CARBIZ

Wait.....didn't these guys predict they'd be #3 in world-wide sales in a few years? Does that mean they've changed their mind?

Being born in '61 (and having lost 14% of my nest egg in the past 6 weeks), I guess I'll be working until I'm 85.

I wonder if the Roddenberry franchise will update itself with some hint as to the sexual mores of the 23rd century? DOUBT IT!! BSG (addicted) at least showed that showers/locker rooms will be co-ed in the future, and they even had Five being the lesbian lover to the Admiral of the Pegasus (shocker!). Babylon 5 even had an episode where two of the characters posed as a gay married couple as they joined the Martian underground. But not so the Enterprise franchises!

But who is all this 'globalization' really benefiting? I'll will tell you: banks and insurance companies. Try and exist without a visa card? Do you see the service fees we are paying now for ATM machines and the fact that we can 'get' cash anywhere, any time? Or how about the explosion in insurance 'products?' One of the biggest insurance growth areas is for companies who export products and aren't paid for them. What a concept! So I export a container of widgets to Mexico and the company that receives them refuses to pay (or goes bankrupt on paper so they don't have to pay) and I have zero chance of collecting due to the myriad and confusing laws between our two countries. Solution? Pay a percentage up front to an insurance company, who will then reimburse you. The great news, of course, is that the scarier the country you are dealing with (the Middle East, for example) the more you will pay for this privilege. What are the real costs of all this? And who ends up paying them? The more I look into all this, the more I realize how many BS charges are tacked on to virtually every transaction that is done today. Consumers are confused - and angry. Rightly so, IMO. Putting lawyers and accountants in charge of all this $h! is the first problem: it is in their vested interests to keep things so damned complicated that we need them to do any transaction.

01LightningGal's post made me thing of the insurance industry: they will advertise impossible to acheive rates, then find every nitpicky reason to charge the consumer MORE. That seems to be more and more how business is done these days. Gouge and rip off. The trouble with credit scores is that the onus is on the consumer to ensure they are accurate, not the other way around. Even with liens, for example, I've seen many credit bureaus with liens still on them for loans that were paid off years ago. Responsible persons will check their credit rating frequently. It can be very enlightening - even scary!

Even though our market it puny, the Ram outsells the Silverado in Canada. It's GMC that is the one to beat here. Just thought I'd throw that out there..................

There's plenty of blame to go around, that's for sure. Look at what our grandparents got for their first home: 1-3 piece bathroom, no sod, no appliances, no driveway (you were lucky if the developer dumped a load of gravel on your front lawn), a carport if you were lucky - that's it. Now, look at what people 'demand' for their first time homes: central air, central vac, 3 or 4 bedrooms, 60 oz carpet, double car garage, casement windows....the list goes on and on. And all of that with nothing down and 40 years??? Clearly a recipe for disaster. Living within our means is a phrase not in most people's vocabulary anymore.

I just have a real weakness for the '69, since my dad had a 4 door hardtop. It wasn't the burn outs, it was the thumping over the potholes on the road: those old torsion bars can't take much of that - not after 40 years. I realize anybody who has a car like that is going to have 'fun' with it (God knows I had my fair share with my dad's car - and I wasn't even of legal driving age when I buried the needle one night on the highway), but they were clearly trashing the car. I guess somebody bought one for $300 and decided to drive it into the ground - literally.

Actually, it's THIRTEEN degrees in the Big City.....psyche! That's about 55 farenheit for the uninitiated.

Okay, so like, I was really bored last night (and the BF was watching his Brazilian soaps on the big TV - yechhh. If you think American soaps are bad, try watching them on Globo - well, okay, the hotties are hotter on those shows, but anyway, I digress.) So, I am in the den, puttering around on the computer and switch to YouTube. After laughing my ass off at the Sarah Pollin skit on SNL, I hunt for old car commercials and take in a dozen or so old Chrysler commercials ("Your Next Car...,") etc, then I see all these videos posted of different folks showing off their old beasties. Ah, a cornacopia of old cars in action. When what to my horrified eyes should appear, but a couple of hillbilly hicks racing around in a '69 Chrysler 300 coupe, beating the snot out of it. Perhaps some of you guys on this site can sympathise with me, but I literally felt sick. The video was about 6 minutes long but I could only watch about 2 minutes of it. The asshole running the camera even remarks about how great the car runs for 40 years old: WELL, THAT'S THE POINT, ASSCLOWN - THE CAR HAS LASTED 40 YEARS OLD AND DESERVES A MODICUM OF RESPECT. They were really beating on it: doing power turns and driving it through a field of tall grass. Screw hunting for child pornographers, the cops should hunt these guys down and give them a good asswhooping. The car looked like it was in decent shape, too - not that it was bound for the wrecking ball! It really saddens me to see these ol' survivors getting beaten like that because there are virtually none of these old '60s tanks left in Ontario, thanks to our salt and weather. Don't these punks appreciate what they got? Is that all those old cars are worth now - demolition derbies and destroying them in farmer's fields? Okay, end of rant.

FIFTY NINE DEGREES OUT?????? YOU CRUEL SON OF A BITCH!!!!! Oh, that's farenheit. My bad.

Although I, too, believe that would be a good merger for all parties, that is one reason GM should merge with Chrysler - to stop a N-R-C merger. I had the opportunity once to take over a competitor but I turned my nose up at the chance: I would be a very rich man today if I had done it. Now, the real question is where would GM get the resources to 'afford' the merger and would this distract them from the greater issue at hand: surviving the next 18 months?

Nothing wrong with RWD, but winter tires are an absolute must around here. We had a bad winter last season and I remember one fool in a Saleen Mustang going sideways up a very small incline on a major street in downtown Toronto because there was about 3" of snow on the road! Cops had to pull over and push him up the hill. I was laughing my ass off as I passed him in my crappy 2.0 litre FWD Optra! My Caprice was RWD and it handled fantastic in the snow - with winter tires! And I lived in northern Ontario in those days where they get REAL snow.

We took 2 in the last year: one to Vegas/L.A., and the other to Chicago in July. The latter was fairly spur of the moment. We're gearing up for another sojourn in Brazil. I haven't had the nerve to spring it on the new bosses yet. This time we are going to take in Iguacu Falls, along with Sao Paulo, Joao Passoa (the in-laws live there along with half the family), and possibly northern Brazil this time. It depends on whether I can ask (beg?) the usual 25 or so days off, something my previously employer didn't care about in the month of February.

+ 1 When I was single (oh, so long ago) and I had just turned 40, many, many 22 year olds were hitting on me in the clubs (for reasons that I won't shock anyone with) and, sure, I'd be the first to admit that I would take them home and, ahem, have a great one night stand - but that's it. Look, there's certainly nothing 'wrong' with youth, but they are at a different stage in life and their viewpoints, career paths, etc. are not set yet. Plus, they tend to be oh, so over dramatic with everything - and that goes for 20-something year old girls as well as guys. Yeah, yeah, the sex is fantastic, but once that is over (or maybe twice or thrice) - then what? My partner is 9 years younger than me, which has been pretty typical in my life, but the difference between 47 and 38 is not as significant as between 22 and 31 - although I have to hit the gym more often than he does. :AH-HA_wink:

The Law Enforcement Industry just loves to whip up a firestorm to feather their own agendas. Another case of killing a mosquito with a machine gun. I've seen (first hand) far too many times what an over-zealous police force can do - and I am unimpressed. A woman who used to work for me said her brother (who was about 17 at the time) was arrested, had his computer seized and ended up being put on house arrest because he had child porn on his computer - but it was laying in a file with a lot of other porn that he had never even opened. Mere possession, whether the possessor is aware of it or not, can be an offense. How many people here have accepted batches of files from someone on the internet and not checked in advance what they were getting? Law enforcement loves to find the thin wedge for which to drive through their bigger agenda. In this case, it is child porn. Who could possibly be against their crusade on child porn, right? But if they get their way on this (along with a few other issues), then they will push through their next agenda, too. Color me skeptical.

The Aveo is certified as 5-Star, but that's only if it hits a brick wall. Naturally, if a small car hits a bus head on, the bus will win. I'd also definitely get the vehicle with the 'safety package' that gives you the side air bags and ABS. I can't comment about the situation south of the border, but if one factors in incentives, the Cobalt isn't that much more. I like the Aveo for what it is, but as many have chimed in on this thread, it's not for everyone. Also, I'd definitely go for the stick (gasp - I can't believe I am saying this) because the 4-spd auto still isn't up snuff with respect to fuel mileage/smoothness. GM needs to put a GM tranny in this thing ASAP.

:rotflmao:

Right now, many companies are just trying to weather this economic maelstrom any way they can. For now, forget about GMAC. Their hands are tied. Twelve months from now, things will either be a lot better, or GM will be gone - simple as that. The entire economic landscape is undergoing tectonic shifts right now; we may not even recognize WallStreet or Detroit in a year's time - for better or worse. In the short term, however, I've looked at numbers that GM is showing us and times will be good for customers who are prudent with their money. The trouble is, GMAC has been taking a lot of questionable credit, or burying a lot of negative equity in the past, and the chickens have come home to roost. As the entire American economy is learning right now, if you don't have the money you shouldn't be buying a new car (or house.) That's the ugly truth, folks. However, with a bit of belt tightening and prudent money managing, the deals are still there. We've just been so addicted to 0 financing that we can't see the money was coming from somewhere else. Whether it's buying a new car, or buying imported goods, I think we can now see the folly of our ways. This party couldn't last forever. Lets hope the hangover doesn't either.

Well, I am 6'2" and I have no trouble sitting in the back or front of an Aveo. To even mention the Mini in the same sentence as the Aveo is silly. Scratch that: it's stupid. The Aveo is less than half the price. Under the category of Tyranny of the Enthusiasts, not everyone can afford a Mini. Thank God most of you are not running a car company. All we would have would be $45k BMW 3s and Corvettes running around.

GMAC is a bank. It used to be a division of General Motors. It is no more. One would have hoped when GM was trying to raise cash and sold 51% to Cerberus that GMAC could continue its partnership as it has in the past; however, nobody saw this market implosion coming. GM appears lucky it got what cash it could out of GMAC when it did - it certainly wouldn't get that kind of money today for it! All banks are backpedalling right now. 'Pull-aheads' were a privilege, not a right. Canada has not had a pull ahead program in about 3 years, so consider yourself lucky that you were offered any. As with all GM programs, they come and go, based on changing market conditions, which are more like quicksand these days. Worse things are coming. We are looking at GMAC's programs and, basically, GMAC is out of the car business for now. Leases were yanked completey from Canada Aug. 1; then they yanked the 0/72 financing, which was pitched to the dealers as compensation for the loss of leases. Now we are told they will only cover off 105% on financing, which means nobody will qualify for 0 down any more. You, sir, are part of the issue in North America right now: that general feeling of entitlement is killing our productivity. When GMAC offered pull-aheads and incentives, they were meant as icing on a cake, but then people grow addicted to that icing and get all bent out of shape when that icing isn't offered. Better the question is where was your salesperson? He/she should have kept you abreast of the program and given you ample warning as to when it might be cancelled. Or, are you one of these people who jumps from dealer to dealer, not stopping long enough to establish any kind of relationship? If that's the case, you reap what you sow.

GMAC is in serious doo-doo. Your rather - ahem, cryptic remark is not helpful.

$100. It was rusted on the back quater panels. It was a base Cavalier with only a/c and automatic. It's running fine and may make a nice beater for someone, but 280k km is a lot of mileage for a vehicle in Ontario.

Even in the land of $5 a gallon gas we are getting $43k for a '08 LTZ Tahoe. I think people who own those beasts are market savvy enough to know this is not the time to trade them in. I've had people come in and explore their options, but they aren't desperate enough to dump their used tanks - not yet anyway.

Suddenly it's 2005 all over again. When the last go-round of 'bankruptcy' talks hit the newswires, customers smelled blood in the water and the sharks were circling. A lot of a-holes would come into the show room, thinking we were giving the cars away. What these a-holes don't understand is that dealers (being smaller than the manufacturers, obviously) usually are better at anticipating down turns and cut back on their inventory accordingly. Any dealer that gets caught with too much inventory wouldn't have lasted the past 2-3 years - not selling domestics, at least. It's the import dealers that are in for a bumpy ride: they are used to double digits sales increases. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, GUYS.