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Comments
Honda stepped up immediately and put me in a comparable rental and had ma back in my van at no expense to me in two days. It's what has kept me with Honda even as their cars get less interesting.
lol, too funny. Actually, being my first car purchase that wasn't a hand me down from my parents I didn't really go to too many places to look for a car. There is a strip of car dealers in Nashua and we stopped at a couple of different ones. The Olds was in the running with an odd group of vehicles actually.
If I remember right there was:
A Dodge Rampage
Cavalier Z24
Toyota Celica GT
early 80's Toyota Supra
Toyota Corolla AE86
Dodge Shadow
Mitsubushi Starion
Mustang 5.0LX
The Mustang got eliminated the quickest because it was literally beat to hell and smelled like wackytibacy big time! The leather seats were so covered in burn marks and the drivers side had been keyed. Shame, still one of my favorite vintages of Mustangs.
I think there were a couple more but my budget was roughly 8 thousand dollars. I wanted the Starion the most but being that I was a kid and my parents wanted me to be protected in the event of a wreck, they convinced me to go for the Olds. The Starion was out of my price range by a bit as well... Plus, like I said it had the V8 which was "cool" at the time.
As far as the motor goes, it was so long ago but my friends and I used to wrench with our cars all the time and one of them had a dad who was a good wrench mechanic who pointed out that it was a 305 and how unusually rare it was in that car. Monte Carlo SS's had the same motor apprently which I thought was pretty cool. I loved, loved loved the MSS.
Mine had the Rochester "quadrajunk"which was constantly needing tweaks to run right and the Transmission went to hell about 45k. The rear end whined a few thou after that, the interior fell apart just by looking at it the wrong way and then the front tie rods needed emergency replacement about 55k requiring a tow to the dealer because it was unsafe to drive and wouldn't pass inspection... The aluminum "Lace" wheels developed stress cracks on 3 of them so I replaced them with AR wheels about 65k.
Sold the car at 75k for 500 bucks. By that time, the dashboard was dead, the windscreen leaked, the rear windows leaked, I had replaced brakes and wheel bearings at all four corners, I was on my third exhaust (the last one I got the duallys like my beloved MSS
The new owner got a bonus too, an AC/DC Highway to hell tape stuck in the cassette player, lol. How appropriate. :shades:
1975 Ford LTD Landau: Rejected when I discovered severe rust hiding behind the wheel wells.
1975 Ford Custom 500 sedan: Rejected. Car refused to start. Bad omen.
1975 Buick Electra 225: Really nice, but owner wanted too much for it.
1958 Oldsmobile Super 88 four-door hardtop: Would've LOVED this one, but even $2,500 was too much for a 16 year-old's budget in 1981.
1972 Buick Skylark 2-door hardtop: Sold right before I could get to it.
This was extraordinary IMO. I've had my dealer do things for me outside of warranty before, but this was unexpected.
I've mentioned this on Edmunds previously, and one anti-GM guy actually wrote that I should stop mentioning this and not 'cross post' from one forum topic to the next about it!
I have found (another thing I learned here) that asking for a piece of their good will money doesn't hurt. Once they realize you know they have such a pot of money dealers seem to find it better to throw some your way than to be cheapskates about it.
And one of the categories is "Most Wanted American Car".
2011 Edmunds' Inside Line Readers' Most Wanted Awards
My American car fleet is less one auto, sold the 2010 Mustang GT to a good friend, for I made the mistake of driving a 2011 Mustang GT w/5.0 power..decided to upgrade.. The new Stang is selling very well, so I looking for a used 2011 or may have to wait for the 2012..The V-8 with RWD is the only way along with the 3.73 rear end..
My 2006 Grand Prix GT just upchucked it's 3rd battery in 57k miles..I had to pay for the 4th one, another 7 yr warranty deal which means they pay for the next one..Only cost $132, and isn't life great..The failed battery was a 7 yr one, which lasted roughly 30 mos..The original battery was replaced after 75 miles..The 2nd battery died @ 21,500 mi..
The hot weather in Fla. destroys them quickly, and the town driving doesn't help..At interstate speeds the air flow helps..My trade on the GT was a 2002 Olds Intrigue which reached 120k at flip time, and it's battery lasted until around 95k, 80% of road time was interstate, all Florida driving..
Love the American-Big3 auto, Cadillac is not on my favorite list, bought the wife 3 of them, had too many issues, and my son has had 7 of them, Eldos and STSs plus 1 Allante..The little 2 seater was a farce, had the Northstar engine..
Bursting Watermelons
I don't know if these melons are exported to the U.S., but wouldn't be surprised.
Another encounter with a Caddy product which I had forgotten was with a 1984 Eldo Biarritz which was given to me after the company CEO was fired..It had less than 10k miles on it, triple blue ext w/stainless roof..4.1 V-8 was worthless, suspension was floaty, and after 2 months of driving I sold it to a retired GM employee who went ga-ga over it..Cost the company $8k to terminate the finance lease..
Another car of the same era I had was a 1981 Buick Rivera V-8, kept it for 6 mos, around 16k miles, had a long vacation from working..In retrospect the Buick was far superior to the Eldo, but neither was a high-speed handler.
I remember the 1996 Caddy Deville which I bought the wife had the 275hp Northstar V-8, and the 2011 DTS is still 275 hp...15 yrs later..no progress, only in the area of pricing has any increase been shown..Caddy is using the same body since 2000 in that series..
I am sure the Chinese are thrilled with the Caddy Div..Didn't the Chinese take over GM's old Delphi operation which was at one time called "Saginaw Steering Gear"???
They love the Buicks most, anyway.
Doubt it!!! Keep that PT Cruiser much longer for your daughter and your retirement funds could be in jeopardy.
That car is a Neon with a new name and shell/body. It will self destruct like clockwork from now on, since you've passed the warranty period.
LOL< asking Chrysler for warranty service is like asking Osama Bin Laden for a donation to help you as an American citizen. They are both unlikely and you are asking a dead source.
Honda too, in my experience treats their customers well and will extend warranties if there's ever an issue.
It's simply a different mentality and different culture at the two dealers. At Chrysler/Dodge, the culture was that parts and cars were meant to break down and that it was normal and acceptable, and you should be happy to pay them to fix it. At Honda, it was embarrassing, unexpected, surprising, shocking, and they immediately work to minimize the impact and inconvenience to you, along with paying for everything. Total 180 from what I experienced at the Dodge Dealerships.
Sounds like a lot of issues for under 80K. I'll be at 80K miles within a couple months in my '06 Audi A3. Care to wager it won't need transmission control modules, horns, and/or steering racks replaced? What kind of odds do you want? I'm in a gambling mood!
Audi did send me a letter the other day that 3 parts are going to be warranted to 10 years or 120,000 miles or something to that effect. Haven't had to replace any of them yet though (78K).
"The car is French and they drive on the correct side of the road there and sit on the correct side, too. Not the British. They want right hand drive. And so, being French, Citroen gives in and builds them that way. Though they've done it all sorts of half-arsed by connecting the right-drive pedal to the left-hand-drive-side mounted brake interface. They didn't move everything over, just moved the pedal and hooked it up. This means that if the passenger hits just the right spot on the carpet, they get to control the brakes."
Recall: Citroen C3 Picasso Recalled Over Passenger Brake Issue
This partially explains why I still haven't got my boat back from the marina. I dropped it off 3 weeks ago and they still haven't worked on it yet. Every marina I called around here has a 2-3 week back log on service work.
I think I told you about one of my four coworkers, who owns an '05 Honda van. $1,800 was their 'goodwill' offer on a new trans. Wow, really helpful. This was two years ago.
I wonder how hard it would be for them to take the platform that serves as the basis for the Caliber, Patriot, and Compass, and massage a PT Cruiser revival out of it? My guess is that it wouldn't take much effort at all to rebody a Compass...just give it a new front-end clip and sheetmetal, and do something with that Gremlin-like rear quarter window.
But then, perhaps the PT Cruiser's time has past, and there's no need for a revival.
More annoying to me are some who drive them and what some do to them. Much less than cool. The convertibles also looked weird.
PT met the ultimate retro roadblock - you can't update it.
VEHICLE
WHERE BUILT
% U.S./Canada
Part Content
Chevrolet Aveo
San Luis Potosi, Mexico
2%
Ford Fiesta
Cuautitlan Izcalli, Mexico
10%
Ford Fusion/Lincoln MKZ
Hermosillo, Mexico
20%
Cadillac SRX
Ramos Arizpe, Mexico
21%
Mercury Milan
Hermosillo, Mexico
25%
Chevrolet HHR
Ramos Arizpe, Mexico
37%
Dodge Journey
Toluca, Mexico
38%
Chevrolet Volt
Hamtramck, Michigan
40%
Chevrolet Cruze
Lordstown, Ohio
45%
Ford Expedition/
Lincoln Navigator
Louisville, Kentucky
50%
Lincoln MKS
Chicago, Illinois
55%
Buick LaCrosse
Kansas City, Kansas
57%
Possibly. The import might save you $500 in gas a year. And say, after 2.5 more years, the PT Crusier will be worthless, but the import would still be worth 65% of it's value. In the long run, you'll always get better value from the best imports.
Have a great Memorial Day, guys. If you see a soldier, give him/her your thanks and buy him/her a beer! If you can swing it, pay for their dinner.
That's true. I figured the damage was done when it was sold as a new unit.
Does anybody remember learning about "the time value of money" in school? You're better saving money upfront and investing it than hoping to get it a few years later.
And frankly, I'm not seeing them selling '05 PT's for free as you suggest.
I wouldn't have bought one new, but I think it's fine for a 17-year old, especially when I look at the other cars in the school parking lot
Mr. Wallace once worked at Dodge Steel. I remember this place. It was a huge plant right next to I-95 that burned to the ground maybe about 15 years ag. A polluted, worthless brownfield is all that is left of Dodge Steel.
Workshop of the World
HONG KONG — Wages are surging this year in China and among its main low-wage Asian rivals, benefiting workers across the region. But the increases confront trading companies and Western retailers with cost increases, and are making higher prices likely for American and European consumers.
Bruce Rockowitz, the chief executive of Li & Fung, the largest trading company supplying Chinese consumer goods to American retail chains, said in a speech here on Tuesday that the company’s average costs for goods rose 15 percent in the first five months of this year compared with the same period last year. Executives at other consumer goods companies have encountered similar or larger increases.
Airline flights to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and other low-wage Asian countries are packed these days with executives looking for alternatives to double-digit wage increases in China. But wages are rising as fast or faster in many of these countries, following China’s example, while commodity prices have surged around the world, leaving buyers with few places to turn.
Bangladesh raised its minimum wage by 87 percent late last year, yet apparel factories there are still struggling to find enough workers to complete ever-rising orders. “Everywhere you see signs saying ‘people wanted,’ “ said Annisul Huq, the chairman of Mohammadi Group, a large Bangladesh garment manufacturer.
The Gap surprised financial markets on May 19 by announcing that a 20 percent jump in costs from suppliers by the second half of this year would depress its profits, prompting a 17.5 percent plunge of its shares the next day. Coach, the luxury handbag company, announced in January that it would try to reduce its reliance on China to less than half of its products within four years, from 80 percent now, by moving production to Vietnam and India.
Yet wages in Vietnam have been rising as fast as Chinese wages, or faster, while India has posed many problems for large-scale manufacturers. Mr. Rockowitz said that India’s infrastructure — roads and ports — was “really poor,” while labor issues, including government regulations, make it hard to build Chinese-style factories for tens of thousands of workers.
With costs rising in China and few alternatives elsewhere, “you have the perfect storm for raising prices,” said Bennett Model, the chief executive of Cassin, a Manhattan-based line of designer clothing. The company’s costs have risen 25 to 35 percent in the last year for cotton and fur garments alike.
Cassin has begun experimenting with garment production in Guatemala with some success, Mr. Model said, adding that many garment companies were still leery of buying from anywhere except China. “Everybody’s scared of the quality — you spend so many years training a factory” to meet detailed specifications, he said.
Yet with 14 million people, Guatemala has the population only of a single large Chinese metropolitan area like Shenzhen or Guangzhou.
Workers in developing countries all over the world are becoming more aware of pay elsewhere through the Internet and the use of social media like Facebook, increasing the pressure for higher wages, Mr. Rockowitz said.
Li & Fung handles about 4 percent of American retailers’ imports from China of virtually all kinds of consumer goods, according to investment analysts. The exception is electronics, which tend to be imported directly to the United States by other companies like Apple.
Mr. Rockowitz and other executives predict that the extremely high concentration of factories in southeastern China near Hong Kong will give way to a dispersal across the country in the next five years. Workers are becoming much more reluctant to spend up to three days on buses and trains from the interior to reach coastal factories, particularly when the growth of domestic spending in China is creating more jobs in the interior.
Even the recent opening of high-speed rail routes that cut travel times by up to 80 percent has not been enough to revive the flow of migrants. “They don’t have to take a 1,000-mile trip to the coast — there’s a shortage of people, unbelievable,” said Douglas Hsu, the chairman and chief executive of the Far Eastern Group, a big Taiwanese multinational with extensive investments in mainland China.
And wages in China’s interior have been rising even faster in percentage terms than in coastal provinces, steadily narrowing what was once a pattern of much higher wages in coastal export zones.
Many companies have another reason for staying in China these days: that is where their sales are growing fastest. “If the market is in China, which in many cases it now is, there’s much less incentive to move,” said Charles Oliver, the senior partner of GCiS China, a market research company in Shanghai.
China has become the world’s largest market for a long list of products, from cars to steel. Producing and selling in China protects companies from later facing “Buy Chinese” policies, antidumping cases or other Chinese import restrictions.
Manufacturing in China allows companies to incur costs in renminbi, the same currency as a growing part of their sales. That insulates them from one kind of currency volatility even as the renminbi fluctuates more against the dollar and euro.
Rising wages and strengthening currencies in Asia are making it less attractive to move higher-value industries like auto manufacturing out of the West. But little mentioned by almost anyone making or trading consumer goods in Asia these days is the possibility of moving these relatively labor-intensive manufacturing industries back to the United States or Europe.
Mr. Rockowitz was dismissive of the idea in his remarks on Tuesday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
“The Western world does not have the work force to do this kind of business,” he said. “For ‘made in Italy,’ the workers are old now and there are no new workers coming in.”
He does have a good point though, the work isn't simply going to come back because of these minor wage issues. When labor costs are almost zero, a 20% rise doesn't break the bank.
They just thought if they keep striking, demanding higher wages far out of range for thei level of skill, gold plated health care and pensions, that the system would just "absorb it" and nothing would change...and nothing changed until something DID change...competition brought in a (sometimes) better product, and the number of retireees became so overwhelming that there simply was not sufficient funds to pay for them, and verybody thought it was "somebody else's" job to take care of them...
Kids grew up thinking that they needed no skills because they were going to get Daddy's position on the union assembly line, because that's what Daddy did when Granddaddy retired...so nobody bothered to learn to read or write because you didn't need to on the assembly line or the steelmaking line...things didn't change overnight but for those who were watching and awake (i.e.not drunk like most UAW workers) the changes were obvious...
Honda and Toyota were making good products and other companies were making quality steel...also, other items became too expensive to fix...they criticize us for being a "throwaway society" but what other choice is there???...I can buy a new VCR for under $100, but if I take it to someone who actually repairs them, they want $75 just to open and diagnose a problem that will cost over $100 to fix...this is a no-brainer...$125 to repair the old one, or $100 for a BRAND NEW one...what idiot will fix the old one just to save some space in the landfill???
My wife wanted me to take her shoes to the cobbler (yes, we have one)...new soles and heels were $65...new shoes were $55-60...I believe that the man's skill is certainly worth what he charges, but he only makes my point...she could not put more money into the repair than the shoes cost when they were new, so she threw them out and bought new shoes...if I had a $500 pair of cowboy boots or $300 Allen Edmonds dress shoes, then a $65 repair would be well worth it...but for shoes that cost under $100 (the shoes we own) the reapir isn't worth it...due to the cost of the shoes, the man, highly skilled, has priced himself out of that repair market...I don't expect him to charge less, but even he acknowledges that it would be silly to pay him the cost of new shoes to fix the old ones...
The northern unions thought they ran the world, and they did, until forces beyond their control ran them...Eastern Airlines went bankrupt because their mechanics, already the highest paid in the industry at the time, wanted more...
We, as a society need to evolve, but the individual fights change, unions ebing the worst of them all, because they have a union management telling them that they will rule the world when it is the world that (eventually) rules them...
After going through 24 boats, I took up golf, joining a private club 40 miles from the house, and played at least 3 times a week, sometimes I did 4 or 5 rounds over the 7 days..
My boating favorites were the 27' Magnum Sport, 24' Donzi Doral both with T-280 w/TRS outdrives, 28' Cigarette with T-280w/TRS drives, 21' Maurader w/350 hp, Holman-Moody 351 Ford w/Volvo OD..3-30' Sea Rays with all I/B power, 1968-36' CC Corvette w/T-427 Fords and a 25.5' Formula w/T-260s, w/ raised outdrives using cleaver props..plus various other SeaRays ranging from 26' to 32' that were bought on speculation never moved, resold off of dealers lot..Paid winter storage on only 3 boats, 36' ChrisCraft, 25.5 Formula, and the 21' Maurader.. The Chris was sold during the winter, and the Formula was sold after 33 hrs of total running hrs with the Formula factory finally replacing the hull using the original engines.3 yr deal of attorney bills..
The upside to this posting is that I have always been heavy on supporting products made in the USA by American owned and based manufacturers..Total boats owned thru 1986 is 24..Car total to date is 53, with 51 Big3 jobbies, and 2 Porsches..
I have found golf much cheaper than boating, however if I unload my Michigan real estate holdings before old age does me in, my first choice will be something of 24' with 2 Big Merc O/Bs---final blast.. Here in Venice, Fla..
Buy American Brands, not from the Asian guys with the "Made in America" hype....Wise up folks, and stop the money flow to foreign lands..
Great idea! And OUr brands based in Detroilet should also compromise and pull all their operations from
China,
Mexico,
Canada,
Korea,
India,
Austria,
Germany,
Australia,
France,
Indonesia,
Hungary,
Brasil,
Uzbekistan,
Thailand,
and any other locations as well so we can stop investing in foriegn lands to peddle our product. They should all be buying global cars from global automakers, not ones from protectionist America!
Economy Missing Workers?
As you can tell, I am not a union supporter. However, I try to buy American made products and services every chance I get. This IS important if you can think past the now. Think into the future and how it affects you when you spend your money. We are a society of short term thinkers and it is killing the economic stability of this nation and its future. There is not a day that goes by that I debate with someone, somewhere in another chat room about how important it is to keep your money close to home. At the end, 99% of the time I get them to THINK. They get it, understand and will try to buy U.S. made goods and services.
Once again, I bought an American made WEBER grill this season. Over the internet, no shipping fee. Sure it took 5 days to get here.. So what. I did not buy one of those Chinese made grills from Home Depot or Lowes. I feel great about my purchase, love the grill. I know I kept an American working.
I suspect many who rail against unions benefit from bloated public sector perks in one way or another.
Really? Would that even happen? I would think there would be some sort of EPA regulation or testing to make sure that wouldn't be allowed to sell here...
Congrats on the Weber btw, great grills. Mine is 7 years old and still works like brand new, even tho I did buy it at Lowes
Plus they are made in Illinois.