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So, is the 15% increase in retail sales vs. last July? If so, doesn't that mean that last summer's crappy sales have been improved by 15%? Numbers can say anything you want them to...I'd like clarification, because 15% more than one of the most fleeted months in GM's history is not an 'improvement' by any means. More significantly, the domestics dipped below 50% of the market...so less people buying vehicles bought their product. It's premature (and perhaps misleading) to celebrate these numbers....I'll take a hard look at my region's numbers this morning, but we've been getting crushed for many months here.

My understanding of the situation is that certain UAW work rules and employee categories must be altered to make the vehicle profitable enough to build in Lordstown...the membership of the plant has either rejected or indicated an objection to some/all of the changes requested.Another example of how inmates run the asylum with the present Union contract and how its got to change with the new agreement.

As a carguy, I would agree it is an issue...but does the average consumer care?A 17" wheel'tire combo with 60-series ratio would look big enough and shouldn't cost much more.... ...I just think the design begs for wheel arch filling rubber. I don't want to see 15" spoiling the design and I think design is one place that GM can make a huge splash in this sector. According to TireRack, standard issue 205/60 16's are between $60-100, while 215/60 17's are about $90-130 (for run-of-the-mill A-S tires)...I guess if we're talking 18's, it might be a much bigger jump....

I was explaining the justification for its development is outside markets, I wasn't disputing that it would be available here.If the US was its primary target, they might as well keep the SRX in production and not bother.

It's for markets outside the US, where wagons are quite popular. Part of the push to make Caddy a worldwide lux brand.I'm encouraged that the GM overlords are even considering the development of such a vehicle at all. The SRX failed because in an attempt to be something for everyone, and although a great product, it could not establish a healthy niche, nor could it out-bling the Escalade, thus, failure.

Is the 4 speed the issue? Absolutely not. All here can agree that GM can produce reliable, predictible, well-mannered 4 speeds all day long.The problem is perception--more specifically, the perception that GM can't make a true Camcord competitor...GM needs to have demonstrably superior products to stem the import tide. Not as good as, not virtually the same, but BETTER! That's how you win people back. I will be the first to tell you that Joe 6-pack couldn't really tell you what the benefit of extra forward speeds really is, but he can easily tell when GM has not EXCEEDED the expectations for a particular class of product. IMO, the 'bu should be coming out with: 1. 6 speeds, regardless of model 2. Wheels big enough to fill the muscular haunches of this vehicle and make it look GOOD, not just good in certain trim levels 3. A base model that beats the competition on features at a significant discount 4. A stop-start system, just like the euros are doing...why wait when you've got the components on the shelf from the mild hybrids? Greater MPG without the hybrid complications How much could these things cost? A grand? You're going to be giving them rebates well in excess of that number if it doesn't take the marketplace by storm anyway...why not start out as a winning product with a real shot of upsetting and redefining the marketplace?

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/30/buick-l...inese-infusion/ Buick lineup to get Chinese-infusion Posted Jul 30th 2007 9:57AM by Damon Lavrinc Filed under: Sedans/Saloons, China, Buick Judging by the positive reception the Chinese-marketed Buicks have been receiving here in the States, GM would be ill-advised to continue offering the same warmed-over products that it's been selling over the past decade. According to Automotive News, the General sees the writing on the wall and intends to go global with the new look of Buick, originally shown at the Shanghai Motor Show in the shape of the Riviera concept. The idea is to make Buick an affordable luxury brand here in the States, and it has plans on offering a number of new vehicles to the U.S. market that will take on the high-end competitors from Japan. To begin with, the Excelle, a small sedan, is set to be released sometime in 2008, based off the Alpha platform currently under development in Germany, while the next iteration of the LaCrosse will come in 2009 and will be based off of GM's Epsilon 2 underpinnings. The Lucerne will get a full makeover in 2011 and will be built around the RWD Zeta platform, and the Rainier, Rendezvous and Terraza will die off after the current production run, and replaced with the new Enclave. Buick's move to become more things to more people is the only way the marque will survive, and judging by what's in the pipeline, the automaker actually has a chance at success.

And the 9-3 'vert periodically.

Toyota Previa!

Media Bias! Media Bias! Ooops...wrong article... As always, good product=good review. See how easy that is, GM?

The new Daewoo stuff that's coming may work, but check out their latest effort right now (reviews from RHD UK model)http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/fi...olet_epica.html Perhaps the new Antara/Captiva CUV might work?

Not what I'm refering to:http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/12...-shelby-gt.html is what I'm refering to...It's like the Hertz package Mustang GT...'limited' in production and 'hand built' in Shelby's own sweatshop, I mean work shop.... The GT500 you are refering to is well worth the money, if you can buy it without ADM....

It's basically a great review...one sentence and it kills it for you?I think you're looking for the 'media bias' monster in too many places. The CTS looks like a huge winner...now if GM can get the derivatives out in a good cadence, they'll have a hit on their hands.

What is Toyota, truly?Nobody's cheering anything, and the fact that some of the US's largest corporations have not been able to muster enough political will or influence to knock down those barriers says more about the domestics being stupid, lazy and shortsighted than the Japanese doing anything other than taking advantage of a business opportunity served up to them on a sliver platter. BiZ---this problem has been going on since the 70's...We gave 'em a quota and were sure they'd fail to set up manufacturing here...well, we got what we wished for and now their shoving it down our throats. Business isn't for the meek, nice or polite---get over it and write a letter to your congressman....

So with an aftermarket Nav system, a body kit and an exhaust system (So the equipment level is about the same)....you're right in the ballpark...which was my point.

Are you guys even aware that a price hasn't been confirmed in this article?...all it says is 'less than 30K' And, obviously, you haven't seen the sticker prices on a fully loaded Cobalt SS. Unbelieveable how inconsistent we are in our logic...its a 'special edition', not the next coming. How can you criticise Honda and not apply the same standards to Ford for the Mustang Shelby, GM for its Corvette 'pacecar' editions or Chrysler for its Bumble-bee pickups? Prediction: They sell each and every one. (Unlike the GTO.)

I'm not advocating the entirety of this piece, by any means...I just thought it was thought-provoking & the parallels are somewhat frightening...an overreliance on the domestic (US) market could be the inverse situation, but analogous to an overreliance on exports...

http://www.autoobserver.com/2007/07/detroi...FTOKEN=47935534 Guest Commentary: Detroit's Big Three on the Road to Oblivion July 23, 2007 By Richard Feast Oh, how my old colleagues in the U.S. liked to tease if the topic of the decline of the U.K. auto industry arose. The derision was deserved. The U.K. automotive industry was second in scale only to that of the U.S. in the 1950s. It was the world’s leading car exporter, putting bread on hundreds of thousands of tables across the country. Today, the U.K.’s indigenous manufacturers have either vanished or been taken over by foreign competitors. No other country so nonchalantly kissed goodbye to so much potential wealth-creation in so short a time. But events in the U.S. auto industry, where the Big Three's share is nearing less than 50 percent, parallel those in the U.K. a couple of decades ago. Whisper it, but Detroit is now on that same road to oblivion. In the U.K., it happened across the board – to cars, medium and heavy trucks, buses, motorcycles, components suppliers and most of the machine tool industry. Names like Austin and Morris, Triumph and Rover, Hillman and Humber, Leyland and Foden, BSA and Lucas succumbed to Darwinian extinction. They and scores of others were condemned to their fates by inept managers, poor products, meddling governments, pathetic quality, Bolshie employees, failed promises and (most important of all) disillusioned car buyers. They did not deserve to survive. Coventry foreshadows Detroit’s future The city of Coventry was the country’s equivalent of Detroit, the cornerstone of its auto industry. It paid a terrible price for that importance in World War II bombing raids. One history of Coventry’s famous car marques lists 110, including Alvis, Armstrong-Siddeley, Chrysler, Daimler, Hillman, Humber, Jaguar, Lanchester, Lea-Francis, Peugeot, Riley, Rover, Singer, Standard, Sunbeam and Triumph. But where metal was once cast, forged, bashed and welded to create cars, trucks and tractors, there are now housing developments or shopping malls. The only surviving automaker produces the iconic London taxis in small numbers. The good news is that the U.K. found a new role when its domestic automakers withered. High quality volume production continues in the country thanks to a trio of transplants (Honda, Nissan and Toyota) and BMW’s Mini factory. Whoever they are, the new owners of Jaguar and Land Rover will probably also continue to make cars in the country, just as Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce do. But, for Coventry today, read Detroit tomorrow. There is a growing conviction on this side of the Atlantic that U.K. history is repeating itself in the U.S. The U.S. auto industry is much bigger, so it will take longer to drive down the road to oblivion once taken by the U.K. Have no doubt, though. The journey has begun. Home defeat One microcosm from the U.K. provides a portent of what is likely to happen in the U.S. Rover, Triumph and Jaguar were once the aspirational brands for every successful businessman, banker and lawyer in my country. For years, no one took foreign firms seriously. Slowly but surely, though, premium sector buyers began to learn to appreciate Volvos, BMWs and Mercedes-Benz. The word spread, and the rest is history. Rover and Triumph are nothing but footnotes in history books and Jaguar was comprehensively screwed up by Ford. No one should have been surprised. Cadillac and Lincoln are the U.S. equivalent of Rover, Triumph and Jaguar. For years, they were the automotive gold standard. Even as recently as the mid-1980s, Americans bought more than 300,000 Cadillacs each year and around 175,000 Lincolns. Annual sales of BMWs and Mercedes-Benz at that time were well under 100,000. Toyota’s Lexus did not then exist. These days, Cadillac sells a fourth fewer vehicles each year than it did a couple of decades ago. Lincoln sales are off by a third. Meanwhile, well in excess of 300,000 Americans choose Lexus each year, and sales of the German brands are in the 250,000 to 275,000 range. Does anyone except Detroit boosters believe the rival sales graphs will change direction any time soon? The talk now at General Motors and Ford is of the need to produce ‘Lexus fighters.’ Good idea. But that’s just PR spin that conveniently ignores how GM and Ford lost their home turf advantages in the first place. Meanwhile, as those Cadillac and Lincoln advantages were squandered, GM and Ford self-confidence told them to add European trophy brands. As that was nearly two decades ago, one might have expected positive results by now. Instead, Ford’s ownership of Jaguar brought nothing but grief, and GM went nowhere with Saab. In spite of the untold money and manpower thrown at Cadillac/Saab and Lincoln/Jaguar, buyers are losing faith. All this happened, remember, during the longest and strongest global sales expansion in automotive history. Sales of Audis, BMWs and Mercedes-Benz soared as those of GM’s and Ford’s premium brands atrophied. It was not just bad luck on the part of GM and Ford. It was bad planning, just as it was by the British Leyland and Rootes groups in the U.K. all those years ago. Where have all the buyers gone? That’s just one sector. The problem for Detroit is that the same is happening across its home market. Excuse the statistics, but they’re necessary to understand the scale of the problem. Car and light truck buyers in the U.S. were intensely loyal for years. Even by the end of the 1960s, imports accounted for no more than 10 percent of the market. The light truck sector, accounting for 15 percent of the total, was 95 percent loyal to local products. Everyone knows what happened after that. In 1986, the year I went to work in Detroit, consumers in the U.S. bought just over 16 million cars and light trucks, a record that would stand for many years. Even if import brands had by then achieved a market share of 26 percent, what did it matter? The combined annual sales of GM, Ford and Chrysler still approached 12 million. Fast forward a couple of decades. Car and light truck sales in the U.S. last year were at a similar level, around 16.5 million. The problem for the Big Three was that import brands took 46 percent of the total. In other words, the domestics were responsible for fewer than 9 million of the vehicles bought by Americans. And the figures are falling. This could be the year the Big Three fall below 50 percent of U.S. market. In June, Big Three market share stood at 50.3 percent. Some experts, including David Cole, an industry analyst whose father was once a president of GM, predict Big Three share eventually could fall to 40 percent. That’s a mighty drop. With the exception of South Korea, imports gained in popularity in other countries with well-established domestic auto industries – in Japan, Germany, France and Italy. But America’s warm embrace of import brands is as loving as it was in the U.K. – and we saw where that led. Along the way, the U.S. also proved as careless as the U.K. in abandoning famous nameplates. The post-war automotive casualty list includes De Soto, Edsel, Hudson, Kaiser, Nash, Oldsmobile, Packard, Plymouth, Rambler, Studebaker, Willys and probably more I’ve forgotten. All this helps to explain the numbing financial losses, the factory closures and job cuts now taking place at GM, Ford, Chrysler and across the components sector. It doesn’t explain why the U.S. industry got things so wrong. Certainly the infamous legacy costs are an issue, and so from time to time are exchange rates. But, just like the U.K., the root cause of the Big Three’s woes is a consistent failure to connect with enough customers. If Detroit offered enough products consumers wanted, legacy costs would not be the problem they are. Management mystery It’s clear that top managements, then in the U.K. and now in the U.S., are not as clever as they think they are. It is one of the great mysteries of commerce. Automakers recruit the brightest and the best. They hire great engineers and designers, creative product planners and marketing people, solidly reliable financial and legal experts. These big decision-makers carry full complements of MBAs and industry accolades. They are talented people who work hard and are handsomely rewarded. Their task is to create products that consumers want, and in many cases cannot live without. To do so, they are provided with budgets that are exceeded only by national defense departments and aerospace companies. How hard can the task be? Time after time, though, these ever-so-clever people collectively screw up. Despite historically high levels of demand, the Big Three last year failed to make hangar-loads of profits. It is no way to run a hot dog stand, let alone a major industrial corporation. It is therefore frightening to imagine how Detroit will fare when the next sales slump arrives, if it isn’t here already. Whole communities seem destined to suffer. The results will go beyond the thousands of employees, shareholders, suppliers and dealers directly involved. The ripple effect will reach into regional shopping centres, the housing market and as far as pumped up politicians in the nation’s capital. It’s what gradually happened to the U.K., auto industry a generation ago. From this side of the pond, it looks as if the same is happening in the U.S. You have been warned.

The latest rumor is that Vick will be suspended, with pay, indefinitely. If he's convicted, my guess would be that his football career is over.

TTAC is entertainment....but like Fox News, their agenda sometimes gets in the way of legitimate thought.I understand they're not well liked here, I just disagree that they're that far off on many points... And I'll answer your criticism with explanantions: 1. They have a point of view, but they're not inaccurate. Much like anyone with a point of view, supporting facts are emphasized and those that don't aren't mentioned---as each and every member here does when they are supporting their arguments... 2. That's where a selective choice of facts comes in, conveniently...The reason Chevrolet is having 'record' sales is because its only been available in most of the countries with 'record' gains for the last 3 years! These are mostly regurgitated Daewoos...not necessarily the product for bringing your 'name' to people's attention first....nor are there huge profits in the sales of these type of vehicles---nor is mention made of the cost of developing an infrastructure in these new markets... --So, when someone attacks opinion, keep in mind that everybody is selective with the facts when the time comes. 3. The only difference between your feeling about GM & mine are that I believe its an 'intervention' - level crisis at GM right now, others here choose to believe otherwise or, IMO, excuse business as usual as acceptable. If quoting TTAC gets people thinking, I'm OK with that.

See. here's my issue with bashing TTAC, as if everything they say is BS:1. I'm not using them as fact finders, just as an opinion that has merit, even if most here vehemently disagree with their 'politics.' I think I've exhibited enough real knowledge to defend my own opinions in a credible fashion. 2. I used that link as a quick counterpoint to the fact that the rosy proclamations of the overseas performance having any bearing here in the US is wishful thinking...if anything, more jobs, more production will flow overseas....you want the small car lineup to be Daewoo updates and mediocrities?, be my guest. 3. More to come....

Sounds like sour grapes. Blame the messanger. TTAC is opinion. They openly agree. They're right more than twice a day....unfortunately.

That's why it"s renamed "Classic" & doesn't get sold to retail customers. Bear in mind production realities, as something might as well be built if they have the capacity & it doesn't lose them more money. The current Malibu is already a rental queen & everyone who owns one and has attempted to trade out of it knows that too.

Except that its not wrong.You may not like what he says, but its a very possible outcome.

You're not crazy, but you're missing the bigger picture.GM, Ford & Chrysler have their fans, which are declining in number each year. The Japanese makes have their fans, which generally speaking, have been growing for many years. Many of these fans WILL NOT step into one of the Big 2.8's stores---they've written off American products COMPLETELY. So net-net, Honda may steal some Camry sales, but a large portion of the population is simply never coming back. The best you can hope for is to keep Big 2.8 loyalists and sway some 2nd tier import buyers (Mazda, Mitsu, VW) Every other manufacturer has an opportunity to pick that sale up, unfortunately.