astra=reestablishing the quality level of the saturn small car which the Ion lost and was also lost because the crappy S series was never updated. i guess you can say honda's cars are great if your own personal standard is dull appliances with buzzy torqueless motors.

i think GM is trying to prevent a big january and feb downturn in sales due to the economy and they are bringing out nice incentives at this time to do so.

i think it depends on which gm card you have. i have the old original plan still, so i have fewer restrictions. i'll say this, if saturn and saab allowed gm card, i would really be interested in one of those. hummer does accept gm card.

tahoe hybrid should have won truck of the year but i think the negative backlash from such a huge truck winning factored in the voting. cx-9 was the safe choice. now let's see if the bu win helps sales. it didn't for the aura.

oh you are so full of $h!. we all know the civic only sells because of the big fuking H on the grille. honda could poop on a piece of bread and put a monroney on it and lesbians and uptight celibate housewives and ricers and liberal urbanites would still line up to buy it because of the H ON THE GRILLE the current civic leads in virtually no aspect in its class but still sells on reputation. ugly expensive torqueless but people buy em. the mazda 3 and vw products are the class of the field. they deserve to sell much more. saturn is probably going to sell more astras at retail than ions had been selling and overall saturn dealers with a full line will likely sell more vehicles total than in the say when s series sold 200k per year. the part you need to ingest is there are way many more competitors these days that GM has to battle. so saturn can't put all its eggs on one car. so they had to diversify the product line. so when saturn actually does sell more astras retail then ions the dealers will be happy also. saturn is set up for the next new product wave in 2 years or so and the whole lineup will become even more competitive. i would say aside from cupholders and mp3's and bluetooth and gadgets, that engine power is really the only flaw the astra has.

weren't they supposed to be putting the 6 speed in the impala some time soon?

a puffy kia rondo then

once you got two tata's you can switch back and forth between em, unless you can fugre out a way to drive em both at the same time.

taurus actually has good real world mpg. now, not vs. an accord four, but i would expect the v6 accord to not be much better than the taurus. many of the cute utes, regardless of make or 4 cylinders, rarely get much more than 20mpg and the taurus should easily reach that in everyday driving. reading on BON and other ford sites, many are getting close to or in excess of 30 on trips with the taurus x and taurus already. both the 500 and freestyle had good mpg performance. most of the mid size 4 cylinder sedans will only average about 23-25 mpg real world and most v6 sedans will consistently be around 20 mpg. so while the taurus is larger, it still gets midsize mpg, and it upsets me that ford is not getting that word out. the AWD version (which is not available on many other cars) does see a bit of a drop which is expected. the accord and camry and maybe the altima are the only 4 cylinder midsizers that really go above the normal average for a 4 cylinder midsize. of that bunch the altima has the CVT which is a nice feature for that car because the automatic is smoother, then. since this was supposed to be a gm thread i guess i will jump in here and say the impala's strength is good real world mileage too and with the incentives now on them its a good time to buy one if you are looking to get good mileage. the G6 i would consider with 4 cylinder probably doesn't get the best real world mileage but the purchase price is attractive.

acura needs to do a few couple things. 1- drop the prices some on the MDX and RDX. 2- bring back the prelude as an INTEGRA 3- RWD biased v6 and v8 LEGEND 4- convert the TSX into VIGOR 5- revive the NSX 6- move the S2000 over to Acura and redesign it. learn about design. keep up on powertrains. stop being so japanese.

yeah but A- shawd is a dumb name. put it on a ricer civic. and b- isn't shawd and saab's cross wheel drive the same thing? ford's response was so high because fusion, focus, 500, etc. all have been getting good reliability scores lately in CR.

meh. is this a 98 odyssey? toyota camry maxx? this allows the highlander to soldier on as the dork mobile it is and the venza is a dorkmobile for the younger set.

i like that interior photo.

i've seen some used 07 kia optimas around here hovering near 10 grand, that is old taurus territory. the deal breaker on the G6 SV is no remote entry or cruise. i would guess remote entry can be added. cruise is tougher i think. move up from the SV and it escalates in price pretty quick. even with big rebates, i can get a new similarly optioned 08 taurus for probably better deals than say, a loaded g6. impala has a luxury package on the LT 3.5 that makes a good buy for someone who wanted a leather lined car for not a lot of cash. i followed a new red impala SS the other day. it doesn't have the chrome on the trunk, which is hot. good looking car! myself, unless i were getting the malibu LTZ, I would stick with the impala and get more for my money. You could probably get an SS small block impala for less than a Malibu LTZ right now. or close to it. a local dealer has a new 05 pontiac montana AWD in stock still ! LOL new 05! leather etc. that thing would need 15k in rebates to move.

odd, looks like cruise and remote entry are omissions from the 1SV package.......by design? argh. it has ABS and side airbags tho. local dealer shows one available for 14,825.

i ran that number on an 07. 08's have a little less rebate. HHR's, Cobalts, Impalas, etc. should all be cheap buys right now.

1000 loyalty bonus in effect GM card topoff in effect auto show bonuses end of season discounts BUY BUY BUY i can buy a 1SV G6 for 11k right now. (15k after 2500 rebate) minus 1k loyalty - 3k GM card topoff. GO GM!

did it ever occur to you that this version of astra is simply a dike plugger? it gives saturn a much better competitor, fast and on the cheap until the next global version comes out. saturn is giving up Ion volume to stake a place on the market for a little bit more upscale small car than what GM has previously offered. they had to do this on the cheap and quick to get something in the lineup to not have to sell the Ion anymore. They had fully planned to sell the Ion much longer but this was the best fix once they made the decision to tank it. and...civics only appeal to the under 30 / video game junkie / east LA / 'nobody told me the sport compact tuner craze was over' crowd. mazda 3 is nice yes, but not everyone likes mazdas, and they are not segment volume leaders. VW represents well in this segment too, don't forget them. Saturn doesn't need Astra to be a 'game changer', it just needs to upgrade its credibility over the Ion a bunch in this model to set the stage for the next version which will arrive maybe in two years. This was how the Japanese build cred in market segments over time. Besides that, Astra is stylish enough to make a market impact on style alone. As nice as Mazdas and VW's are (the civic is not in any way NICE), not everyone wants to drive one. There are enough people out there who do not simply read CR or a comparison test written by some lame ass journalist and conclude that every other that wasn't first or second is complete crap. at the auto show last year, the astra got all sorts of love. I think it will claim a nice spot in the market. And if it sells in expected volume at a profit, they will build MO for the next version when it comes out. Just like they are doing with the Aura / Insignia. What needs to happen is chevy needs to be good enough to steal sales from corolla and sell in big volumes so saturn can continue to sell in good, but not top segment volume. Saturn can exist as a good alternative, a good GM alternative, by selling 5-7 lines of cars in enough volume to make the brand unique and viable. And c'mon, in the end, the bigger issue is that the Astra lacks cupholders and usb ports and mp3 inputs. That is a bigger problem than anything right now.

it always comes down to engineering. with larger displacement comes larger pistons and mass of moving components too. one of the reasons dohc as touted a long time ago was you could spin the sucker higher because the rotational mass was less. GM never demostrated that they could make a pushrod v6 have the more refined characteristics of the OHC counterparts. with v8's they have been able to participate better. but really regardless of drivetrain the real thing to focus on is whether GM continually updates its v8 offerings to be current in power, fuel economy, and NVH and packaging. Where GM has fallen off the wagon for most of its mainstream models is not focusing on continuous improvement. so if they keep the northstar and not develop a replacement, the question is will it get any attention?

it's white so the best buy geek squad can slap their logo on the side and drive around in them

were you using it as an adverb, verb, noun, adjective?