regfootball

does the AVENGER come with a CAPE as an option?

your take works for me. too bad the A3 and GTI are so much better frickkin cars. too bad the mazda 3 looks nicer and normal. to bad the SS Cobalt is faster.

does this make the cars themselves any better?

ditched twice and a few too many 360's and spin outs with the RWD. Not to mention the getting stucks and not being able to make inclines. Since FWD, only one 360 with my Diamante in an icy parking lot and getting rod of the cheap ass yokohamas solved that. Haven't been stuck or had any incline problems with FWD either that I recall. I don't think your incident is a drive wheel issue as much as just having a teeny bit too much fun!

I saw a Caliber on the road today. I like it. It's got a bit of a 'pissed off dunebuggy' look to it. Chrysler scored on the styling of this one.

the name Pursuit is FRUITY. G5, bleh. How bout Pontiac CANNONBALL?

yeah, the srx exterior needs tweaks, the interior needs a complete replacement. i would not go x3 hunting. x3's are a joke anyways. but i guess every automaker needs a 'chick car' to sell. a ULS is too ambitious right now. I'd rather see the investment in amking the next CTS mindblowing and hurrying up the STS replacement and readying a new DTS replacement. Although I would still keep the DTS as it is for the fogeys and stuff.

so if you buy a brand new car, you've got another 500 or more free that you can immediately spend on snow tires and wheels? got a place to store em? can you set aside some time to go get your tires rotated or even hoist up the car and do it yourself? we are a convenience society. that 500 bucks for most average non car folks works better in their 401k rather than on tires they only use 3 months a year.

my friend the other day was whining about how his car expenses went up so much last year. HE got a new Passat and then she had to have a new vehicle too so she got a Pilot. He was bound and determined to not drive American anymore after a string of about 5 Chryslers (in which case I guess I can see why). Anyways, he started talking about premium gas and high insurance and not as agood of mpg as he expected. But at least he's not driving American crap anymore......... I'm guessing his insurance might be 20% higher and the premium gas is another 5-10% penalty. The Pilot gets 15mpg and the Passat 4 cylinder barely cracks 20. But that umbrella holder is SOOOOO worth it. Here's the kicker. He's even commented more than once now about the Pilot is not that great and how a lot of stuff seems cheap (to him). Of course, he wants a Touareg. And he's already had to have stuff fixed on the Passat. i bet the Intrepid never had to have the windshield replaced within 6 months of new, do to a stress breakage.

BINGO!!!!!! he said what i meant. and the sonata and azera are both lackluster, and this is looking like a 7/8 scale version of those two visual disasters/dated designs. 06 sonata = 98 escort upsized 11%

YUP. its YUCK

nah, he may be on to something.

panther, who's the blonde in that cobalt photo? OUCH! by the way, that's a nice p*ssy you've got there. Looks like a nice one to snuggle up to. It bet that one feels good when it rubs up against you. hey, imagine how nice it would be to have a black on black Malibu SS as an option with the new 260hp ecotec turbo and 6 speed manual for around 20 grand? coablt SS is a VERY NICE car.

since Acura has existed, I think its watered down honda's brand equity and they haven't done anything with Acura to make it a credible brand vs. Infinit, Lexus, MB, BMW, Audi. it basically highlights the problem that Gm has always faced and now honda and toyota will have to face up to. Having your image so dependent on st@rcher culture and fast and furious stuff waters down the brand too. No adult with kids wants to drive the same car that some dork has a fart can muffler and bright green paint on. Oh, and i forgot the 2 foot high 'aircraft aluminum' spoiler. Tell me those doinks don't destroy the brand. You want to expand and soon find out you need more than one brand and several more models. So all of a sudden, each additional model puts you under increased scrutiny. If you survive that, you ultimately have to feed the monster with more models and some of them are iffy (Ridgeline) and you soon find out being all things to all people is not that easy. And it ends up diluting your product line, just by default. At least in the perception eyes of the public. I mean, do you see Eddie bauer making biker wear? it will catch up with them over time.........what we see with honda are the seeds of its growth being a strain and the fact that toyota is going balls out for every segment and honda is not. Right now we have a phase where a large chunk of our carbuyers are buying hoyotahonda for the first time. time will tell how many of those customers will be so enomored with those cars like the original hard core die hard hoyotahonda fans. And as more folks buy those brands, look at how many more trips to service will get talked about around the watercooler. It will be at that point where the urban legends that have created about hoyotahonda will start to become destroyed. Lots of olks are expecting that they will never have to get this car fixed. When the stories start rolling in about how yes, you do need to fix hondas and toyotas too, the legend (no pun inteded) will start to come down to reality.

UGLY UGLY UGLY its like a bloated and shrunken AZERA the new Sentra will feast all over this POS

check out the GM news board topic

"A lot of this bias can be traced back to the university weenies who bought VW and Honda 25 years ago because they were cheap and decent on gas. Honestly, these guys are in charge of these magazines and think tanks now" absolutely 100% true. it is the whole foundation behind all of this. Like I said in the other topic, popular mechanics has similar owner data but PM readers aren't of the same 'ilk' so MSNBC does not write stories about what PM 'white trash' readers are saying about their Lesabres.

no, european cars are SO COOL and so HIP, they get a pass too.......

how many $$$ is toyota paying them under the table?

How spot dead on are you? "EXCEPT TO HIPPIES AND UNIVERSITY WEENIES" that is indeed the 'intelligentsia' that spawned the popularity of Consumer Reports and made them who they are. Now, the whole 'consumer reports' mentality has such a momentum, that its kind of become a gospel and everyone is looking to it as some authority. the press panders to them, and the intelligentsia. So even though GM is building its best cars ever, the press is locked into the intelligentsia take on everything. And they can't report the other side, that is folks who either don't read stuff on the internet, don't watch the firnge news channels, and certainly don't have consumer reports. But they make it seem like that is the only place you should make your judgements on. So if Car and Driver said their long term Acura RL was in the shop 8 times (in basically the first year) but Consumer Reports loves Honda....who do you believe? Doesn't JD power matter? popular Mechanics has great test / reliability data, but why do we never see them as being the authority? Is it just because PM readers buy a greater percentage of domestics? Consumer Reports can uck off fro all i am concerned. Until their data is geenrated from representative samples of EVERYONE....I find their data results to be limited, useful but NOT THE AUTHORITY. why do we never hear from the midwestern farmer who's Buick LeSabre is still trouble free after many years? BECAUSE HE DOESn'T READ CONSUMER REPORTS. Because he's not INTELLIGENT.

and the engines have a lot to do with it.

is Cr'S ONLY SAMPLE BASE THEIR OWN READERS? If its not a random sample of the US population, then its inherently biased.

the journalists are pandering to honda on the new civic. C/D was the only mag that didn't. I just got a new C/D today and there is an interesting letter from a reader exactly about that. He was thanking them for not pandering to the new Civic. I agree. I believe the Cobalt is a pretty darn nice small car, although I would consider the Mazda 3 probably the best. I still think the Civic gets attention to its arcade dashboard and available hybrid and the H on the grille more than anything else. In my family we had 2 vegas and 3 chevettes. I drove one of the vegas and two fo the chevettes. My senior year car was my sisters chevette scooter. I thought it was a fun car. I wish GM would build chevettes and Vegas again. My 'vette had no back seat! It was a 2 seater Vette! I took drivers ed in the Vega. I always felt the Beretta was the spiritual successor to the Vega. My sister had a Beretta. It was an ok car, it just was long in the tooth. Typical GM, leave a car out to dry for 10 years. I owned a Chevy Prizm which was essentially a Corolla. It had a higher feeling of refinement compared to the Cavalier at the time which is why I bought it. It started and ran, but it was DULL and there were a LOT of things about it that felt insubstantial and like they would become frail over time if I kept the car. to top it off, the engine was weak at freeway speeds. The body was thin and subject to dents to easily. The tires and wheels were small and diminutive and frail. BUT it was built with tiny seams, good looking BUT HARD plastic, and it felt solid for the most part. Doors and trunks closed with a hushed THUNK. But then the climate controls felt flimsy and like they may not work at any time. The new Corolla has improved a lot in packaging but I see they still have the crap motor and thin sheet metal. i wonder if the steering is still light, sloppy, and uncommunicative. GM's improved a lot in small cars. And it still has a jouney ahead, but i guess my point is that folks who are only buying on brand reputation from the past these days are simply followers and not open minded. what I always find funny is 'how many 5,6,7 year old corollas do you see around, and how many of them look in good condition'. not many. they stay good for awhile, but when subjected ot normal use, get quite hashed looking.

RuPaul and COJO from entertainment tonight