General Motors Fans

stever

2016 Chevrolet Camaro Inspires Clothing Line

berri

What is it, crushed high top tennis shoes - just kidding!

Mr_Shiftright

iluvmysephia1

Dude needs another tattoo, man.

Michaell

iluvmysephia1 said:

Dude needs another tattoo, man.

He could go Mike Tyson and get one on his face ...

slorenzen

Talk about self-limiting your career choices...

I don't recall ever seeing that in a board room. Maybe he can work in a tattoo shop?

Minimum wage?

fintail

Looks rough, but is probably a hipster with a trust fund and upper middle class upbringing. Visit Brooklyn these days.

stever

Tats are so common these days, they are kind of passé.

berri

Hey, years back business was a long sleeve dress shirt and tie environment. It has evolved more into khakis and a sports shirt. Tats may end up bringing it full circle back to the more formal look

slorenzen

stever said:

Tats are so common these days, they are kind of passé.

Maybe, but if you showed up for me to interview you, and I can see tats on your neck and hands, that WILL affect my decision to hire you.

Just sayin'...

stever

Imagine that.

berri

Psychedelic baby - peace and love

imidazol97

Mr_Shiftright said:

I'm trying to figure out if the tattoo guy is related to Camaro licensed clothing?

Mr_Shiftright

No, that was only my impression of what Camaro licensed clothing might look like.

I seem to recall that the US Armed Forces won't take anyone with a tattoo above the collar or below the cuffs of the shirt. So that's another career crossed off the list.

imidazol97

Car of the Year--Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/mark-phelan/2016/01/02/free-press-car-year-chevrolet-malibu/78006456/

stever

Chevrolet earned the second-most 2016 "Most Popular on Edmunds.com" Awards, with a total of four. Its haul was led by the Chevrolet Corvette, which was named the Most Popular Midrange Sport Car.

Honda and Chevrolet Emerge as Biggest Winners of 2016 "Most Popular on Edmunds.com" Awards

berri

The new Corvette seems like a heck of a car for the money. But the reviews seem to vary a lot. Some have all accolades for the vehicle performance and cost, while others bemoan glitches. I don't really know the real story, but for me it's moot - I'm probably too old for easy and comfortable egress anyway

dieselone

The Corvette is a heck of a lot of car for the money, but it does tend to have some glitches. My uncle dumped his '14 due to issues and the '15 which replaced it still has a few issues. But man is it fun to drive.

uplanderguy

Ford moving all small-car production to Mexico.

If I was buying in the near-future (and I'm not; despite conventional wisdom my Cobalt keeps on keepin'on, cheaply--finally biting the bullet and will replace the original battery after 102K miles and 8.5 years, soon), I'd buy my fourth Lordstown, OH-built small car, the all-new '16 Cruze. There's not a whole lot in that extreme corner of Ohio, but GM has invested there for fifty years. I went to the plant for a celebration back in May and I was still astounded how enormous it is, out in the country. At that time, there were at production capacity for the new Cruze.

MHO only, in that segment cars are about interchangeable; better for me to buy local and have a choice of two competing Chevy dealers within seven miles of me.

berri

Personally, the whole thing about plant final assembly location overlooks what I think is more relevant - US content. So much of today's auto's are other plant or vendor sourced components and subassemblies. Even the UAW seems to have kind of stopped the plant location thing because the press began investigating and found vehicles like Camry and Accord often had higher US made content. I think, just buy what you like and makes you happy. GM makes a lot of money in China and that helps their corporation too.

imidazol97

uplanderguy said:

If I was buying in the near-future (and I'm not; despite conventional wisdom my Cobalt keeps on keepin'on, cheaply--finally biting the bullet and will replace the original battery after 102K miles and 8.5 years, soon), I'd buy my fourth Lordstown, OH-built small car, the all-new '16 Cruze. There's not a whole lot in that extreme corner of Ohio, but GM has invested there for fifty years. .

The 17 Cruze hatchback is at my local dealer now. I'll have to stop and take a look.

I still consider GM and F and Chrysler American. Most companies are global now, the excuse for accepting that HoToy build some of their product here, and that applies to US brands having content from other operations as well. Goes both ways.

stever

Jeep is iconic, but it's really a Fiat. Just don't tell Tony Packo.

I'm pretty fond of our friend's Cruze although it's a bit cramped for her. Have to take a look at the hatch; that wasn't even on my radar. Hm, Kinetic Blue Metallic, loaded with BLIS and sunroof, MSRP of $28,865 and EPA of 28/37.

uplanderguy

I know. But if I like the car and the plant employs thousands of people who live near me, there's no bad in any of that.

I think if you like a line of cars, it's easy to see from the content label, where the engine and transmission are assembled, parts content, final assembly of car, and I still like a U.S.-based company for headquarters, much of the engineering, etc., but I realize I am an anomaly. Sometimes the things mentioned on the label change on which model or trim level of a line of car you're looking at.

I just always remember the U.S. head of Toyota looking like a deer in the headlights when he was asked about recall decisions. He deferred to Mr. Toyoda.

Not saying that's bad, I just don't dig it.

Incidentally, I was interested in buying an HHR in 2008, with a 5-speed. When I saw they were all built in Mexico, that was a turnoff to me. They were Cobalt-based; why not build them at Lordstown? I bought a Cobalt instead which has served me extremely well. I didn't want to reward GM for building in Mexico by buying a Mexico product. But that's me.

berri

Unfortunately, as time goes on, you may have to move up to trucks and SUV's if you want a D3 US plant produced vehicle. They are all moving smaller, lower priced stuff out of the US and away from the UAW because of the global market competition. FCA is in the process of just not producing cars. If crossovers keep growing and cars keep shrinking, I suspect Lordstown will rotate its product down the road. Nothing wrong with a Cruze that I can see though.

dieselone

Nah, nothing wrong with a Cruze. My SIL has a '15 Cruze LT and it seems nice and she's happy with it.

Yeah, it seems all small car production will be leaving the US. Gas prices aren't helping and it seems CUV/SUVs are taking over.

tlong

uplanderguy said:

I know. But if I like the car and the plant employs thousands of people who live near me, there's no bad in any of that.

I think if you like a line of cars, it's easy to see from the content label, where the engine and transmission are assembled, parts content, final assembly of car, and I still like a U.S.-based company for headquarters, much of the engineering, etc., but I realize I am an anomaly. Sometimes the things mentioned on the label change on which model or trim level of a line of car you're looking at.

I just always remember the U.S. head of Toyota looking like a deer in the headlights when he was asked about recall decisions. He deferred to Mr. Toyoda.

Not saying that's bad, I just don't dig it.

Incidentally, I was interested in buying an HHR in 2008, with a 5-speed. When I saw they were all built in Mexico, that was a turnoff to me. They were Cobalt-based; why not build them at Lordstown? I bought a Cobalt instead which has served me extremely well. I didn't want to reward GM for building in Mexico by buying a Mexico product. But that's me.

First of all, great to see you guys (you and imidazol) posting here again. Hope you've been well.

I can see the reasons especially to buy something that supports your local area. Nothing wrong with that.

The issue is that in an increasingly global world, any company that wants to survive has to make tough decisions. And we can see with all of the controversies like Apple and Ireland, companies are ultimately not geo-centric for purposes of their financial optimization.

IMHO the UAW has contributed to the loss of jobs as their desire for ultra-high wages and benefits made them far less competitive with other similarly skilled jobs, and ultimately that was unsustainable. This was a large part of the reason of the BK of GM and C, and it could be argued that it contributed to the cheapening of content in order to try and stay cost-competitive against non-unionized competitors. Of course management bears a bunch of blame as well.

But the US does benefit from HoToy manufacturing just as Fiat benefits from US (C) manufacturing, and GM benefits from China manufacturing. Competition is good, and the reason autos are so reliable and refined is largely due to the competition in the market.

berri

I don't disagree with you, but I'll still avoid Chinese Buick's. China supports North Korea and cyber attacks against Americans. China also keeps lopsided business rule advantages against American companies trying to compete over there. There are plenty of other choices in the marketplace here.

fintail

Definitely our "most favored trading partner" is not a reason vehicles have improved over time. GM may benefit from it, but that doesn't translate into a mass market consumer benefit. There's still a glaring race to the bottom in many aspects.

That being said, I would take a Mexican built car over a Chinese built car for political considerations alone.

dieselone

Definitely, I'd avoid a Chinese built car too.

berri

I'm not sure that GM gets it - as they produce cars fit for Europe or the US in China, their technology, engineering, etc. will be ripped off by the Chinese and given to their own country auto manufacturers. China may help GM in the short term, but long term there may be ugly consequences. China does not respect proprietary data and approves of cheating and stealing. Different set of ethics and different laws over there. However, you can be sure once they've gotten what they want from western auto producers, China will trump up legal charges against them to push them out. Meanwhile, the US will talk tough, but continue to fold. Sad!

fintail

I don't know if our beloved cereal box MBA exec set (who has answered for so many of their actions) understands long term consequences and externalities - they only see short term profits.

BMW learned about what happens in Chinese courts if they challenge a copycat - they lose.

tlong

fintail said:

Definitely our "most favored trading partner" is not a reason vehicles have improved over time. GM may benefit from it, but that doesn't translate into a mass market consumer benefit. There's still a glaring race to the bottom in many aspects.

That being said, I would take a Mexican built car over a Chinese built car for political considerations alone.

Agreed. The problem is that we are so dependent on China these days for manufacturing (not cars necessarily, but across the board) that it seems that horse is a long ways from the barn.

fintail

Yep, nobody can argue against that. That horrible ship set sail awhile ago. With it we get mutually assured economic destruction instead of nuclear destruction (wait...the nuclear destruction is still there), cheap goods to distract the masses from their shrinking real incomes and socio-economic issues, and it subsidizes parts of our real estate and luxury goods industry by being venues for low level officials to launder money, especially on the west coast. What could go wrong?

tlong said:

Agreed. The problem is that we are so dependent on China these days for manufacturing (not cars necessarily, but across the board) that it seems that horse is a long ways from the barn.

berri

I just read that the Chinese are sucking up Seattle real estate now that Canada imposed a 15% tax on foreign buyers. Looks like your governor, mayor and legislative bodies are more focused on either homeless shelters or real estate lobby contributions, than the welfare of their working citizens. Eventually, I'm thinking this will push more people back to affordable places elsewhere in the country.

fintail

I've heard that roughly half of residential transactions in my specific area are to offshore cash buyers. Don't look into where the cash comes from, of course. There's definitely something linked to the FIRE industry here. It's going to end up like Vancouver, and not in a good way.

Could be worse though, the Wally World cheap iffy goods dollars come back to benefit the oldsters and boomers who bought houses when prices were affordable for normal working people, and are now selling to receive lottery jackpots.

berri said:

I just read that the Chinese are sucking up Seattle real estate now that Canada imposed a 15% tax on foreign buyers. Looks like your governor, mayor and legislative bodies are more focused on either homeless shelters or real estate lobby contributions, than the welfare of their working citizens. Eventually, I'm thinking this will push more people back to affordable places elsewhere in the country.

uplanderguy

Well, luckily I think, GM just put a bunch of money into the Lordstown plant for the new Cruze which only started production earlier this year, so I'd bet that small cars will come from there for a while. Personally, I hope they're still built there when I'm ready to buy. Although that's not important to a lot of people, I think if I were GM marketing I'd figure a way to insert that even in a small way, into Cruze advertising.

fintail

They probably have to be careful with that - the whiny SJW movement only tolerates pride in national origin if it isn't from a western nation.

uplanderguy

So true.

uplanderguy

Cruze supposedly just made a CR list of 'most reliable vehicles'. The car was all-new less than a year ago; I'm wondering if that's the car they mean? Kind of early to tell, but I'm feeling a little sort-of 'hometown pride' (they're built 35 miles down the road from me).

Mr_Shiftright

It beat out some Toyota and Audi models. Got an 89/100 score. Highest score was, of course, the Prius at 94/100.

stever

Sat in a Cruze hatchback this morning but it was an LX model and no higher trims in stock. Even being manual, the seats felt pretty comfy.

imidazol97

stever said:

Sat in a Cruze hatchback this morning but it was an LX model and no higher trims in stock. Even being manual, the seats felt pretty comfy.

Your impression matches mine of the new model Cruze. Both times I've sat in one, the seats felt much nicer than I expected. They have a different feel than the '15 Cruze my son drives with leather seats--actually better. Don't know which would be best on a 5-hour drive however.

stever

I think our friend's Cruze is a 2013 and I drove it back from Taos one day (~5+ hours) and the seats were very good. Don't know her trim, but the seats were cloth.

uplanderguy

I read that the Cruze hatchback is built in Mexico instead of Lordstown, Ohio. That bums me out.

Mr_Shiftright

Why?

uplanderguy

I'd rather buy built in America, and Lordstown employs people both where I live now and where I grew up. If I lived 35 miles from the Mexico plant, I might feel differently.

uplanderguy

Just got done waxing my wife's black metallic '11 Malibu 1LT, 81K miles. I don't believe there's been a more expensive-looking Malibu since. Even our 1LT has polished wheels and a rocker molding and body-side protection, none available on a 1LT '16 model.

One thing I do like about the '16 over ours--our passenger front seat is low to the floor. The current car has manually-adjustable right front seat height. I like that. I'm guessing most cars have that now.

stever

A lot don't - the recent Civic hatch we drove for example. The driver's seat was powered and very adjustable, but I wasn't sold on the passenger side just from a short test drive.

And neither side had a lumbar.

And yeah, it is a nice feature and I notice when it's not available.

berri

I just had the previous gen Malibu (had to be a 14 or early 15) with the strangest front seat as a rental. Manual back and forth and manual seatback, but a single power adjustment which controlled combined height and seat bottom level. Could never get that seat right. I seem to recall something like that rocker mechanism once many years ago on Corsica rental. It was an Enterprise car and wonder if it was special ordered by them this way to save money. Most full size cars I have rented over the past 5 or 6 years have a complete 6 way power seat.

tlong

I had a fairly recent Impala on rental this past week. While many of my other recent GM experiences were pretty impressive. I thought the Impala was the epitomy of a rental. Hard black plastic everywhere, boat-like ride, numb steering. I was a bit surprised - I know the LaCrosse is really nice, is the Impala just a bargain-basement medium-large car?