regfootball

if you buy into the theory that as California goes, so goes the world. maybe. I was also just at the caddy dealer. they didn't have a manual CTS i could beat on today but i was chatting with the sales guy. he said they are really looking forward to the 08 CTS, because of the new design and because 'it finally has all wheel drive'. He said all the STS they stock are AWD because they can't sell the RWD only ones. He said the CTS sells alright because of the low price point but that people that don't know the car is RWD are surprised to hear that becuase it looks like a FWD car. FWIW, the sales guy used to own a 3 series. He said the SRX's are what they sell the most of and that they had moved 3 just this weekend.

BTW, just drove an Aura XR. Nice engine and tranny, but otherwise not impressed.

see, those are good numbers, about 25% of the two models it is on, considering the x versions are relatively new. That percentage will continue to grow. Its an example of responding to the market. 'someone in the know' confirmed to me that their are about 2800 buick dealers, 100 of those still stand alone. but did not have an idea what the numbers were for pontiac. you could understand why those 2800 dealers would be concerned about profit and volume both. 100,000 buicks for 2800 dealers doens't pay the bills. I've already said the current G6 was lucklaster. The problem is execution. The Aura is a better executed offering but is still not a sporty enough version. There is no reason why something like the G6 in a new version someday couldn't have top drawer styling powertrains and interiors, and still be different than the other GM cars and something people seek out. You are just judging the car and GM's ability to do that based on GM's typical half ass effort. You might as well just admit GM has no capability of putting out anything besides a half ass car then. I don't see why its such a sin for a G8 to share the showroom with a really well executed perfomance based epsilon for example. Your Torana clone would be a nice offering, sure, but a-where is it, and b-the pricing will not be able to be kept in line like a epsilon car would be. So the torana rebadge if sold here would have to be sold in addition to the G8 and epsilon car. I just don't think they can make the numbers work with just the torana and G8 and a coupe G8 variant. There's not enough other special models in the pipeline I don't think that holden is developing RWD only to fill the lineup with for pontiac. I am not aware of anything besides G8 and the possible Torana and Monaro coupe that GM could sell here as a Pontiac. If its not in the pipeline now, its not anything that can help in the next 3-5 years. Do they even have a go on the Torana? becuase that daewoo LX4, holden caprice, and chinese park avenue all look so different already. if there were a quarter million of those 3 roaming the streets here no one would be able to tell the difference between the three. even the fusion/milan's look more different than those three badge jobbed zetas.

why did they even bother? to avoid a civil lawsuit probably.

SOURCE: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CARS published by the auto editors of CONSUMER GUIDE publications international, LTD. copyright 1996 production numbers (vans not included) 1995 buick- 574455 skylark - 53860 century - 113699 regal - 100169 lesabre - 171783 park avenue - 62994 roadmaster - 30508 (note how the fwd park avenue and lesabre outsold the rwd roadmaster) riviera - 41442 1995 olds - 454957 achieva - 57263 combined ciera - 135346 combined cutlass supreme - 113232 combined 88 - 75841 98 - 25444 aurora - 47831 1995 pontiac - 663980 sunfire - 66655 firebird - 60550 grand am - 287988 grand prix - 160711 bonneville - 88076 (92 bonneville sold 124511 units) 1995 total MY produced by the three GM 'tier two' brands 1,693,392 sorry i was wrong. i my guess was UNDER actual by like 200,000 units. my whole feeling is that no matter how hard they try, Pontiac has never been perceived a niche brand, and therefore would fail in both volume and profit if they tried to be because the public's perception of them is too hard to change (quickly). it would be like taking corn flakes and moving all the boxes off the cereal aisle and over to the organic foods section, even if you changed the design of the box and made them taste better. look at how not the organic doritos sell. their transaction prices would not be what they would need and their margins would not be able to be held because production costs could be too great for the focused hardware and they could not fall back on volume. it has to still have some appeal to mainstream, somewhere between niche and mainstream, even if it is part of BPG for some dealers, and therefore does need to retain some mainstream traits to be viable from a business standpoint. there is no hard evidence that proves or suggests Pontiac or Buick alone or together can exist with too narrow of a focus and being to exclusionary in their product offerings. the people's perception and history of the brands are too strong to allow people to shift their thinking that much. Saturn possibly can because it is the youngest brand and people's perception about the brand is less about the car and more about the experience. Saturn is trying to define a perception of their cars and even so far, its success in doing that is lukewarm. So to think Pontiac can go that way, in less than ten years even, would be iffy at best. Pontiac to remain, in the mid range business plan, has to still offer enough that still may attract the mainstream in a sporty performance oriented way, to exist, and to enable them to provide the more tightly focused stuff they want to as a good percentage of their offerings. No matter which path they chose, they have to work the numbers for a profit or they die, their chances of profit are greater with more volume because it makes up for ebb and flow of business and popularity of models and market swings and trends towards styling or features. Plus, more volume can mean more market share to freeze out competitors and also reasonably priced models bring 'brand entry' and accessibility to the brand. You want to entice people to enter your brand and move up later. Grand Am was a great brand entry car, it was just lackluster to some. had the grand am made people happy like accords do (in the simple sense of the buyer not regretting their purchase) it may be a totally different pontiac today. Making BMW exclusive is wise because it allows them to keep their prices up, but BMW is not a large outfit in the US. Making Pontiac exclusive likely won't work, even if its bundled with BPG. B and G depend on P to pull their own weight too. The BPG group is too large and cannot be pared down to BMW type levels. GM's business operations and dealer network cannot be pared down pr consolidated that quickly. Olds was bundled with other GM brands and look what it did for them. Many BPO dealers have already been paired with GMC for a long time already. Otherwise, Lutz/LaNeve better show me that spreadsheet. i'm not saying to limit performance. i am saying it needs to be performance packaged in a fairly accepted way. If I were throwing numbers around, it would be nice if Buick + Pontiac could sell 500,000 cars a year between the two brands for the next few years. That might be the sweet spot between supply and demand, selling and dumping, between niche and not niche. If they had to adjust that number to also include for the Enclave, that's fine, because buyers buy SUV's in lieu of sedans these days. Many LeSabre or Park customers may buy Enclaves now.

nothing sets off your autistic child like a big bunch of flourescent lights!

ah, this is the at work. nice. GM will get china to build the volt. "it's the only place we can make money doing it". sometimes 'profit' comes from PR and brand image, not just dollars. build it and you will benefit.

flourescent light is a terrible quality light in comparison to incandescent. in terms of ambience it just does not compare.

Ethanol emissions more harmful? another assault on transportation.....this will hit the US makers hard. everyone head to the bomb shelter with your gas masks on.

the Mini is reported as the "BMW Mini"...mini is a model. Porsche has like what, 200 dealers to support? Small dealers with small buildings and not a lot of real estate to support. average model is what, 75 grand? pontiac will never manage even half that anytime soon. Hummer if not already, should be tacked on to cadillac dealers. i've already seen one newly built Hummer dealer go out of business. I've already seen Saab dealers moving to cadillac locations. i don't want a malibu. its not sporty enough. what don't you get about that concept. if the aura is not sporty enough, neither is the malibu. The current G6 is in the right direction, just not executed well enough yet. there is no creed in the bible that says good performance cars can't be FWD. all i am saying is pontiac should be diverse enough to cover this group too, one car even. i'll pay for awd if you offer it, but its not there. other Gm brands can only go part way to being sporty. pontiac custom s has it entirely right. Pontiac will never be able to bring niche transaction prices that would allow the profit levels to sustain the brand at your neccessary low volumes. it simply aintgonnahappendotcom. this is the fundamental point of dissension. your niche is far too narrowly defined and way too exclusionary. I'm not sure how many dealers have the pontiac label but i saw somewhere that there is over 3000 Buick dealers. At 100,000 buick cars and 3000 buick dealers that's what, 33.3 buicks sold per dealer per year. If there truly is 3000 pontiac dealers....hell, even if you say they weeded them out to 2000 dealers and sold 100,000 pontiacs, that's 50 cars per year. That is still not any sort of sustainable level for the brand, even if its bundled with Buick and Pontiac. Not for a dealer with acres of parking lot, a huge ass building, and tons invested in service equipment for a brand that used to sell many times more. GMC can only prop up the dealers in the case it is bundled with B/P. that whole transition will still take years to complete. hey, someone show me the business plan on a spread sheet that proves how pontiac makes money selling cars at those low volumes. if you can show me this profit as you envision it on a spread sheet, i am gung ho all over it on top it UAW be damned send those chinese pontiacs and buicks it's awesome fer sure. I'll buy into your 100,000 car pontiac plan when someone shows me the hard evidence (numbers, not your generalization). Send me a spread sheet with Mark LaNeve's signature that says 'we can do this'. Send me a buick plan that even buickman says 'this will work'. thanks everyone. it's been fun, your rwd only kool aid truck just pulled up to the door so its time to go.......... hey balthazar, great post. I'm in agreement.

a minivans load floor is lower which allows for more room and cargo, but the lambdas offer the ground clearance which so many folks love in wintery weather. that's why you could never truly say a lambda replaces a minivan fully....but it gets 80% of the way there. and that's enough in return for the SUV style. you know, its a shame the interior sucks (too boxy and plain) on this thing. the utility alone is worth making one at least take a look.

msn oh man, this global warming $h! is out of control

watch, the imports will bring in diesels and the press will cricufy detroit for not having them here. then, memories of the old v8 GM diesel all over the press. anyways, i bet the 010 max diesel will be nice.

still no love here. pleasant, but nothing to lust after. i actually prefer the G6 coupe's shape. altima coupe also. monte too, for that matter. GTO as well. Maybe if the front wasn't so 'scion TC' i would be happier. the whole front end tapers too much.

waiting that long for a bland luxury car is like waiting a year for a sexual encounter with rosie o donnell.

the fact that we have to put our heads together to figure out how to get this test to work on this car is pathetic considering toyota's engineers should be doing that. is that MOVING FORWARD? no.

unfortunately it looks bland/nice enough that it will continue to sell like hotcakes. Jetta meets Corolla.

i'd rather it had the STSv's powertrain. or something like it.

Bob, you have a bid set to get out. Oh yeah, the client wanted that moved up to TOMORROW.

do you think domestic automakers should be held to a much higher standard than non domestic automakers? do you know that even the domestic automakers are in fact global companies building cars all over the world? do you feel buying a japanese branded vehicle hurts or helps the US economy? do you feel that the perception of imported autos being superior has even been proven statistically?

"you know, .....it's... the best... car" I so want to punch that lipstick wearing jerk-off on that commercial.

toyota blandness is hard to cover up. even if had no badges, you would know its a toyota. you could even include 2 other cars. a milan/fusion and a mazda6. it would be interesting since the fusion milan and mazda6 are pretty close to the same car. to really cover your bases you could even add a passat or 9-3. a good car to test this on would be dual branded cars with nearly identical underpinnings. the old Dodge Stealth / Mitsubishi 3000GT. IDENTICAL. more or less, except for badging. same with the sebring / avenger coupes and the eclipse. or ford ranger/mazda b or escape/tribute. saab 9-2 and subaru imprezza. isuzu assender/gmc envoy/saab9-7. i have brand ethnocentrism. most often (but not entirely) i buy US cars. i bought a philips plasma tv, dvd player, mp3 player, and office stereo because i like their stuff but also so i wouldn't have to buy sony or other asian named stuff. my home theater components are sherwood newcastle. my speakers are advent and paradigm. i also have an ipod. oddly, i think sony makes apple laptops. i occasionally will stoop and buy pioneer products if it has to have a japanese name. i am fine with samsung as a korean name too.

there is no watermark or copyright on that photo. better protect your work, muh boy.

yes, it is the x-vers and SUV's dealers want in the showroom for cash flow. i hope this isn't built on theta. theta is crap. what is "TE"? Shouldn't this be on a variant of Epsilon 2?

depends where the hookers are. that, and no CFO's wife wants to live in China....EWE!!!!!