Northstar

The Civic sure is losing steam fast, but to what? The new Sentra? Aside from the RDX, MDX, CR-V, and Accord, it wasn't a very good month for Honda. I fail to see how 14k people would buy a CR-V, but it does have an H on it.

V-Series production is roughly 10% of total production for the vehicles that have a V-Series model. The CTS-V was originally projected at 5k/units a year. I think the CTS does about 60k vehicles/year now, though.

The Edge is doing well, and the MKX looks like it's doing okay too, surprisingly. Nothing else looks too bright for Ford, though. I wonder if the Silverado will beat the F-Series in sales this month. 45k is a rather low total.

MyerShift brings up an excellent point. It would have made much more sense for Chrysler to pocket the costs of producing the Nitro and used the money to make the Liberty best-in-class. They could probably save half of the Nitro's development costs and spend them on giving the Liberty a class-leading interior, and then save the rest for something else. Instead, we will probably end up with two middle-of-the-road vehicles. I wish GM would do this too in some cases, but they seem to be getting away from sharing so much, other than platforms and in a few cases A-Pillar-back sheet metal. The Enclave is very different from either of the other two Lambdas, and while the Acadia and Outlook are basically the same from the A-Pillar back, their interiors are well differentiated and the front ends are unique. For instance, on the next Cobalt, they should pocket any costs saved by not making a new G5 and use that money to fix anything that might have gotten cut by having to spend the money to make the G5 a little different. Chrysler's products may have unique front ends, but their interiors all look almost exactly the same.

If you must do a Mustang, make one like this: That's one of the few Fords I would like to own. I may try to restore a '67 or '68 fastback and install the Eleanor body kit someday, if I have the money and time. I seriously don't know if there's another old American car I'd rather have than an Eleanor clone.

I figured out it was the A-pillar after thinking about it for a while. That's definitely bad because that part of the car shouldn't be abused, even at an auto show. We can agree that the Nitro's interior fits te macho feel of the exterior, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on whether it's any good

Dodgefan: that Equinox is bad. What is the last pic of? BrewSwillis: no, I perfer something that seems like it's worth the price tag. Take a look at this thread if you want to see some of my opinions on interiors: http://www.cheersandgears.com/forums/index...showtopic=14445 Believe it or not, the Santa Fe had the best interior of any compact SUV I sat in while car shopping.

A '71 Mustang? It's so ugly I'm not sure it's worth the time and effort.

Yeah, we just have a personal vendetta about Chrysler and want to see them fail so we say all Chrysler group interiors are crap, but let others slide. Oh, wait, look at what I said about the CR-V and RAV4: So there you have it. All Chryslers are junk and everything else is at the very least acceptable.

Yes, I just got owned hardcore because Edmunds thinks the interior is average and I think it's crap. I see you conveniently didn't highlight auto123's opinion: "hard plastic is the construction material of choice for most of the inside." Looks like I just got owned there too. Apparently some people have different thoughts about interior quality than others, and perhaps my opinion about what's a quality interior and what's junk is a bit more demanding than yours. It's my opinion that the only people getting "owned" in the case of the Nitro are those willing to plunk down $20-30k so that they can ride around in a pile of crap.

Ok, so they neither hated it or liked it. Very well, they like the utilitarian feel. I'm not sure the center stack is very well laid out, but whatever. I'm also not quite sure that "brushed aluminum" belongs in a utilitarian car... that would seem to belong in something sporty to me. There's a difference between feeling tough and ready to work and cheap and ready to fall apart. I fail to see how the cheap plastic can feel so substantial to them. And, anyone who is smart enough to realize they're spending $20+k on a vehicle should care that the interior isn't a horrible place to be. Maybe it's "cool" and "utilitarian" at first, but can you imagine driving around in such a bucket of crap for more than a week?

How about something like an old Nova: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Chevrolet-N...1QQcmdZViewItem

That doesn't mean it shouldn't have better plastics. There's a big difference between having decent plastics and piss-poor ones. The Nitro's plastics are piss-poor, and there's absolutely no excuse for a vehicle of it's price to have such a cheap interior. Not having the best plastics is not the Nitro's problem. Not having average plastics is the problem.

If this means that the ASIM is returning, I'm happy. If not, I guess I don't care that much since I'd never go all the way there to test cars. What pissed me off about ASIM is that it was close to here when I was 17 (and couldn't drive the cars) but it didn't come back the following year when I would have been able to drive the cars.

Good, then there's very little chance I'll ever see one of these monstrosities running around on the street. Who cares what PR Lexus can report if there aren't any for sale.

That's not good if the interior quality of the Aura is poor, but hey, at least you can easily pull pieces of the center stack off a la the Camry. Also, if you go to Autoweek's past poles, the Aura beat the Camry in Autoweek-reader opinions 50.1% to 19.7% (the remaining people either said "Neither" or "Both are nice."

Isn't GM targeting ~200k for the 3 Lambdas? I know Saturn wants to sell 100k Outlooks, though I don't think people recognize Saturn as a brand to go to for a big SUV right now, so that will take awhile if it's ever reached.

Breaking news! Chrysler has just released the picture of the Liberty's interior:

The '69 looks a lot better to me. The interior is actually in decent shape, and it already has nice wheels and tires, which saves you some money in the restoration process. Obviously the downside is you're only getting 1 El Camino instead of two, but do you really have time to restore two at once, anyways? I guess you could resell the one you decided not to restore, but the '69 looks like a much easier project.

Agreed. The 300's dash materials may be superior, but 99% of the time I don't touch my dash. The door panels on the other hand are touched regularly. I'll take the Lucerne's interior any day over the 300s because it has nicer materials on surfaces you actually touch.

That's weird that it's only available in a very small number of states. It seems like a good deal though.

So they killed the Commander so they could use it's styling on the Liberty? I thought they killed the Commander because it was ugly and didn't sell

The Cobalt MCE got pushed back to the '09 MY.

Buick gets the LaCrosse on Epsilon II as a 2010MY vehicle and the Lucerne on Zeta as a 2011 MY vehicle. No coupe is in the plans right now, as far as I know.

Looks good. The wheels are different and I don't think everyone's going to like them, so I hope they offer more choices (on the GTO for the first year there were no options for wheels, you got what it came with). Hopefully the price is similar to the GTO, too.