CARBIZ

You are all correct. The Sierra/Silverado always outsells the F-150. Dealers will cannabalize each other's sales. Ford's are cheaper. Someone who is only concerned about budget will buy Ford. Do a serious comparison with the F-150 and you will see for yourself. Locking differential versus limited slip. No comparison. Check out the construction/design of the bed. No comparison. Engine choices and durability. NO comparison. The only area Ford truly beats GM is in the appearance of the interior, which as has been beaten to death on C&G is GM's Achilles heel on almost all of its products.

My guess is that it is the tranny's fault. The Malibu transmission is impressive. Case in point, the Malibu 2.2 gets better real world fuel mileage than the Optra 2.0. The Optra is smaller and the engine is smaller, but the Aisin tranny is sloppy.

Seriously, if you were the CEO of Exxon, would you spend a billion dollars building a new refinery in North America, knowing full well that as soon as that refinery came online the price of your product would DROP? The bottleneck is refinery capacity, not supply. Every summer we hear that the refineries haven't switched over from heating oil due to the cold/long/unexpected winter season so gasoline will be expensive, then every damned Fall we hear that heating oil will be expensive because of the long/hot driving season. The Greenies are really playing into the hands of the oil companies here. When people protest the construction of a new oil refinery, do you think the oil companies give a damn?

There are obvious strategic advantages to getting more of America's oil from North America (ie, Canada, Mexico, itself) rather than the Middle East - cost of transport, ease of security, proximity, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about the economies of the Arab states going down any time soon: India and China are going to more than pick up the slack! That is going to be the real elephant in the room over the next 25 years. China is going to pass America in terms of GDP - anyone can see that. They only have to achieve 25% of the productivity of America to achieve that, having 4 times the population. If China's middle class aspires to match the West's level of consumption, there will be a real threat to raw materials: steel, oil, zinc, etc - all of which we are beginning to see now. Frankly, this planet can't support it. Although the West has no right in denying China or India their places as industrial/economic power houses, those two countries will have to come to grips with their population growth and horrific environmental records, or they will take the rest of us down a spiral that no one will escape.

AM radio? Who the hell listens to AM radio? I haven't tuned in AM in 25 years!

Wouldn't the biggest chunk of their profit be from the $2b that GM handed them? What will they do for an encore? Sign a deal with Ford and then sucker them into a $2b gift?

The 2004 Impala did have a standard Cd player. Cassettes were only available in conjunction with a Cd/cassette combo. Sounds like someone switched the radio.

But isn't it interesting that OPEC, as led by the Saudis, was made to promise to hold oil at $30 a barrel for years to help the West out or else our economies would crash. Now, all of the sudden, oil doubles and we are told that it is because of Iraq/Sudan/China/Katrina. What surprises me is that OPEC is taking this news quietly. I do smell conspiracy here. The last time oil was this expensive, it was OPEC's move and they were making the money. Now we are being told it is the market, yet the oil companies are making more money than most countries. I, for one, am unimpressed.

I can't speak for Mexico's numbers, but don't forget that Canada also BUYS a lot of American made parts and American assembled vehicles. Japan buys diddly squat. How many AMerican cars are sold in Japan? Thousands, not millions. Of the 1.5 million vehicles sold in Canada every year, almost 60% are from the Big Three. So Canada gives as good as it gets. Not so for Japan.

Bobo is right: the movie is a bit of an emotional train-wreck. Everyone gets burned. When Alma catches the two of them kissing against the wall, half the audience (including me) burst into nervous laughter. Then I realized, from her point of view, it wasn't funny at all. The old cliche about being able to compete with another woman, but what do you do about another man...? But as I have thought more about this movie, it does burn me up a little that, once again, gay people are being portrayed as doomed, damned, etc. For sure things were pretty bad in the 1960s, and probably still are in some areas of the world, but Ennis was being a bit of a cop out. He took the easy way out and ruined everyone's lives because of his own lack of courage. I may be one of the lucky ones, but I resisted and fought all through my childhood. I knew I was gay before puberty and fought my parents all through my teenage years, but I know from my couple years of peer counselling on a gay youth line 27 years ago that it isn't easy for everyone. It wasn't easy, but in 1976, at the age of 15, I stood up to my parents and told them I was gay. I work in a car dealership and I am "out" to everyone. It is not a badge of honor, it is a matter of principle. I don't advertise it - in fact, I can easily slip through the straight world unnoticed, but there are happy stories out there and you don't have to look very hard. It still astounds me, however, the number of people I have met over the years from the small town where I lived for 11 years who are gay. My mother's best friend's husband, at 52 years of age, after nearly 30 years of marriage, turned to his wife and told her he was gay. (Me shaking my head.) As a historical piece, Brokeback is wonderful, but I want to see more gay characters who are just people, not emotional wrecks, like Wil (Wil & Grace), queens, sluts or sexually sterile.

The G800 looks like an early Ridgeline....don't tell Motor Trend.. it'll be Truck of the Year.

....not the SS-SC in our show room. None of the Cobalts have it. Big mistake. It costs $400 to have it done after market.

Razor, two big things happened after 1985 to GM: the Ford Taurus and Acura. Oldsmobile outsold Ford a couple times in the mid-80s, then Olds' sales dropped, in no small part due to the fact that the Legend gave American car haters something to buy and still be snooty.

The current IMpala SS is scary with the V-8. Too much power for a FWD platform. It is just silly. In iterations like the 300 or BMWs, I can see it. I agree with many on this board that nothing quite sounds like a rumbling V-8. GM should make available a RWD car platform again and make a V-8 available for those who demand it.

Smaller, yes, but it is the proportion of retired persons versus working aged persons that counts, and I believe Japan has more of a disadvantage that either the U.S. or Canada. Their population is aging (they live longer) and they don't have the relatively young immigration influx that we do here to offset the retirees. Also, Japan's population is basically stagnant. They will have a bigger problem with funding retirment than the U.S. should. However, Japan doesn't have the huge military budget to deal with.

Of course GM isn't going to go down without a fight. That has never been in dispute. But how have things improved from 2001? GM's quality has gotten better, but then so has Toyota and HOnda's. GM has launched an entire battery of new and improved cars: Impala, G6, etc. but then so has Toyota and Honda. GM has missed the boat on RWD vehicles (Charger, 300, Mustang) AWD (Ford 500), and hybrids. Talk of the Camaro should have happened 3 years ago. The current Impala should be RWD, not the next one! And let's not even get into the legacy costs and the other elephant in the room: gas prices. Toyota has been very, very lucky this past 5 years, what with the Iraq war and Karina creating a perfect storm on world markets. I sincerely hope that Lutz and Wagoner have a couple aces up their sleeves, because from where I sit we are still playing catch up. (modified because I hit some damned key and it was submitted before I was done!!!)

Yeah, my father's girlfriend's '73 Pontiac Parisienne had the solid bench - she is 5'2" and I am 6'2" - not fun when riding with her in the front! I preferred her '71 Duster before that: white, full vinyl bucket seats. No console, though. My father's '69 Chrysler 300 had really cool vinyl bucket seats of the (then) new thin-style buckets. It had a wide, low brushed aluminum and chrome locking console, with couresy lights along the floor. Too low to act as an arm rest, though. Nostalgia is great, but in the pre-cupholder days and in the days when the cars were damned near 6 feet wide inside, it made sense to have bench seats. Nowadays, even trying to squeeze 3 adults into the front of a new Impala isn't fun because they aren't wide enough (and the center seat belt clips are stuffed up your arse, too!)

I can see the direction the GM is going and each generation is getting better than the last, but will GM survive long enough to finally "get it?" The first new generation Malibu ('97-03) had some nice attributes, but never stood out in the mid-size crowd. Ditto the newest generation Malibu. The last Impala was a decently riding/handling car with decent gas mileage, but again, had fleet car written all over it. The new Impala, despite what I've read here, is a vastly better car than the one it replaces and certainly is better than the Buick or Grand Prix, but I fear we will be playing catch up to the Camry, once again when it comes out in a few months. The Cobalt is vastly better than the Cavalier, and was better than the Corolla or Civic, but then Honda leap-frogged over GM again! How could GM not see this coming? If we are ever to get off this selling on price and constantly having to defend ourselves against Toyota shoppers, we need a ball out of the park. And I am not talking about a lower volume vehicle like the Camaro, either! Anybody I have met who works as a supplier to GM has said to me that GM can never make up its mind when it comes to designs and design changes. If it drives suppliers crazy, then things must be pretty f**ked up. GM can't afford to play catch up. Case in point: the Impala and HHR have an input for an Ipod (or any other device). Why not the Cobalt - the vehicle that truly needs it? Impala customers don't care (unless they can plug in their portable 8-track!), but Cobalt customers do. I know it has to do with the new "bow-tie" radio will trickle down into all the vehicle lines and they will all have that feature - eventually. No more compromises! Better to spend an extra $500 on design and features than $1,500 on incentives.

...thanks guys..I haven't seen that episode yet! I was going to watch it tonight!

The 5 door has always looked better...hey, at $4 a gallon, we need this car up here!

Oh, and I missed the fact that the article is surrounded by Lexus ads..............hmmmm

Wow, that article was breathtaking. And what about the V-6 engine coking problem Toyota had that they blamed on the customer, until the dealer lobby in the States threatened to sue, then they quietly put a power train warranty on their Siennas and Camrys that were effected........? Brake problems on the Rav4 a couple years back....? Toyota has just as many bodies buried in the back yard, they just bury them deeper. Req is right: how does Toyota get such endearing press? How can GM fight this type of propaganda? Frankly, at this stage I would say GM and Ford need to get together - for the sake of survival, and hit Toyota between the eyes. Toyota and the gang have been doing it for years in Japan, it is time that GM wakes up and does it here now.

Didn't GM invent the crash test dummy? Maybe they should have used Nader instead.

Yeah, all the seeds of GM's current problems were sown with the beginnings of the platform sharing: Astre/Vega, Chevette/Acadian, Citation/Pheonix/Omega/Skyhawk.......the list goes on.

No, but when people have just sat in a Corolla, Sentra and Focus in the past hour you are getting their honest opinions. I've gotten an earful over the years, wandering around auto shows just listening to people's reactions. It can be hilarious but informative, too.