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Comments
I'll be glad to. I just bought a 3.5L Sebring Limited sedan last month. Before I bought it I test drove a 2.7L Sebring, I sat in a Camry and I also test drove a 3.0L AWD Fusion. I never made it down the road to the Saturn dealer because after I drove the Sebring I knew that's what I wanted.
I was not impressed at all with the interior of the Camry and taking one for a test drive would have just been a waste of time.
I wasn't happy after my original test drive of the 2.7L Sebring. The 3.5L, with its 6-speed autostick, changed my mind.
The 3.0L AWD Fusion I drove had decent performance but it had a ho-hum interior, not much better than the Camry. Plus, there was just too much chrome on the front end for me to like.
The Sebring I drove and ended up buying had just about everything I could ever want - MyGIG GPS navigation, 20GB HD for storing up to 1,600 songs plus photos. UConnect hands-free voice commands with bluetooth to connect with my cell phone, Sirius satellite radio with real-time traffic interface, front seat DVD player and more. I'm a gadget guy and all this was sort of like a playground on wheels. I even noticed things like the nice, solid sound and feel the door made when closing.
Okay, in answer to your question...
1. It had what I wanted. The others I looked at didn't.
2. My family has been happy overall with Chrysler vehicles and I decided to finally give them a try for my personal vehicle.
3. I know some people in the auto business and I was able to get an employee discount, which saved me over $5,500 off the $30,000 MSRP, including a $1,000 rebate.
As others have already pointed out, things have changed a lot in two decades. I could write a book about the problems I had with an import Isuzu Opel I had back in the 1980s.
Yikes!!!
You've demonstrated that there's lots of different reasons for why someone buys a particular car. Having a "playground on wheels" would never make my Top 10 or even Top 20 reasons for buying a car, but that's why everyone has to evaluate cars based on their criteria and not others'. One thing Chrysler appears to have done with the Sebring is attack a niche market for people who like lots of electronic entertainment features in their sedans. Have fun with them!
What about the Fusion with Sync? I thought the Chrysler only had a hard drive for music - does it do more than that?
Absolutely not. Chrysler is the exact same company it was 10, 20, and 30 years ago; that being a company that makes nothing but junk lemon cars :lemon:
I see no indication that they have ever improved on anything.
How many drivers do you want watching TV while they are driving? or are you thinking about having the video sent to the rear screens?
I wonder if that one-only Mazda6 was a demo?
After having lost a lot of data (which was recovered at a cost) to a damaged micro-drive in my digital camera, I've been wary of going that route again. No more micro-drives... compact flash works better. With proliferation of HDD based systems, I'm thinking along the same lines, especially in cars where extreme heat, cold and bumps could play a major role in terms of reliability/durability over the life of a car.
Just let me plug my stupid iPod in and play it and control it. Design an interface to control the iPod in a vehicle that doesn't suck. I don't want to re-copy all my cd's in 50 places, especially if I already have a portable tool I can use.
I've one at home but have not used i-Pod in my car yet.
Is there something wrong with the Sync iPod interface?
The Azera presents a pretty great value as far as bang for the buck is concerned.
Is there something wrong with the Sync iPod interface?
I haven't gotten to play with it yet, but as far as I can tell, it is exactly what I am talking about. It interfaces with devices people already have, doesn't require them to do anything differently (like dump a bunch of songs on a hard drive) and provides a better in-vehicle interface.
And new devices will also be supported via software upgrade.
discounts for fire victims
Of course, I wouldn't buy a car based on how generous a company was to people in need, but it is a nice gesture deserving of praise.
His comments about interior flaws do reflect the recent discussion here about interior quality slipping in general.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/COL14/710250367/1015/BU- SINESS01
Read more of Mark's reviews and you will discover he is an equal opportunity basher.
For people with a strong anti-detroit bias, I can understand how your conclusion could be reached.
Discussion Toyota's problems
Priceless comments:
What do you think of the J.D. Power surveys?" another executive asked me last week, regarding the quality rankings. "They're making us crazy" because Toyota's top models don't always finish on top these days.
"We get downgraded because of little things like a squeak or a loose piece. It's not like we had a transmission failure."
He went on to say that the company felt Consumer Reports magazine treats it more fairly. Of course, that was a couple of days before the magazine downgraded Toyota for problems ranging from squeaks and rattles to suspension and transmission faults.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
My Sebring does have a bluetooth interface with my cell phone. I don't know if it was part of the MyGIG package or some other option but as soon as I turn the car on it connects. The hands-free interface lets me use voice commands to control the phone, GPS, radio and possibly the DVD player, although I have yet to watch a movie on it.
Also, the factory setting will not let you watch a front seat movie while in motion but there is already one hardware hack to get around it, available on the Internet. I wouldn't ever watch a movie while driving but it would be a great feature whenever my wife and I travel.
One of the options that you can get with MyGIG that mine didn't come with is a backup camera that automatically switches to the camera display when you shift into reverse. I'd like to add that to mine but I'm waiting the results of a Nitro owner who is adding a backup camera display to his MyGIG. The small camera attaches to the license plate frame. I've seen them on eBay.
One owner talked about the ultimate setup being to have an IR camera for the front view and a switchable display signal to send to the MyGIG screen for night stealth driving. Hmm...
Directly in between the front seats is a center console with a cloth covering, which serves as an armrest (the whole top slides back and forth to allow the driver to adjust the position of the armrest). Well, in my car, the cloth covering has pulled out in the front. I'm going to see if I can get a picture of this and post it later.
The car has 10,800 miles. I have no other interior-related complaints, save for a very slightly misaligned glove box.
The base Malibu looks like a nice package for only $19,995, especially this spring when the 4AT is upgraded to a 6AT. That undercuts Accord, Altima, and Camry and is in the Sonata's ballpark, but with some unique features such as OnStar and, soon, the 6AT. But not ESC.
Which reminds me, I noticed at least one gaffe in the review:
Front and rear head curtain side-impact bags and front-seat-mounted thorax bags are standard, along with dual-stage front bags. Standard ABS and traction control along with electronic stability control (standard on the Malibu LT and Malibu LTZ models) are there to prevent impromptu testing of any of those airbags.
There isn't a competitor that offers a better allotment of standard safety features.
Wrong. Both Accord and Sonata offer all of these features on every trim; Malibu doesn't offer ESC on the base trim. Now, if they toss in OnStar as a safety feature, then perhaps the statement is true. But they didn't. Also no mention of whether the Malibu has active front head restraints, which many mid-sized cars including Accord and Sonata have.
I think 2008 is the year the Camry will lose the sales lead to Accord, unless Toyota dumps a lot of Camrys into fleets.
Toyo can't do that after so many people have criticized GM for selling cars to fleets all these years, ridiculed GM, in fact.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
They should be selling them to individuals. That dilutes the value of the brand and the car to sell them to fleets. And they're dumping them in leases. That means in two years those used cars won't be worth anything!
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I think Chrysler is the brand that is suffering from it the most. In fact, I was shocked to learn that 79.4% of Avenger went to fleet (based on mid-year registrations, not over a full year). There seems to be a pretty long list of vehicles with more than a third of their sales going towards fleet. Here are some midsizers that top the list (w/minimum projected annual sales of 40K units)
Chrysler Sebring 63.50%
Chevrolet Malibu 58.80%
Dodge Charger 56.20%
Chevrolet Impala 53.90%
Kia Optima 52.80%
Chrysler 300 44.00%
Ford Five Hundred 43.10%
Mazda6 42.70%
Pontiac G6 36.20%
Now with these cars, fleet sales really becomes an issue. Most of them have less than half making it to a private owner. When fleet returns happen, these cars can't hold value, and resale suffers. For Camry and Altima (typically 16-18%), it is much less of an issue, even though they sell in higher volumes than most of these.
I think it was about a year ago that Hyundai said it was reducing fleet sales.
If the author of the Malibu preview drive is any indication of how the rest of the editors feel then the Accord will take #1 spot at Edmunds.
In number of units, 15K units of Sonata out of 54K sold went to fleet in first half of 2007. Over the same period a year before that, it was 42.5K units of 84.6K units sold.
So, Hyundai did reduce fleet sales from 42.5K units to 14.9K units going from 2006 to 2007. The retail sales was about the same, dipping slightly from 42.1K in 2006 to 38.9K in 2007 (same period).