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For us the SUV is a must. I try to conserve energy where ever I can. If gas costs get to a point to where an SUV or Boat becomes cost prohibitive then we'll have to find something else to do.
I'd love a more efficient fullsize SUV. I'd love to have a diesel Suburban/Expedition.
As for boats, I think they are very good recreation. For those taking but a few trips to the lake, isn't a rental the way to go? Once, up at East Lake, I think it was, in Oregon Dad and I rented a boat with no motor. The guy looked at use as a bit strange, and probably asked a second time, " you mean no motor ". Great exercise, but I am thinking a motor would have been nice, as the lake got to be larger in size, once under way.
the small boat kid, the dingy one,
Loren
There used to be a Diesel version of the Suburban, but at some point I think it got phased out. I think around the time that GM switched from the old 6.5L TurboDiesel to the Isuzu Duramax, maybe?
As for the Expedition, it was never offered as a Diesel, but the Excursion was. I think the Expedition, even in extended form, is only offered in light-duty 1/2 ton guise. The Excursion was sort of Ford's reply to the 3/4 ton Suburban, but its body was so heavy that it ate up too much of the frame's GVWR, so you ended up with a 3/4 ton vehicle with less payload capacity than the competition's 1/2 ton!
I've heard that Ford's power Stroke Diesel wasn't that great, either. Or, at least, in a rather naughty analogy, I have heard that the Cummins used in Dodges is better. I'd repeat it here, but it would probably get my post deleted. :P
Absolutely not. The decision to purchase one was a personal one, and not done for economics.
The point is, whether we are talking about a camper, boat, SUV, or a subcompact, at what point is it economically feasible (if you don't NEED something new) to alter your lifestyle, based on fuel costs.
Someone who bought an '00 Suburban brand new, when there was no concern for fuel costs, today (considering the 'Burb is in good shape) may just hold onto the old 'Burb instead of buying a new one. Seeing as how it should be paid off by now, they may decide to use it as a spare/tow vehicle, and buy a car for use as a commuter (providing they WANT something new), which also saves wear and tear on the 'Burb.
Same thing w/ a boat or camper. It's just there comes a point in time where you may say I'll just use it less this year to save money.
L
A rental would be the way to go if you were only wanted to boat a few times a year. But boat rentals are not cheap and not available everywhere. Yes a new Mastercraft or similar skiboat has gotten expensive. Many are now over $60k new for a 20-22' model.
They don't make a diesel version? Wonder why that is. Another mysterious move by GM management, or is there a reason??? We have a couple people here to provide an answer, I think.
Nope, no diesel offered in the 3/4 ton Suburbans anymore. That was phased out in 2000 I believe. I've heard the Duramax won't fit within the Suburban body and 3/4 ton frame. I've seen conversion companies that offer to put a Duramax in a 3/4 ton Suburban, but it costs a ton of money. Apparently the frame of the 3/4 ton Burb is not exactly the same as what is under a Chevy 3/4 ton P/U.
Now that GM has phased out the 8.1 gas v8, I don't know what they are going to use for good pulling power in a 3/4 ton burb.
But it did offer quite a bit more towing capacity. Still, like you said about the weight, it wasn't rated to tow as much as a 3/4 ton Suburban, but it's still a very stout tow vehicle.
IMHO, Chrysler has a way to go to get even/close to GM. Others may favor Chrysler and I respect their right to feel that way.
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What ya think? Remember this is the North American Car or the Year we are talking about.
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will post link when ad returns
L
H1 is gone, not to be replaced. H2 is the largest you can get. The military version of the H1 is to be replaced and companies are putting in bids for the business.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195303,00.html
This was listed in Financial week for 2006. Found it to be interesting, w/o more data it may not mean much. But seeing how much less Toyota spends on warranty costs is surprising. These are global numbers, so Toyota does not build 1/2 the vehicles that GM or Ford does.
You are right, Toyota sells about the same number of vehicles as GM world-wide, but I am not sure why you are surprised.
"GM and Ford now spend roughly 2.5% of their auto sales revenue fixing vehicles under warranty." That's a pretty ok percentage. IBM's claims rate is 3.2% - Boeing is 0.7%.
The most recent % I can find there for DaimlerChrysler (2006) is 4.3% of their revenue is paid out in warranty claims (but that includes everything - the cars, trucks, engines and some aerospace stuff). That's almost as bad as Whirlpool's 5.6%.
It's hard for Warranty Week to report percentage numbers for the foreign companies because they don't fill out the same kind of reports that publicly owned US companies have to file. We may not find out new Chrysler's rates because they are private now.
The charger is doing OK in sales, but I think a lot of them are fleet sales. It has matched or surpassed the 300 in sales.
chrysler needs more cars ASAP and that isnt going to happen. I am starting to see quite a few Avengers around but that car should've been much better from a styling and power standpoint. I dont think chrysler has any significant car launches until the next gen 300 in 2009.
Toyota could have more problems, but they may be on cheaper components. Toyota could also be more reluctant to repair things OR allow recalls to cover many faulty items that otherwise be repaired under warranty. Lets see who spent the most on recall repairs in 2006. Doubt its GM or Ford.
those numbers means little without more details.
While the warranty is OK I still wonder how much hassle it will be to get the General to honor it. My brother had his new Acadia in for it's first oil change and when he brought it home, it had it's fist oil leak. When he called about it, the SM's initial reaction was to deny that they did anything to it. That would have been a big coincidence and I highly doubt that the SM was down there watching what the tech was doing.
When he brought it in, it ended up that it was oil from the skid plate which they cleaned off but when my brother asked them about the stains on his fairly new driveway, the SM laughed it off and basically told him that driveways get stained.
That's not what you expect with a $39,000 truck but when you buy GM you buy the vaunted dealer network.
You basically have to be on your toes, all the time, in order to not "void" the lifetime powertrain warranty. It isn't transferrable either, that is a shame!
Also, they still have a short bumper to bumper warranty, so when the other 1,000 pieces in the car fail at year 3 and day 1, you are screwed.
However, not all manufacturers have to deal with a lot of warranty claims (or at least not significant important and costly warranty claims), so that is of the utmost importance. Toyota "could" be reluctant to repair things, as you accuse them of being, but what is more likely is that they never have anything to repair in the first place. Even if Toyota was reluctant, the owners of faulty vehicles would not allow their reluctance to get in the way.
That seems a bit dismissive in light of other recent postings in this thread, such as the WarrantyWeek piece, showing that Toyota's warranty claim rates were also about 50% of GM and Ford.
the yen's surge against the U.S. dollar in recent weeks, prompted by
worries that their profits may wane. But analysts say strong sales and
diversification in emerging markets such as China and India may cushion
them from serious damage in the long run.
For the past several months, Japan's three biggest automakers by sales –
Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor – have benefited from the weak
yen, which helps boost profits by increasing the value of overseas earnings
when converted into Japanese currency. That changed earlier this month,
when the U.S. subprime-loan problem led to jitters in the global financial
markets. The yen rose sharply, reaching a 14-month high of 111 yen to the
dollar on Aug. 17. Toyota's stock price has fallen nearly 10 percent in the
past month to 6,530 yen ($57.09) yesterday. Honda's price has declined 14
percent in the past month to 3,690 yen yesterday. Nissan's also has fallen
14 percent since July 30 to close at 1,089 yen.
Yesterday alone – as the stronger yen pressured Japanese exporters' stocks,
amid fears that the U.S. hasn't done enough to ease problems related to the
global credit crisis – Toyota's stock price fell 2 percent, while Honda's
declined 2.4 percent and Nissan's fell 1.6 percent. The Nikkei Stock
Average of 225 companies slipped 1.7 percent.
Analysts say the stronger yen could crimp the car makers' overseas profits.
But they add that the impact may not be so serious in the long run. The
weak yen has been such a boost to profits this fiscal year that analysts
say automakers can weather the currency's strength without a severe hit to
annual earnings.
I think we all know dealers are bad (and good) for all brands. As usual you are using one isolated experience to make broad assumptions about GM.
I never had a problem getting warranty repairs from my dealer. Ever. Common sense tells you that the dealer has little to lose by making a warranty repair- they get reimbursed by the manufacturer.
that same info showed GM and Ford's warranty costs were trending down and were pretty low when compared to other indsutries. Are you saying that site suggests that GM vehicles are unreliable?
Again, whatever is NOT fixed doesnt affect the warranty costs. If Toyota is reluctant to make warranty repairs (such as with the problematic 6 speed) that only helps their stats.
Again, even if your accusations against Toyota were true and they were reluctant to fix peoples 6 speed trannies, (which is only an accusation and has no truth or merit in the world of facts), it still would be completely irrelevant as the 6speed transmissions didn't come into play until the 2007 models, which wouldn't be included in the information, statistics, and warranty graphs shown.
Again, and furthermore, their reluctance to fix the tranny's would not equal "never fixing them." Eventually, the customer will strong arm a dealer into fixing the problem.
Obviously Toyo has a much better dealer network than GM?
"When we took our 2007 camry in and complained about the hesitation they said that it was normal and there was nothing we could do but get used to it."
"Had another problem with the dealer and would like to know some of your opinions. When checking our bill we saw that they used 5W30 oil in both of our oil changes we had done. The manual says to ONLY use 0w20 or 5W20 in the 4 cylinder cars. The service manager said that is only a suggestion and you don't need that oil only in the winter."
ToyotaCamryTransmissionQuestions
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
But to say that Toy/honda could be scrimping on warranty claims is rediculous IMO. I've never owned a toy/honda, but I've never heard of anyone regardless of make being turned down for a repair that is warranteed. If anything, I've heard from associates if anything toy/honda is more likey to cover a repair or at least share some of the costs on certain repairs after warranty. In my experience this has as much to do with the dealer as it does anything else.
I've owned vehicles from Ford, Saturn, Chevy, Dodge, VW, and Nissan, and I've never had an issue with a warranty repair. Most dealers I've dealt with have been pretty good.
That's great that perhaps GM can design a vehicle more reliable than a Chinese built electronic toy or a computer manufactured in Taiwan. However, it shows that Ford and GM are spending twice as much of their revenue (as a percentage) than either Toyota or Honda, and Chrysler 4 times as much!
That to me, spells extra warranty problems and/or more serious warranty problems. If you had shown me those graphs with each chart unlabeled, I'd of been able to fill in the name of the company for each one 100% accurately except for maybe crisscrossing Ford and GM (which are similar), but the others, would have been easy to label w/o hesitation.
It must be the owners of these vehicles have such pride, when something does break, they are ashamed to take it in to get repaired.
When I compare my Suburban to my previous Nissan Pathfinder. I basically had 3 problems by 60k miles on both. I had to have an 02 sensor, a valve timing control sensor, and a CD changer repaired on the Pathfinder. The Suburban needed a new transmission, fuel pump, and A/C compressor. Gee I wonder which one would be more expensive in warranty costs.
Actually I'm using another experience to confirm assumptions about GM. It's funny how every problem related to GM that I've experienced lately from the tranny leak on my mother's Impala, the ABS problem on my Father's Century to my brother's broken moonroof and oil leak are all isolated experiences.
Or Maytag. Last year my wife spent $2500 on a Maytag bottom freezer stainless fridge. 1 month out of warranty a control board went bad and cost $300 to fix. Pathetic for a 13 month old fridge. Not to mention it took a month to get fixed. Thankfully that is not our only fridge or I'd would have been seriously PO'd.
Not neccesarily. It COULD be a lazy/incompetent service dept. Don't forget, warranty work is done based on flat rate hrs. based on the mfr's books, which ALWAYS favor the mfr., especially if the tech has never done the work before.
Our Rainier went in for service (oil chng) and we asked them to check a vibration in the steering at low (parking lot) speeds (during the warranty period).
First time: Can't find it.
Second time: Rotated the tires.
THIRD TIME: Can't find it, but a code came up for a wheel sensor, we'll look at it for $88.
Think about it. Each time I brought it in, they looked at it under warranty, charged GM, and NEVER fixed it.
A friend of mine moved to another GM dealer from the Toyota dealer he worked at as Service Writer (they bought the GM franchise) and told me to bring it in. His mechanic had the problem solved it 5 MIN.!!!!! They ordered the part and fixed it, even giving me a loaner for the day.
ONE problem, and GM was charged FOUR TIMES to look at it.
Honestly, though I am a domestic auto fan, it does make more sense for GM and ford to be compared within their industry rather than all those studied by the survey. Whats more important though, is to gauge what percentage of their income ends up being eliminated by warranty claims... That helps deal with the concept of volume vs. warranty claims.