Drew Dowdell

After reading this thread 1. Civic Hybrid 2. Civic 3. Fusion/Milan 4. G6 4 Cylinder Sedan 5. Mazda 5 6. Vibe 7. CPO Alero - 4 cylinder gets 34mpg highway easily, and with the $11,000 you'd save over a new car, you can buy something else. The Subarus are nice but the AWD kills the gas mileage pretty severely.

If you can have a 350hp turbo V6 Camaro in a lighter body rather than a 400hp V8 Camaro in a heavier body, wouldn't you want the lighter vehicle?

don't you ever get tired of saying the same thing over and over again?

globalization is just code for ''averaging wealth globally''.... since we are the wealthiest nation, that automatically means we lose.

This is what happens when you press the pedal on the right:

Better for whom? Upper management? Sure. Lower prices for us? Not so much. Prices have remained fairly constant, yet management's salaries has exploded upward with the offshoring movement. I used to work for a textile company. When we off shored part of our production, we didn't reduce prices much... maybe 10 cents per unit. The owners of the company just took a much larger profit. Those of us not involved with manufacturing who were still around didn't get any raises and the factory workers mostly got laid off. After the first year of Chinese outsourcing, we got $200 bonuses for Xmas. The owner of the company pulled ahead his S-class lease for a new one.

QFT.

FOG, if they can get 6 litres into the smallest Sigma they'll be able to get 4 litres plus a turbo into an Alpha. Heck, hasn't someone got a V8 into a Kappa?

I don't think it's quite big enough to do the 4x8 sheet and 3 row thing, but I agree in principle.

What are you talking about? The current crop of mini-vans is within an inch in length to the Lucerne and out weigh it by 200-800 lbs! There are Mini-vans that are heavier than my BOF Roadmaster Estate!

uhm, won't Alpha make it lighter?

Uh.... O.C. you're responding to yourself again...

Camry sales are down 2.7% DSR in a BEST MONTH EVAR for beige 4-cylinder automatic Camrys.

exactly... it would actually cause fairly rapid inflation because it would prop up housing prices in ranges they have no place being and just start the whole cycle all over again.

The longer I drive the Roadmaster Estate, the more I think that type of vehicle needs to make a reappearance. It has versatility that rivals the Avalanche. It had "stow and go" and "in bed trunk" before either were a twinkle in Chrysler's and Honda's eye respectively. If GM could design a modern version of this car with all the same capabilities, including the all important ability to haul a 4x8 sheet of whatever, make it unibody, make it RWD or AWD, and put a decent V6 in it, they'd clean house. Trouble is, everyone would want it to handle like a 3-series and it would get blasted for not having a sub-4 second 0-60 time. edit: Chrysler came close with the Magnum. I loved the looks from the outside. It was the terrible interior that killed it for me.

I'll get painted as a tax and spend liberal for wanting any of these projects though.... because I'd refuse to allow any of these projects to continue without tax increases or budget cuts to pay for it. My favorite tax and spend liberal was Eisenhower. He was the champion of the Eisenhower interstate system, a domestic spending, liberal, lifelong democrat....... oh.... wait...

Imagine if instead of spending 3 trillion dollars on the Iraq war we had: 1. Fully funded, no, OVER funded Amtrak to redevelop itself into a system with an infrastructure that would make the Germans, French and Japanese envious? The reduction in petroleum used for airlines and cars would be huge. 2. Executed a MASSIVE deployment of wind energy across the nation. A recently approved wind farm project is supposed to cost $450 million and produce enough energy to power 100,000 homes. Extrapolate it out, and a $3 trillion wind farm project would power 660 million homes. 3. Offered 100% rebates to homeowners to install alternative energy on their homes, be it solar, wind, or geothermal. 4. Built 100 BioButanol plants throughout the US <assumes a very expensive $3 billion each>. BioButanol is a drop in replacement for gasoline.

The article is wrong. Sales of Mini-vans <Mazda 5, Kia Rondo, Dodge Journey> are way up. VW would be wise to bring the Touran over here. Saturn would do well with the Opel Meriva, Zafira, and an Insignia Caravan. Likewise Ford C-max, S-max, and Mondeo wagon. It's the Full sized vans <Odyssey, Sienna, Town & Country> that are way down. Nothing that tips the scales over 4,500 lbs deserves to be called "mini"

Model year or calendar year? Just curious....

Planning a hostile takeover? sharebuilder.com is great for dollar-cost averaging.

I want the diesel and I have money in euros already.

Speaking of which, I just priced out der neue CTS in Germany. Configured the way I want it is 42,000 euro... quite doable. But the diesel doesn't appear to be available...... STILL. oh... sorry. This is a GM site, I suppose I should price out a 3-series instead.

only if you're planning on holding for a long time... probably more than 5 years.

A Cadillac salesman who talks his customers into BMWs?

It's no wonder GM is struggling when they have salesmen like you.....