Drew Dowdell

Neato. You did exactly what I said and picked out one of the worst domestics to compare to one of the best imports. I mean really, the Venture was rivaled only by the Windstar/Freestar in domestic lameness. Aura, Malibu, Fusion, Sable, Taurus, Milan.... match the options up to their foreign rivals and the domestics will cost you less. Edge, Vue, Outlook, Acadia.... same thing

Why is it bad for me to try and get the best deal possible on the car I want? The difference is desire. I would have bought the car regardless but I found a way to save money in the process. If I had the opportunity to get the same deal on a C-Class or 3-series, I still would have picked the CTS because it was the car I wanted! Why is that so hard to understand? There were less expensive lease offers on the 3-series at the time and I passed them up to get the CTS. OMFG! I didn't say a Cobalt was better than the Corolla... or any other vehicle for that matter! I'm simply saying that feature for feature you pay less at any domestic dealer and that most times, over the life of the vehicle, you save money. Of course, your mileage may vary. "The deal" includes things like expected maintenance costs, expected gas costs, expected insurance costs. It costs more to insure a Civic or Corolla. Don't ask me why, I don't know. It's not just price + tax + tags. Hyundai/Kia

There it is! That's what I'm trying to say!

With your finger on the trigger I'm sure.....

I got an amazing deal on the CTS, however that was not my reasoning for buying it as you are trying to assume. I would have paid MSRP for the CTS if I had been able to afford it and if the dealer wasn't negotiating. I desired the CTS. No one desires a Cobalt or Corolla. I'm not sure where this part is coming from. I never said that people didn't look at safety or reliability or reputation before making a purchase. I specifically waited for the HF3.6 because I knew the 3.2 offered at launch was inadequate. GM did themselves a disservice by offering that engine at launch, but the 3.6 has been great enough that they've been forgiven for it. People buy Toyondas for two reasons: 1. Consumer Reports tells them to. 2. Their great aunt's, roomate's, lesbian lover had a used Chevy Vega that broke down two miles outside of the dealership in 1981. In nearly every case, feature v. feature, reliability v. reliability, price v. price, the domestics will offer a better deal than Toyondassan. However, most sheeple don't bother to do the research. Yes there are exceptions, but for the bulk of the lineups, this is true.

do you think we can get Enzl in here to say something nice about the Volt or GM?

Do something to fix the value of the dollar. That's how this will get fixed. If the dollar was on par with the Euro, oil would be $80 a barrel right now.

He'd call his own mother a terrorist if she bought a taco from a mexican.

What pisses me off is GM has a fairly full stable of powerful yet fuel efficient powertrains that could have been used on Zeta. With enough "Quiet Tuning", the 260hp Turbo Eco-tech could have been quite the crowd pleaser. Have the same engine coupled to the Two-mode for uplevel models. The 2.9 litre diesel could have been offered. Benz used to run S-classes with 2.8 litre, 204hp V6es! BMW still has 7-series in Europe with 231hp diesels and gassers. GM has no excuse at all. None. Zero.

Apparently I wasn't clear. The only way I could afford the car was "the deal". As far as wanting one over the other cars I drove, there was no contest. The CTS "sold" itself. The only way I could have gotten the car was because of "the deal". I could not have afforded a CTS at MSRP at the time of the sale. However, I would have just waited till I had a bigger down payment and bought the car at a later date. If I had bought one of the other models I looked at, it only would have been because I was unable to afford the car I really wanted. No one buys a Cobalt <non-SS> or Corolla because they are pining for one, drooling over it ever since seeing it at the autoshow. People buy one of these cars because of "the deal". Given the ability to afford more car, few people are going to pick a Cobalt or Corolla over a Malibu or Camry. Whether it be at the dealership, the service desk, the gas pump, or all three the perception is that the Corolla as the better deal. What Carbiz is trying to show is that the Corolla isn't the deal it appears to be. edit: I still think I'm not being clear enough. Point is, even if the CTS were $50 cheaper on a lease price than a 3-series, I wasn't about to march over to the BMW dealership and sign on the dotted line. I didn't even bother to test drive the 3-series because it's looks don't appeal to me.

Untrue. I was going to get a CTS. I test drove everything else I was interested in and even a few I wasn't interested in just to make an informed decision. The end result was simple.... I was getting a CTS. I may have to wait for it, but I was getting it. It was "the deal" that got it for me. I got an amazing deal on my CTS about 13 months after it had been released. There was no "other" for me. I would have been perfectly content to drive my Cutlass convertible for another summer and just put money into any repairs it might need. The car "sold" itself to me. The "deal" made it possible. In the interest of full disclosure, the other cars I was considering at the time were: Aurora V8 Regal GS - Joseph Abboud eddition - this came close, it was the W-body familiarity that really made it comforting Chrysler 300m - the 300c wasn't out yet Subaru Legacy GT - loaded with manual transmission Hyundai XG350 - I liked the "baby Towncar" look, but the car was a complete pile and a host of used cars.

OK, so you get equal financing on both vehicles, but if you drive away from the Chevy dealer with an extra $1500 in your pocket <and only that little because you didn't negotiate a better price>, didn't you STILL end up with a better deal? Assumes 5.9% interest for all: Cobalt: $25,000 Total Repaid: $28929.60 Total Interest Paid: $3929.60 Interest as percentage of Principal: 15.718% Payment Amount: $482.16 Corolla: $26,390 Total Repaid: $30538.20 Total Interest Paid: $4148.20 Interest as percentage of Principal: 15.719% Payment Amount: $508.97 Now suppose the buyer isn't an idiot and was able to negotiate another grand off the purchase price of the Cobalt: Cobalt: $24,000 Total Repaid: $27772.20 Total Interest Paid: $3772.20 Interest as percentage of Principal: 15.718% Payment Amount:: $462.87 Oh look! There's bonus cash on the Cobalt Cobalt: $22,500 Total Repaid: $26036.40 Total Interest Paid: $3536.40 Interest as percentage of Principal: 15.717% Payment Amount: $433.94

Surely one more suited to his qualifications.

Then I'm simply not able to follow you as you dart around like an A.D.D. rabbit on speed running from an imaginary wolf. Are we talking NHV? Low end torque? Packaging? Torque per litre? If you're making an argument that torque per litre is better in a DOHC engine than a pushrod in engines of equal displacement, then fine, I concede to your stupidly shortsighted point. In the meantime, while you're capped out at 3.6 litres in your engine bay, happily spinning your four cams, I can fill that same engine bay with 6 litres of pushrod power. If you want to test this experiment, go out in your CTS and taunt the next CTS-V you encounter. Make sure you record it so we can all see the results. To make comparisons of engines based on displacement and valvetrain while ignoring all other factors is just plain dumb... and I know you know better.

If you're not going to qualify for 0% at Chevy, you're not going to qualify for 5.9% at Toyota.

The line is already there. Sure it needs some refurbishment, but it's there. You can find abandoned rail lines on Google earth. There is one that is pretty much a straight shot from NYC to Chicago. NYC to Chicago is about 960 miles, meaning about 3.5 hours by high speed rail, a perfectly reasonable time.

It's all part of GM's master plan to reduce costs by reducing customers. If they don't actually have anyone who wants to buy their product then they don't have to go to expense of actually designing and building things. Their new business model involves producing concepts that tour the autoshow circuit in perpetuity <like the Camaro, Velite, and Beat> without ever actually being produced and charging people to come view the concepts. Sure, market share will take a beating, but look at all the money they'll save after all the plants get closed. In other words: Step 1: Cancel all the good vehicles .... Step 3: Profit!

How much do new airports and interstates cost? The PA turnpike is in the final stages of a complete rebuild, how much did that cost?

I think Civics are at an 80,000 mile interval. My 3.4 DOHC Cutlass was an 80,000 mile belt also.

fixed. LAX to Albuquerque, NM = 804 miles by car. A TGV at 300mph would take 2.68 hours, assuming non-stop service. Take out dealing with LAX, taxing, baggage delays, security. TGV would be way faster. Basically.... write your congressman.

Maglev is too expensive and not really needed. The fastest maglev is only 5mph faster than the fastest TGV, yet the TGV doesn't require special track.

If you get too far over 4 litres, people start expecting 8 cylinders rather than 6.

The 5.3 is cheaper then the DI3.6HF, makes more power, has displacement on demand and E85, and will fit into the same engine bays that the 3.6 does. If you're going to fill an engine bay to get the most grunt, you don't use a DOHC V6 to do it.

:deadhorse: :deadhorse: :deadhorse: I thought the whole "horsepower per litre" argument has already been shown to be a red herring on this board. It comes down to PACKAGING. If you're really concerned about horsepower per litre, put the turbo ecotec in place of the HF and call it a day. You picked a rather neglected, old, and underdeveloped <much like your argument>, pushrod V6 to compare to GM's finest DOHC engine and you expect us to be shocked, SHOCKED, that the pushrod engine doesn't perform like the DOHC. Go pop the hood on your CTS, take off the plastic cover, and take note of just how much SPACE the 3.6 takes up. Next, go look under the hood of any 3500 powered vehicle. Notice how much space it DOESN'T take up. You are using an engine that has been around since the last decade to try prove that a new DOHC is better than an old pushrod. Well I hope you are sitting down, because I have news for you. When the Quad-4 came out... it was waaay better than the iron duke it replaced. I know.. it shocked me too. GM spent a ton of money and put a lot of technology into the Quad-4 and it instantly surpassed it's predecessor. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe. MY point is that if GM had put the same amount of money into a pushrod V6 as they have into the HF line they would have easily come up with an engine that would match the performance of the HF. Yes it would have been a larger displacement but it still would have fit in the same space as the HF. The 3.6 is about as big as GM can go on a DOHC V6 Epsilon. However, a pushrod V6 can increase displacement dramatically and push up into V8 territory. Now I'm not advocating that GM take this course of action. GM could come up the sweetest reving V6 in the world, but if it was operated by pushrods, the press <and you> would &#036;h&#33; all over it before shoving all four of your cam shafts back up your ass.

You realize that most intra-continental flights in the US are between 600 and 1,000 miles? The TGV can run at 357 mph. Round that down to 300 mph and you're still doing a pretty good pace. To put that in perspective, it is 300 miles from Pittsburgh to Philly. So that's a 1 hour trip by train. US Air currently schedules 45 minutes between Pitt and Philly, but I have to stand in airport security for 40 minutes just to get to my gate to wait another 30 minutes to board my flight, and then wait 20 minutes for my bags at the other end. Getting on and off the train is much faster than getting on and off a flight. Trains are substantially more comfortable as well.