regfootball

And my neighbor, who works for Dodge corporation himself, says the 300's and Magnums all suck in snow, regardless of the hype. Tomato, tomato. I'm not putting down 30 grand on the CHANCE any of that electro garbage works. I already tried that on my Tbird, the whole trac control thing. Sure the newer systems are improved a lot. But ESP does not solve the weight distribution issue. Too many of the RWD cars I've had have had issues in winter. Stories I hear from others are no different. I'm not putting faith in a long wheelbase, nose heavy, rear wheel drive car to be trustworthy in a MN winter. I love shitties in the snow as much as anyone, but I don't want what else comes with it. brew, why don't you tell us if you're riding your stock all seasons in winter........

the funny thing is that the automotive press were the ones who endlessly harped the greatness of Accords and Camrys and made them out to the be ultimate driving solution not less than 10 years ago. The press just goes in cycles, looking for the next flavor of the month to write about. Its like the fashion industry. Hey, are jeans that don't even come half way up a girls' hip in fahsion right now? Sure, but what will be in fashion in 3 years?

Well, most folks in the USA don't want the hassle of seasonal tire changes, which is why all season tires are so popular. And so, folks here just want to drive what they own, without changing their tires. Myself, I would love to have winter tire packages for all my vehicles, but my budget doesn't allow it. FWD with all seasons is popular because its easy and versatile.

hey! what the hell happened to all the blowing chunks icons? dammit, there went the punchline. SEBRING WHAT AN UGLY ASS CAR

why waste time examining it. the car is ASS FRICKING UGLY. not only is chrysler the new cheap plastic king, they apparently are the king of ugly cars now too. I can refrain from convulsions having an Aztek in my garage every day but I see this new Sebring and.........

I just realized i hadn't posted anything yet. Sorry about that and sorry I can't do that tonight. NEED SLEEP BAD. Been staying up too late on C/G and GMI etc. The one year AZTEK ANALVERSARY is the 28th.

here's my guess. You can even expand your list to ten topics if you like. -WHY IS THERE NO CAMARO -WHY FWD SUCKS -MONTHLY SALES POSTS -TOYOTA SUCKS FORUM -HOW GM IS BETTER THAN FORD (bonus) -LUTZ, KEEP HIS ASS OR KICK HIS ASS OUT not presenting these in a mean spirited way, I'm just trying to list what most recurring topics have been, seemingly. I would love your take. This is for fun. Good night, gotta get sleep tonight. Can't wait to see all of your lists in the morning.

hey ted, does that 500 have a big trunk?

what an ass ugly car

vehicross

"The only huge advantage RWD has (imo) is the ability to do donuts and such" well, that was the whole 'smoky burnouts' thing I've been harping about. Or as they used to say in high school, 'whipping shitties'. Oh sure, that's fun when you're like 17, but when you are older and making big car payments and using your car as TRANSPORTATION, 'whipping shitties' and 'smoky burnouts' tends to be low priority and rather juvenile IMHO. I just don't see a car company building a foundation for the long haul based upon whether they make it a priority for a new RWD pony car that folks can spend time whipping shitties with. As a niche supplemental product, sure. For as many folks out there who think RWD is neutral (which I do feel is true, BTW), the realtive tail happiness of RWD cars is another strike against them with the fickle and unskilled general public.

well, my stinkin 5 year college degree is making me low-mid 50s a year, and still needing to pay part of my own benes. Since my wife works, we pay extra into her plan. Neither of us could get all of our own medical taken care of. I think we choke up like 3-400 a month (guess) to have a family plan coverage that has low deductibles but also has copays. I picked the wrong profession though, so I have no one to bitch at but myself. In fact, cnn had an article last week for the 5 'big jobs' that don't pay shit or something like that....I'm one of them. I make out good. But I am typically about 10-20 grand now behind my college contemporaries in other majors. Currently one buddy is going for his MBA and likely will double me in pay someday soon. An ex HS classmate who got a doctorate and teaches at a U, married another like person and now their two doctorates and teaching jobs have them riding the gravy train. If my wife quit her job, we'd have to sell our house which is reasonably close to the core area where all the jobs are around here (if 25 miles or 30 miles is close) and move to the sticks and I'd be driving 60 miles one way to work, but with gas that won't work either. We couldn't make a go renting a townhouse around here on my pay alone, because the housing market is so out of whack. Anyways, that might explain why I drive an Aztek and an over and done Diamante (certainly never are these FIRST choices) and my old college buddies are driving Passats, Pilots, Odysseys, Volvos..... Regardless of any of that, it still is the case that with NWA, they may not be able to go on unless there is adjustments made to the mechanics' compansation in a larger than desired way. The monster is too big and now the trouble begins.

this might be the new ride for college profs who can no longer buy troopers and don't want the snobbery of a Land ROver

damn. then who's making the 60-70k?

well, i do agree with you there, he ought to have more coming to him, but i would ask where/plant does he work. 30 years i'd guess he'd be in line for more. Was that 30 CONTINUOUS years? I would also ask for details of his health plan/copayments etc.

union negotiations and people's well being/jobs is the not the proper way to wage a class warfare. Mainly because its not effective. They are gonna scheme to continue to get their huge chunk of pie, regardless if y'all 'revolt' to get an extra 50 cents an hour. In other words, regardless of how a petty little collective bargaining negotiations plays out in one instance such as this, its not going to make any dent in how wily exec types sway the forces to get their huge cut. They think on another level, and are driven by greed and shiftiness. They are expert at staying on top, and will use every resource they can to stay there. They are so internally driven to get what they want, they will not let anything stop them to get their cut. Not all of them, just enough of them. Do y'all remember the dot-com crash? The folks with the old money thought it was fine and cute to let all the day traders and online investors and 'tech stocks' go rabid and let the wanna be's make all sorts of money. Then, it got to a certain point and the old money folks said, 'ok, that's enough' and they threw the gauntlet down on the stock market. SO MANY people lost their asses when they thought they made a fortune. Another example of the MAN finding ways to stop you before it gets too far. Then they sip on their liquor, have a cigar and chuckle. Its so misguided to lose focus on the core issues and turn it into a class war. Its unproductive, and lacks quiet pride. Approaching it from that bent isn't going to get you anywhere. I don't recall in history ever, when winning concessions for the union has seriously 'taken down the MAN' in a hard core way. Its not right as humans to use a collective group of people's jobs as pawns in some sort of 'righteous battle' because of some pent up anger and such. It is fine to do it for the good of the workers. But to turn it into a personal battle and class warfare, is simply counter productive because the workers bees lose all the time. I would say don't let emotion and 'wanting to down the MAN' cloud your ability to solve the real issues here.

proof that GM continues to blow snot up everyone's arse with all this 'we get interiors now' thing. Still the same old GM, in some ways.

only posting this one for the what its worth department. startribune

STRYPER just put out a new album my wife loves contemporary Christian pop type music, but i have to force myself to keep from telling her how cheesy most of it I think is.

tell me how you really feel. :rolleyes: one thing i will find that i liked about your post is the reference to CEO pay not being cut. I honestly do not know what the solution to this problem is, as its not isolated to GM. But what are the forces that can change this? I do not think that the unions will ever be the ones to be successful in reforming executive compensation. One thing is for sure. A labor strike will not contribute any time soon towards a global movement to reducing executive pay. And hey, Bush/Cheney are oil folks. Doesn't surprise me that gas is going through the roof. I'm surprised it took this long, maybe they were just waiting for re-election first. That said, Kerry was a horrific alternative and I can't believe that the Dems in the last two elections cannot come up with anything better than the Gore/Kerry combo platter. Its like being asked, do you prefer poison, or being shot? And it only gets worse, Queen Hillary is laying the groundwork for embattled fems and semi-thoughtful 'wanna be aware' soccer moms to put her in power in 08. Like I would vote for her? If you really want a national downfall, an undoing of the country, put Hill in office. lastly, it doesn't seem that mass US culture would really give a hoot if the union got cut in half. That's really the key thing to understand here; public sentiment. Union labor would gain a lot more public support if they were convinced into thinking that unions contributed in a meaningful way to corporate and national success. But too often what I've come across from people I know is a fervent anti-union sentiment. Whether its right or wrong isn't the issue, but many people feel that 'why are they asking for more when they already have it so much better than me'? If everyone in our country unionized and got great benefits, then many companies who provide the jobs would simply go under and they also would fail in the global market. No country can survive as an island in the world unless they participate in the global economy. If you don't participate in the world, you lose political and military influence. Then, someone takes you over and you can't defend yourself. I strongly dislike this new trend in outsourcing US jobs and I do believe we need a strong manufacturing base and need to pay those jobs well. But unions pining for a lot more than what the average American makes is not the effective solution. Unions do not have what it takes to reform the pay deficiencies of America's working classes or executives. It will take some sort of third party breakthrough in our economic structure to ever be able to make social class pay scale corrections. Some social force aside from unions will maybe someday reform our pay structures in America.

Living here in Minneapolis area I am getting lots of media coverage on this. Basically, Northwest will have to go under if they cannot cannot cut their costs. The amount of money they have been losing over years now suggests the bleeding cannot continue. Even if NWA is using the bankruptcy card as a tool or leverage, the threat is very real. NWA cannot raise fares, they would price themselves out of the market. Why? Many factors, but I am sure too high labor costs IN COMPARISON to others in the market are one of them. I know they won't see pay increases which is a bummer, but if the outside market exposes your current salary as too high, what do you do? Ultimately, the market in some way will set what you are worth, regardless of whether you try to artificially prop up your own worth. It just sucks when the adjustment has to happen for so many folks at one time. Just pick your day when you want it happen. Now...or in a couple more years when the bubble breaks then (because the company couldn't afford your pay). Considering NWA got rid of pretzels or snacks or something on flights to save money, I would assume they've looked for a lot of cost savings. The mechanics have these options -strike and risk losing their jobs forever. There are going to be MANY folks out there who would jump at the chance to get what the compensation package of the striking workers was. Good luck finding a new job as good. A prolonged strike will likely shut down the airlines. -settle quickly and give in some more than they wanted, but realize that keeping their jobs and a compensation package that is still good compared to many others is satisfactory to continuing on in life. Such is the way when you sign away your ability to be your own agent and put your livelihood in the hands of others. Ah, the concept UNION. We can all throw our families futures down the toilet at the same time! tens of thousands of us at a time! If that isn't good for economy and country, I don't know what is! And we can harm thousand's of others futures at the same time too! What it seems to do well, is handcuff corporations from proactively trimming costs when neccessary, on the fly. It sucks to be laid off (3 time veteran, thank you) but maybe we all need to consider that organizations have checkbooks too, and when dollars coming in are not what we like, then its nice to shed 'payments' when we can't afford them. To trim down and expand up as revenue and work demands, rather than to be handcuffed by expensive and inflexible labor contracts.......... I see your angle here, and its parallels with the auto industry. But I doubt you will find much union sympathy here. All it really shows is a microvision of how bad the US car industry will be forever damaged if the union doesn't recognize that pushing it too far and getting greedy is their own ultimate demise. It just brings everyone else down with it. And you always hear the whole 'joe EXECUTIVE makes xxxx million too much". True, but even if exec pay was slashed, its not going to turn a company around or benefit the rank and file that much. And then, all your top execs would quit and believe it or not, cheaper execs would screw the company up pretty badly. There's always going to be corrupt folks at management levels skimming the crab out of the crab salad. Striking should not be done from the angle of 'us against them/poor vs rich/we need to bring the top men down!'. Its nothing less than a feeble attempt at class warfare and is just a bunch of people pissed off at their perceived status in life. And the rest of America looks down on that angle, and all that happens is you lose your jobs because you got too feisty. You just gotta give some and shut up with all the undignified fightin' words. Its not professional or classy and its devalues your support from the rest of America (I am referring to some of the comments I've been reading from the striking mechanics in this example, not anyone here on this board). And all companies are poorly managed. You can blame it as 'poor management' but all companies make good decisions and all of them make shitty decisions. Managing GM or NWA is so complex, the company has to excel in SPITE of what can be piss poor management. Humans are not perfect. www.startribune.com has a lot of coverage about the NWA strike Really what I see to this is the catastrophic pendelum effects that unions can impose on an economy. No group of folks should be allowed to have that great of an influence on the health of a large company, a state's economy, or the ability of a much needed airliner to do work safely and with service to its CUSTOMERS. I predict big damage, with smaller, leaner carriers benefitting.

The Impala has better proportioning than the Camry.

that 29 grand charger was not a Hemi. thanks, tannersoc for shedding light on the obvious, the new impala has cheapness inside. again, my impressions of drivng the SS didn't wow me or do anything for me that made me really want the car. Still, its a decent cruiser in the classic GM vein. A great cornfield state cruiser for the interstates, and thanks for someone also confirming that yes, the rear seat is small like on so many GM cars. but i will say the new Impala is a big improvement and I would buy one over a Camry, Accord, Sonata for sure. No worries there. The LT and LTZ deserve to be huge sellers and the SS package is a nice offering for those who want a smooth v8 car. The Impala is a very good offering. It just is nothing to lust over, even the SS. There's too many more interesting cars out there.

my aztek has exposed screws and they're real.

I think the cobalt will benefit from the radical nature of this new styling. the jetta went and left for the high ground and the civic has gone for the wierd ground. Corolla and Cobalt will benefit. Focus is old, Mazda 3 is more expensive than a Mazda6.