CARBIZ

Are you old enough to have lived through the last fuel mileage war, fought roughly from the late '70s through the mid-80s? To be sure, that was a period when cars did become very boring and everything was sacrificed for fuel mileage, but then cars became fun again and the fuel mileage didn't suffer appreciably. I would surmise that $150+ barrel of oil is going to facilitate a new round of mileage wars, but given the manytechnological surprises in the past, I would expect cars to become fun again a few years after that.

If you drive a 1.6 litre engine like you stole the car, of course your gas mileage is going to stink. People expect a certain degree of performance from their vehicles. The drivetrain can be tailored for whatever the marketing boys think the car needs. Case in point: the 3.4 in the older Impala (heavy, bigger) and the Alero/Grand Am. Same engine, same tranny, but the Alero/Grand AM has horrid fuel mileage; whereas the Impala was absolutely amazing. Any 20 year old who buys a G3 because it is what he/she can 'afford' and then drive it like their daddy's Audi, is going to be in for quite a shock. Ditto for the Corolla.

Well, on the face of it, this sounds like good news, but I can't help but fear that we are going down the path of corporate socialism that Japan has promoted for the past 50 years. One of the reasons Japan's economy has been in a decade long funk is because of all the cheap money Japan Inc has access to - at the expense of the Japanese taxpayers and bank depositors. One would hope these loan 'guarantees' will never have to be exercised, but ultimately the American taxpayers are on the hook for all thes corporate 'hand outs.'

Just be thankful you don't live up here where every Province has their own Human Rights codes and tribunals. There is a very amusing book that I read a few months ago, called America Alone, by Mark Steyn. Get this: a group of Muslims from Ontario got together and filed a complain with the Alberta Human Rights Commission when Macleans magazine published a few excerpts from Mark's book. Two or three years later,the tribunal reluctantly decided there was no basis for a complaint under the 'hate speech' laws. It cost the taxpayers in Alberta over a half million dollars to hold the hearings. It cost Mark and Macleans more than $100k to defend themselves and it cost the group of offended Muslims ZIP to make the filing. The greatest irony in all this, is one of Mark's chapters deal with the issue that the Muslims cherry-pick which Western institutions suit them. They want their polygamous/misogynist sharia laws, but don't hesitate to tear a page out of the gay rights movement's playbook in suing anyone who looks cross-eyed at Islam. Anyone out there want to grab a copy of the book, it is both amusing and scary as hell. Some of Mark's figures are exaggerated, but the crux of his thesis is frightening: the West has a negative birthrate and most of our immigration is coming from 'poor' Muslim and Asian countries. Fast forward 20, 30 years and our laws and institutions will be under seige by peoples who don't necessary share our Western affections for democracy and 'liberalisms.'

+1 You guys whine about $4 a gallon - wait until you hit $5.50, like we are used to. When it costs you $120 to fill up your SUV, your world changes, trust me. As much as I don't like sharing the Wave with the Aveo, the world hasn't ended. Before this mortgage BS hit the fan, I would have hoped GM could stop this blatant rebadging; however, in light of the market free-fall, all bets are off. We could easily be returning to the awful days of the early '80s when horsepower and fun were out the window and fuel mileage was the end-all and be-all. One could hope that we won't need to see 83 hp $h!boxes on the road, but one never knows. One more hurricane blows up the gulf and oil could be over $150 a barrel again.

My dad used to say never put sugar in gasoline - use shellac, it can't be traced. ER, did I misread this thread?

That reminds me of the fight between Jim Kenzie and Bob Lutz about 5 years ago. The Toyota Star wrote a scathing piece on the 'new' Grand Prix. I wish I'd kept it, but they really harped on it. So, Lutz called up Jim Kenzie (who writes for a lot of the car mags up here in the hinterland) and challenged him to a duel: bring any import you want in the same price range to GM's testing grounds. Kenzie brought the (then) new Maxima. They both drove it around the proving grounds and the Pontiac wiped the asphalt with the Nissan. Jim Kenzie printed a huge retraction in the Star; even Laurence Yap (a real import humper) printed a mea culpa, saying that 'we car journalist types sometimes have pre-conceived notions before going into a test.' Yeah, right. Tell me something I didn't know! Back on topic, I think most of us agree that the '80s are best forgotten. I could print an entire page of woes from my two (new) cars of the '80s: a '82 Dodge Rampage, followed by a '87 Dodge Shadow ES. Both pure crap. But I am wise enough to know that I would not judge MoPar of later years, based on my experiences with those 2 cars.

Are we talking Cimarron here, or Cavalier? If you would put the Cavalier in the same class as an Audi, that's not even revisionist history, that's nuts. You gotta stack the Datsun 210s, the Civics and the Cavaliers together. GM had nothing to be ashamed of with the original J-cars. It was the later cars that didn't improve enough while the Japanese finally figured out what Americans wanted in a small car. That is the legacy that Smith and his cronies left behind: their clear disdain for small cars. BMers were funky and ugly until the early '80s. So were most Mercedes. RWD has always shown up disproportionately at Barrett-Jackson & others, so to point out that a 240Z is a collectors items while a Cimarron is not is disengenous at best. I worked at a Caddy dealer when the Cimarron sold well. Yeah, even as a 21 year old kid I could tell it was a glorified Cavalier, but driving the snot out of the car (as we 'lot lizards' did), the Cimarron was actually an okay ride. For the record, when I worked at the Plaza II Hotel here, the cars I looked forward to driving the MOST were the Devilles and the Fleetwood Broughams of that era. I loathed the BMWs and Mercedes: stiff steering and suspension, smelly diesels. The Lincolns and Rolls/Bentleys of the day were too mushy. The Mercury Zephyr/Ford Fairmonts were true turds of their day. The head chef drove a Fairmont wagon and I hated parking it. The Ford Granada was a neat little package. A girl I dated in highschool (yes, a girl) drove her mother's. The Omega was the only X-car I would have been caught dead in, although a friend of mine bought a Citation X-11 in mint condition a few years ago and it wasn't nearly as ugly as I remember the other Citations being. Our biases are based on what we grew up with. My stepfather bought a Datsun 510 in '82. It was a 5 spd stick with those funny louvers on the hatch. It was actually an okay car to drive, but the entire thing rusted out in about 5 years. My mother was still driving their '80 Ford Econoline long after the Datsun died.

With my mother's checkered history, I would be afraid to have this test. Unless it somehow proved I was adopted.

OH, PUHLEASE! I rented a Datsun 210 in the summer of '83 to go camping - the f'ing thing couldn't pass dumptrucks on passing lanes in norther Ontario. A year later, I sailed up the same stretch of road in an (get ready for this) OMNI. JapCrap was designed for stick shift only. When accompanied with a 3 speed slushbox, they were noisy and couldn't get out of their own way. You had to live it, my friend. Japanese cars in the early '80s were, at best, oddities. The only way I can explain how those turds didn't sink Honda and Toyota is because a) they were more simply equipped (no a/c, no power windows, etc., so fewer things could go wrong, relative to their American cousins) and b) fewer people bought them, so fewer people regretted buying them. Now, if we start talking LATE '80s, that is an entirely different matter, but this subject was about an '83 article and the complicity of the media.

Nothing personal, Enzl - but were you in the 'biz in the early '80s? I drove a parts truck for a major parts distributor in '81 and hung out with a lot of car guys. I witnessed a 240Z going up on a hoist and the wheels staying on the ground, due to rust. I talked to taxi drivers (when I was concierge in a major hotel) who had taken delivery of the first K-cars - they were thrilled with the roominess and gas mileage. (Remember, adjusted for inflation, '81 had higher gas prices than NOW.) My ex had a '81 Tercel: the pure definition of $h!. I will concede the X-cars were total crap. I worked at a Pontiac-Buick-Cadillac dealer then and saw the sheer numbers of Citations, Pheonixes, etc. being brought in for warranty work. You are right about one thing, though: the media were and are a bunch of sheep. Just as they gushed over ever junk heap the Big 3 produced in the '80s they now squeal like school girls over every turd Japan builds.

The new Corolla is finally a car I wouldn't be embarassed to drive - at least in the higher trims. It offers a lot of neat tricks (like the keyless start), but then OnStar can be pretty impressive, too. Of course, you all know I"d rather walk than drive a Toyota.......... I would be more concerned if the Cobalt didn't already have a planned replacement. Mercifully, we are not going to have another Cavalier on our hands here: staying 3 or 4 years beyond her prime. Our Cobalt sales are through the roof and for the buck, it's a very decent car. The tweaks to the '09 are pleasant and the extra power is noticeable. Let's be ready to dump all over GM if the Cruze doesn't blow the Civic and Mazda 3 out of the water. My gun is ready, just in case. Oh, and at last you can get the graphite cloth interior in the Cobalt, which greatly improves the look of the interior.

Well, if they are planning to strangle Pontiac or Buick or GMC, do you think they will just announce it? Kinda defeats the purpose, don't you think? Oldsmobile cost them billions. Making a brand unprofitable and killing off the dealers will, on the face of it, cost GM nothing. It's a calculated risk, though - GM's image could still be hurt in the process. It could be ugly for Canada, though, since Pontiac-Buick-GMC are stronger names than Chevrolet. Whatever GM decides (or has decided) to do, it won't be easy. But with sub-20% market share, there is absolutely no business model for 8 brands. NONE. NADA.

There are a lot of cost variables, but then nobody said buying a Prius was about saving money either! Even if the Volt comes out at $15-20k more than similar hybrid-electrics, a $5-7k federal tax rebate and then a savings of $1,500+ in gas costs would wipe out the cost differential within a few years - for some people. I have no doubt the Volt will sell out for the first production year. It is year #2 I am concerned about. First of all, there had better not be any significant production gaffes with the vehicle. (The public may tolerate all the electronic glitches the Prius has had, but then that is TOYOTA - and they walk on water!) Secondly, GM had better realize cost savings very rapidly so that the price of the Volt can come down and GM can make a profit. This could be a more significant vehicle than the original Taurus was for Ford, or the K-car for Chrysler, but it absolutely, positively must go off without a hitch.

Wow, Allison, now medium truck. What's next, the kitchen sink? At this rate it won't matter if GM still exists in 2 years, it won't own anything anyway.

Forget it. I've stopped arguing with people who dredge up the original J-bodies, K-cars and others. Those of us who lived it (and worked in the auto industry in the '80s) KNOW that the original Civics, Accords, Tercels, etc. were pieces of $h!, too. But REVISIONIST HISTORY states that only GM and Ford built crap back then.

Well, we Canadian dealers have been feeling the pain for years now, it's time for our American cousins to feel it, too. I can't wait for the Pontiac Volt. What are they going to call it, Watt? As I have said for years, GM is the only manufacturer out there that canablizes its own. It's not enough that we have to compete with Honda, Toyota and the rest, but we also have to worry about our Pontiac dealers whoring out products that we have in our show room. It's a big heaping dose of not good for both the dealers and the consumer, but GM figures an extra few sales are good for corporate. It's that stupid thinking that has gotten us all into this mess. Oh, and don't forget about the Swift + sold over at Suzuki, now with 0% financing for 84 F$%KING MONTHS.

+1 More than once I considered not posting here any more because of him. I was tired of his condesension and his constantly talking over everyone's heads. His deliberate obfuscation on issues relating to who owns what were tiresome.

Canada only for 2009.

I drive the same amount to work every day: 38 km round trip (about 25 miles.) This summer I drove to Chicago (about 8 hours each way) and to Niagara Falls about 2 weeks ago ( 90 minutes each way.) My cross-continent trips (have driven to Vancouver twice and Florida 3 times) are over. I get bored after the 2nd day of driving. I used to drive to Montreal nearly every weekend. Flying is faster, more convenient and lets you do more once you are at our destination. Today, we may go hiking on some cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment .... if it doesn't rain! Buy a car that gets 30 mpg and you won't care about gas prices.

Funny, that: my Lexmark printer that I got in '02 was slow, jammed a lot and drank ink more than import humpers drink Toyota Koolaid. I was glad to shove it down the garbage chute from the 26th floor 3 years ago and listen to it crash all the way down. The HP printer I replaced it with has been faithful to a tee, and it uses far less ink. However, having said that, my 14 month old HP notebook (loaded with Vista, BTW, which works fine), suddenly decided the WLAN didn't want to work. Judging by the speed with which the woman at the HP helpline offered to whisk the offending notebook in for repairs at no charge, I'd say it is a fairly common occurrence. They cheerfully replaced the motherboard! Must be all those porno sites I'm on..............

...."credibility on WallStreet..." :rotflmao: Now that's ripe!

10/15. I never even heard of many of those brands dropped. I also didn't know that GM tried to buy Ford in the beginning. Is Ford worth $8 million today?

You guys would have your 'free' Medicare by now with the money Washington is using to bail out the vultures on WallStreet. Did I not predict this just a year or so ago? Will the trillion (read: TRILLION) dollars that this is going to cost, NASA could set up a base on Mars, then send the WallStreet bankers to it. THAT would be a far better use of a trillion dollars, IMO. A certain somebody (who no longer posts here) took exception to my disdain for accountants and banker types, but I am being being proven right. We cannot live in a country that produces only paper assets.

I can pull out any number of MT, CD, R&T from the '80s and read all about Detroit's 'comeback.' Makes for more than a few good laughs. I've said this before and I'll say it again: the media and most 'journalists' are jaded and, let's face it - it's all been said before. There ain't any more pullitzers out there for writing about the car industry. Anyone who thinks GM and Ford could have held onto their stranglehold of the North American industry that they enjoyed 35 years ago is a serious fool. It does not matter one iota what Ford or GM did 'wrong' in the '80s or '90s: the fact remains that Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and many others, built ugly crap back then, and now they do not. If someone had told me 10 years ago that they were buying a Hyundai, I would have said they were an idiot. Now, I would merely say they are selling our future up the river, but the car itself is not bad. How would the Big 2.5 fought against a gradual awakening of the compeitition (well, except Toyota) that good looking, well designed products sell? The one thing I realize as I hit my late '40s: I have read all this before, and I am sure I will read it again. There are very few original thoughts out there left, and none of it is being written about the auto industry.