Northstar

Check your local rental lots, I'm sure there are a lot more new Corollas there than ever before.

Overall, sales were decent, nothing great though. The Silverado outsold the F-Series, and I expect that to continue to happen. The Acadia's numbers are pretty good, though I expect them to climb to abuot 7k/month or so. I have noticed that it looks like Saturn is going to have a problem with its turnaround. The Aura is still not selling well (3700 in a month is bad for GM's best family sedan), and the Outlook, which I feel is a nicer vehicle than the Acadia, at least in terms of interior materials, sold less than half as much as the Acadia. People are not used to Saturn having a family sedan or a big SUV-like vehicle, and it's going to take a while for them to catch on. I think we'll start to see Saturn's sales pick up in about a year, when everyone is aware that Saturn no longer only builds compact economy cars.

Toyota's sales are never impressive except for the new models and the Prius, which is the same as what happened in February. When they start to not have so many new models (read: they have entered all the segments they're going to) sales won't be as good.

FORD'S FEBRUARY SALES OFF 13%; DAILY RENTAL SALES DOWN 30% http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=25526 * Ford's February sales totaled 211,150, down 13 percent compared with a year ago. * Lower sales to daily rental companies (down 30 percent) account for about one-half of the decline. * Sales to retail customers were down 8 percent. * Ford's estimated retail market share in February is 13 percent -- maintaining a consistent level since June 2006. * Demand continues to grow for new mid-size sedans (Ford Fusion up 46 percent compared with a year ago, Mercury Milan up 22 percent and Lincoln MKZ up 21 percent) and new crossover vehicles (Ford Edge up 43 percent compared with January and Lincoln MKX up 38 percent). * February inventories were 175,000 units lower than a year ago. * Ford announces second quarter North American production plan. DEARBORN, Mich., Mar. 1 - Ford Motor Company's February U.S. sales declined 13 percent compared with a year ago. Sales to daily rental companies were 30 percent lower than a year ago as the company continued its planned reduction in this market. The company's February sales totaled 211,150, compared with 244,021 a year ago. Lower sales to daily rental companies (down 16,000 units) accounted for about half of the decline. Sales to individual retail customers were down 8 percent compared with a year ago. The company estimates retail sales for its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands were 13 percent of industry-wide retail sales in February. The company's share of the U.S. retail market has been consistent at approximately 13 percent since June 2006. “Our objective is to deliver more of the products that people want and, in doing so, stabilize retail share," said Mark Fields, Ford’s President of The Americas. “We're encouraged by the results we have achieved over the past several months. O ur new products and our initiatives to strengthen our brands are starting to pay off." Consumer demand continues to grow for Ford's new mid-size cars and crossover utilities (CUVs). In February, Ford Fusion sales were up 46 percent compared with a year ago, Mercury Milan sales were up 22 percent, and Lincoln MKZ sales were up 21 percent. February marked the second month on sale for the company's new crossover utilities – the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX. Edge sales were 7,977 (up 43 percent compared with January) and Lincoln MKX sales were 2,310 (up 38 percent). The Edge has posted higher sales in its first two months than did Ford's popular Fusion when it was introduced in late 2005. The Edge and Lincoln MKX are all-new products in the company's CUV lineup. Redesigned models of Ford's Escape and Mercury Mariner are arriving at dealer showrooms now, and the new Taurus X crossover will go on sale this summer. Ford saw lower sales for its F-Series pickup truck in February (down 12 percent), which compares with a very strong performance for America's best-selling pickup last year. Although supply is limited, the all-new F-Series Super Duty pickup is off to a fast start, with a very positive "days to turn" level of 6 days in February. U.S. Inventories At the end of February, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury inventories were estimated at 603,000 units. This level is 175,000 units lower than a year ago. North American Production In the first quarter 2007, the company plans to produce 740,000 vehicles (200,000 cars and 540,000 trucks). This plan is unchanged from the previously announced plan. In the second quarter 2007, the company plans to produce 770,000 vehicles (220,000 cars and 550,000 trucks). In the second quarter 2006, the company produced 897,000 vehicles (328,000 cars and 569,000 trucks). More than 60 percent of the year-to-year decline in second quarter reduction reflects discontinued products and the company's planned reduction in sales to daily rental companies. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Edge is doing surprisingly well. Almost 8k units sold. The Fusion was up big, but I'm guessing some of the lost Taurus fleet sales became Fusion fleet sales. The rest was pretty bleak for Ford though. F-Series down 12%, Explorer down 26%, and Freestyle down 42.5%; it would appear the Edge is cannibalizing a lot of Freestyle sales. Somehow the MKX sold 2300 units. I have no idea how, as it is a terrible vehicle for the price.

Ugh, they really need to paint that. Having the very lowest part below the front air damn and the area in the rear that has the exhaust cutouts would be ok to have unpainted, but the rest is unacceptable, and makes a great design look mediocre.

Congrats, but don't have too much fun, you might end up having to buy some new tires :AH-HA_wink:

Yeah, I have to take a Linear Algebra class. Physics I understand pretty well, but Calc 2 is a pain. My professor is crazy (explains something new that we've never seen before, then says, "ok so this easy right?" umm, no, oh course not dummy, we don't have any idea what you're talking about. I have a B- in it (almost B) even though I did terribly on the first test, but because I did better than the average I have a higher than average grade. How important is Chemistry? It bores me to death and even though I have a B or B- in it too but I don't feel very motivated to learn it because I think it's dumb... right now we're doing cell potentials, reaction mechanisms, differential and integrated rate laws. I have no idea why I would need to know any of this later on, as it all seems like it would all just be available in some directory about them if I actually needed to do use this stuff.

Cool, do you want to be a professor if you're going for your Ph.D? I hope to have a B.S. in ME from U of Ill in 2010 and a minor in business as well, and perhaps go for my M.S. in ME (2011). How difficult would you say the engineering classes are compared to say, Calc 2 and the science courses? I've only had one engineering class so far (CAD) and it was really easy, but the first half was basically following instructions out of the book, and the second part was just using what I learned in the first half to make more parts including a big design project at the end. Is BEng Bioengineering? One of my suite mates is in that, sounds difficult with all the Orgo Chem you have to take.

I don't understand how Bush thinks they can increase MPG by 4% every year. That would require new technology year after year after year on basically everything, which is quite obviously not going to happen. As for 650HP Vettes and 400HP Camaros... well, I think they will sell in such small quantities that it won't affect CAFE that much. The Z06 gets 26MPG highway, so I think it's more trucks than cars (hi-power or not) that need to see the big improvements.

AAS - What did you get your degree in?

Tuition is not really that bad here because I'm in state, but the added cost of housing really makes it look expensive. It would actually be less than $8k/year if I wasn't in engineering (which is $3500/year more because of lab use, etc.) I think my housing is close to $10k/year, which is sort of ridiculous considering I could just live at home (7 min car ride away) and save the $10k. Community colleges are certainly a good way to go to save money. I am taking a class online at the community college and it's only like $270 for the 3 hour course (books are extra). So, if you say the costs for books is $500, and you want to take 15 hours, the cost would only be $1850 for a semester of college. As for raise in prices... my tuition is fixed for the full 4 years. Meaning what I pay now is what I pay for the whole time. Luckily my grandparents bought me a ton of college bonds to help pay for tuition, and my dad is paying for the extra.

I think the article is talking about the proposed ULS. The DTS would not be the S-Class fighter, the ULS would.

Dodge is a very "damaged" brand as well. I'm going to guess that probably 40% of Dodges go to fleets. I would say Jeep is hardly damaged at all except for the Compass being a joke. As for GM's build quality... it is at least on par if not better than Chrysler's on the new models. There are no faults in the build quality of the T900s or Lambdas. There are faults in the build quality of the newest Chrysler's.

With 2WD... you won't be doing that much off-roading in that. It also has no A/C ($850), no power windows, door locks, or mirrors. How many of those are you going to find on the lot? The argument was that you can go off-roading for cheap, and therefore the interior doesn't matter. Well, yes $15k is cheap, but if you want A/C so that you don't die of heat exhaustion while going off-road in the middle of nowhere, and you'd like power windows and door locks, a CVT or auto trans (how many manuals are going to be on lots?), and a full size spare tire so that if you have to replace one you can still go off-roading, you're at nearly $20k, and that's the base model without many options that aren't standard on other vehicles in the class. And, if you'd like one of the "nice" models, you're at over $26k. If you could get everything on the "nice" model but with it actually having a nice interior, you wouldn't see me complaining.

I'm not repeating what I heard. I sat in the vehicle, it's crap. I hardly even read reviews any more. I'm not asking for a leather-lined dash. I'm asking for an interior that, if I bought the vehicle, I wouldn't feel like I felt like I wasted $xxxxx after driving it for 2 weeks. You shouldn't have to pick whether you want good off-road ability or an acceptable interior. Chrysler must be in the situation they're in because they have the same attitude. "Oh, we'll make the vehicle have this or that that's really good, and then people will choose our product no matter what and we can just stuff a junky interior into the vehicle." Problem is, most people don't want to make sacrifices when they're spending $20k+ on something. What do Avenger buyers gain by giving up any sort of quality interior? Not good off roading ability...

Right... GM doesn't have the capacity right now to build enough six-speed transmissions for each and every Silverado. As soon as more plants are converted over to be able to produce more six speeds, more vehicles will ave them. Having an interior that sucks has nothing to do with production capacity unless you're making the interiors by hand, and none of us are asking for that. We would just like to be able to have a pleasant place to ride around in, instead of a bucket of plastic. At least GM has the best interiors class. There's a difference between investing money into a better interior and investing it into manufacturing plants. It takes hundreds of millions of dollars for GM to convert to the 6-speed, it would have taken Chrysler very little in comparison to give the Patriot a nice interior. $500/more per vehicle would be a huge improvement, I think. They could charge the same $500/more per unit because it would feel like it was worth $2k more than before. There's absolutely no excuse that nearly all of Chrysler's recently debuted vehicles all suffer from poor interior quality. Not having the production capacity to make some part of a vehicle is another matter. As NOS said, GM is supposed to have capacity to put six-speeds in all Silverados by the '08MY. Last I checked, Chrysler made no commitment to do the same with it's interiors.

Well, you'd think if we all know it has a terrible interior that Chrysler would have been able to realize that before they released it, but apparently they suck too much to figure such obvious things out.

And you said you saw the Tundra after you left, which implies you saw the Tundra after the dust storm... how is it not dusty then? The paint on the old Silverado (especially red and black) was rather poor, I thought, after detailing cars over. The dark blue was probably the best paint. I'm not sure if GM re-did the paint shop wit the changeover to the T900s, but at least the slate blue on the T900s looks much higher-quality than it did on the T800s. I think a lot of the "depth" you see in paint is mostly seen in metallic colors. The red and black used on the old Silverados (and possibly the new ones, I'm not sure), is flat, not metallic, while the dark blue that looked nice was metallic.

The front looks more Nissan to me, but the rear is definitely very A&S Cadillac-like.

Okay now, kiddies, I think everyone has had their voice about their interior. Let's get back to topic here and talk some more about what appears to be awesome interiors in the future. If you want to discuss this interior vs. that interior, that's perfectly fine by me, how about opening up a new topic instead of discussing it here though?

If there was a heavy dust storm, that would mean the Tundra would be very dusty. Are superb paint jobs now ones that are covered in dust, or am I missing something here? I saw two Tundras this weekend... both on the interstate. The second one at least had a dealer plate on it (didn't notice if the first one had a dealer plate or not), so I'm wondering if they were doing a dealer trade, because they were going opposite directions not that long after each other (I was going the opposite direction of them both times, on the same interstate). I haven't seen one up close outside of the auto show, but my initial impressions were that it is a better than average truck, but not a great truck like the T900s. I think the interest level from the crowds at the auto show reflected that. GM does need to do something about the Tundra being the better performer, whether trucks are supposed to be performance vehicles or not. I suspect that soon enough the 6L will be gone, replaced by the 6.2 with 417lb-ft and 380-400HP.

I will be very surprised if this happens. There's no way GM let's Daimler take a stake in GM. Maybe GM is taking a stake in Chrysler, but not buying all of it, and someone got confused and we ended up with this report.

The center gauge pod is sweet and the seats look fabulous with the suede (or whatever) on them but otherwise I prefer the G8's exterior. Perhaps we will get a G8 GXP with the 20s, LS3, and interior modifications that this has.

But it's not faster than the Veyron GT That's pretty impressive, though when you get into the $200+k range, I think most customers are going to want something a little nicer than a Viper, even if the Viper is faster.

Exactly. We rarely use the third row except for "soccer mom" duties and when freinds/family come over.