Northstar

MarioBro88: You can enter both, but let me suggest something: rather than spending maybe 30 minutes to an hour on each entry, you'll have better success (meaning more votes when the time comes) working on an entry for 4 to 5 hours and perfecting it.

The front is a little dated looking from some angles, but it still looks pretty good and I think the rest of the car looks great. Of course the best part about it is the driving experience and the interior.

I like the pinstripe; nice ride!

Too bad it's just an engineering mule and doesn't have any of the design changes. I agree the 300HP DI 3.6 would have been better.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would you not want PW? I can see not wanting them if you have to pay for them, but what's wrong with them if they're free?

I'll have to see it in person to judge, as with the S-Class.

I decided we could do a pick-you-own-picture Choppin' Comp this time, so I thought this was a good idea... Your task is to create a vehicle that you feel would fill a gap in GM's lineup. There aren't a whole lot of gap's in GM's lineup because it is so vast, but if you think creatively I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something. Or, if you feel that GM has a particularly weak spot in their lineup, that would work as well. Just a few ideas: Zeta vehicles Small RWD vehicles (think Kappa sedans, etc) Minivans Cadillac Coupe Please resize your pictures to 800 pixels wide before posting. Deadline for entries is Friday, July 14th at 11:59 PM your time. Now get choppin'!

I haven't heard of this issue, but I can confirm your notes on the Suburban. I only drove it to the gas station, but it felt much smaller than it looks, and never wobbled around or felt like it was disconnected to the road like our TB EXT does sometimes.

I decided to add colors, too. M: Porsche 911 GT2, Charcoal T: Z06, Dark Blue W: Ferrari F430, Light Blue R: Ford GT, Tungsten w/Blue Stripes F: CTS-V, Black Sat: Sky Red Line, Dark Blue Sun: Corvette Convertible, Red

I'm guessing the next van will be pretty good, considering Lutz said "judge me after my next minivan." The Lambda crossovers have AWD and fold-flat seats, so there's no reason why the minivans won't as well.

The GTO's interior is better design-wise, IMO, though the 9-3 has better (but not by a whole lot) materials.

No one ever makes this excuse for GM, it's funny, because GM's launch vehicles are doing very well. The only thing doing bad are those at the end of their lifecycles.

I think I need to say something in this thread: You can't sell a product to someone if no one comes into the showroom to buy it. Cars such as the Solstice, HHR, Sky, and Corvette draw people in to the showroom because they're great products that attract attention, and they're all knockout hits. Cars such as the LaCrosse, Malibu, and Cobalt are not all knockout hits because they aren't the greatest products, and don't attract people to the showroom. The product should be so good that the cars sell themselves, which is the case with the Kappas, HHR, and Vette. GM and the dealers shouldn't have to make deals on cars to sell them as they do with most. If the products sell themselves, there's no reason to need "The Plan."

June sales as well as other recent months have shown that Ghosn's plan only worked in the short term, and while Nissan may again be profitable, sales are now sinking. Ghosn is not the man for the job at GM; he would try to turn the ship around 180 degrees overnight, and while he might turn a profit, the products would be of poorer quality because they would be rushed to market. If GM is going to turn it around, it has to be under Wagoner. Why? Because, if someone else comes in in the middle of an attempted turnaround and changes everything, it absolutely destroys all of the work that was put in place before, and would essentially mean the turnaround would just begin again. In other words, it would waste a hell of a lot of time, and by the time the new turnaround effort takes place, GM may not be in existence.

There were Oldsmobiles for a long time after they were produced, but it has been quite a while. I'm also surprised there are still E39 M5s.

Well since the old one sold like crap, it's not that surprising. The CTS that's on it's final year now outsold it by over 1500 units, so I'm not sure how impressive that really is though. It would be interesting to see how much of an increase the CTS had over the Catera.

I don't much care for how it looks, but the materials are pretty nice.

The Focus is actually doing okay for as old as it is, and the Five Hundred is doing alright. I don't really know how to judge the Milan and Zephyr because they didn't really replace anything, but the Milan sold 3400 units and the Zephyr 2200. Combined they sold less than the CTS, and the Milan starts at $19k.

Nah, the Raider sold 937 units in May (not sure for June), but it still is nothing impressive.

I agree they should be options but also agree w/Fly that they're no good. It teaches the driver that he/she doesn't have to look to change lanes and develops bad driving habits. What happens when the driver is renting a car that doesn't have these features and causes a wreck because he/she is not used to checking their blind spots?

True, but something tells me at least the Econoline has a lot of fleets sales. That's not bad however, since I'm sure they still make money on them; GM would love for those sales to be going to the Savana/Express I'm sure.

We sold a lot of Impala's in the two and a half weeks I've been working, probably more than anything else, but some of the increase is probably fleets. The G6 probably got at least 1500 sales from the convertible, and it's been about 11k units for a while now, so I'm not so sure it's fleets.

I don't think that's the problem. People (at least most of them) aren't buying the Avalon because of it's power. That's like saying its ok for GM to stick the 3900 in the G6 because it might take Aura sales if it got the 3.6 (even though it is now), or that the Lucerne shouldn't have the Northstar because that should be Cadillac-exclusive and it only steals DTS sales. I think the problem is that when the Avalon came out it didn't have the Lucerne to contend with nor the ES. The Camry may be taking some sales, but I don't think it's because you can get the same engine in both. Anyways, Toyota sales were pretty good, but what everyone always fails to point out is that Toyota's gains are always made by their new releases. If GM's lineup was the same size as Toyota's, they'd be gaining volume too because such a large percentage of the vehicles are "launch vehicles" -- GM's launch vehicles are doing very well. Other than the Corolla (which I'm not sure how it had such a huge gain - fleet?) and xB, the only vehicles that posted significant gains were the Camry (launch), Yaris (launch), ES (launch), IS (hasn't been out for a year and the old one sold like crap), RAV4 and FJ (both launch). Now, that's a large percentage of Toyota's lineup because it's not as big as GM's, but most of Toyota's products were actually down.

Not for where GM is taking Saturn though. If the Malibu has remote start, the Outlook surely should.

Other than the F-Series, Mustang, and Fusion, what does FoMoCo have that's doing well?