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How did they end up with Mary Jo Blige?
The Detroit Auto Show has always had a sweet spot in my heart. I remember seeing Farah Fawcett with her pussycat climbing up on the Mercury sign. I'd hoped to go this year, but it's not going to work out.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Well, yes......but I cannot disclose the outcome as yet !!!
BBB rules.
The Malibu has good fit and finish and good materials, but unfortunately I think a few design shortcomings will hold it back. The swoopy roofline really cuts down on the rear headroom and makes it somewhat perilous to exit the front seats without banging your head on the roof pillar. The cutouts in the backs of the front seats provided just enough rear leg room, but the hard plastic back meant that edges of the alcove dug into my knees. The very long rear window and the nonintrusive trunk hinges and struts make the trunk opening very small for a car its size, no bigger than the opening on the Cobalt right next to it. The manual door lock tabs at the rear of the doors are in a horrible position. They really need to be the de facto standard pivoting nubs in the notch with the interior door latch pulls. The Malibu was almost there, but the designers shot it in the foot.
The CTS was nice, but rather small inside for such a large car. I hit my head on the roof liner hump for the sunroof. Unless you really like Cadillac styling, the Lexus IS provides a roomier, lighter, faster car with better instruments for the same money. Oh, and who decided that the best place for the trunk release was under the rear of the driver's side door handle? :confuse:
I don't know who approved the chassis bracing for the LaCrosse Super, but they should be fired immediately. Those two pressed-end steel tubes under the hood look cruddy enough on the Impala SS, but they look absolutely atrocious on a Buick.
The Aveo manual has a lifting ring for the left-up reverse, even though it's only a five speed. Who knew?
-Rocky
I will just wait until the Philly Auto show in February to check them out.
Equipment wise it is a pretty close match to the Rabbit ( I own a three door ). The Astra has a lot of standard safety features ( airs bags galore ).
I personally think it is a more stylish vehicle than the Rabbit and compares well with the Mazda, perhaps looking a little more up market, having a better quality interior and
simply being a fresher face.
The big sticking point is the Saturn branding. There seems to be a mismatch between the quality of smaller Saturn product and the pretentions and actual quality of this model. It is too good to be a Saturn.
The problem for GM is that they don't have a brand synonymous with quality in a compact car. They might get customers who already would drive a Saturn to look at the car but buyers who are looking at Honda, VW, Mazda,
Scion etc will hesitate to be seen in a Saturn. There's no easy solution to this so I suppose this is an attempt to elevate the Saturn brand and that will take a little time.
The nail in the coffin though is going to be the engine. The VW is up to 170 horses and more importantly ( although nobody seems to ever realize it ), 177 ft-lbs of torque.
The Astra is rated at 125 ft-lbs which is way off the pace. The Mazda 3 wagon is at about 150 for both HP and torque which is enough to make it not a factor when comparing to the Rabbit.
I just got back from the UK and I did look at a few Astras. The interior looks very VW ( well that is all I can compare it too as the only non-luxury European brand sold in the US ) and it is a sharp vehicle. I hope they have plans to tweak the motor in the next six months. Mind you, I have owned a '96 Saturn SL2 since '99 and it is far an away the worst engine I have ever driven so the 1.8 is maintaining the tradition ( although I do have 165k miles on it so I can't complain too loudly ).
To me Saturn has been searching for its identity for the past 8-9 years. It seem like they have a plan. Unfortunately, the recent memory is the Ion, L-series, and Relay. Include a limited dealer base and little advertising, it will take a while to get Saturn where GM wants.
Anyway, in talking with a few of the auto media it looks like Toyota is feeling pressured. They looked at the new Malibu last year in disbelief. They have asked the media what is going on at GM. Watanabee could not believe GM could build the Malibu. Now they are releasing press releases on 2010 models. They have never been that vocal before. Last year when the Volt came out they said a Li ion battery by 2010 was impossible and a danger to the public. This week they are announcing that in 2010 they will release their own volt type vehicle. Now they are in a race with GM to be the first one out so they can save their green face.
Truthfully it does not matter to me who comes out first. As long as they both are safe and do what has been advertised. As long as they are within a year of each other they, and us the customer, wins.
What they are concerned with is that all these technologies are at least 20 years out before a large percentage of the US fleet is replaced with the non oil using powertrains. In other words the non-plug in hybrids are great but they do not really increase mpg that much to really decrease our oil usage. And in 5 years there still will not be that many in the US fleet. The plug in hybrids are even better but again it will be many years before the industry changes over in large numbers and the US fleet is purged of gas suckers. Hydrogen is even further out there.
So the only solution in the short term (2-5 years) to greatly reduce oil usage is to go to E85. It looks like GM has started the process to make their own cheap celluosic fuel because nobody has been able/willing to do it.
Now IF in 4 years the breakthru gains fruition (E85 half the price of gas?) the infrastructure (E85 pumps) will sprout everywhere and those vehicles that can burn E85 will be in great demand. So, who has the largest fleet of E85 vehicles? I believe it is the domestics and they have a whole bunch more coming.
So suddenly the residual values of E85 vehicles (virtually 100% domestic) will skyrocket and those that are not will drop. Those that supply new E85 capable vehicles will outsell those that do not.
Of course there will probably be a huge aftermarket conversion kits being sold but the cost and labor will be expensive.
The bottom line is General Motors, could become once again the biggest and greatest corporation in the world where we make standard of the world automobiles and power them with "standard ofthe world" fuel !!!!
-Rocky
featuring New York steaks," Lutz said. "Maybe they devoted less shelf
space to them, but even with all the healthy eating there are people who
still like red meat. And we're a full-service grocery chain."
-Rocky
Just to be clear that is my take on what could happen. All GM said was they are investing in a company that has proven to independent outside concerns that they can produced E85 for ~$1/gallon. And GM said they have a lot of vehicles produced, and to be produced, that are E85 compatible.
Of course with any new technology/process there will be problems but the plant is suipposed to be shipping E85 by the end of this year, not 5 years from now, so it must be pretty much well along.
I guess I could be "silver-bulleting" it but no one has yet to say where I could be incorrect. Perhaps buyers will still not want the percieved "UN" green domestic companies green vehicles?
-Rocky
-Rocky
First off, the company has to able to produce E85 that retails at a substantial discount to regular gasoline, ramp up its E85 production to meet your proposed demand, hope that demand doesn't raise the cost of its feedstock, hope that the infrastructure to handle that E85 volume develops quickly, and hope that the "foreign" manufacturers don't hop on the E85 bandwagon once they see that it's something other than corporate welfare for ADM.
-Rocky
Well, on our '04 VUE, the "I" stood for Intermediate - the transmission was a 5-speed auto, and it allowed the transmission to move between 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears. There was a "D" that allowed 5th gear to be engaged, and "L" which was 1st gear only.
I'm guessing that is the same for the Malibu, except it's a 6-speed auto instead of 5.
ramp up its E85 production to meet your proposed demand, At $1/gallon vs. $4 for gas (of course the $1 would be actully higher since that is what it cost to produce, need to figure in profit, transport, etc.) I would think there would be enough people out there that would get a lot of production capability quickly.
hope that demand doesn't raise the cost of its feedstock,true, but there are a lot of old tires and garbage dumps out there to feed it. It takes just about anything in.
hope that the infrastructure to handle that E85 volume develops quicklyagain very true but if it has such a price advantage the pumps will come
, and hope that the "foreign" manufacturers don't hop on the E85 bandwagonThey are already "jumping" on the bandwagon. But the domestics have millions of used vehicles out there already.
Of course there are plenty of risks and roadblocks that will come in to play, but my premise was what if it works out and how would that effect the domestic makers. Only your last point really hit on that.
I read somewhere that we could make conventional fuels out of coal for about $40 a barrel. If thats the case, couldn't we supplement conventional fuels with that for now, until the cellulosic ethanol was up and running to meet demand????
I can see a lot of ethanol being produced by low-temperature celluostic processes. These can use all woody plant material. Yard clippings, paper, cardboard, etc... You may have your local trash pickup people start taking yard waste again and chipping it to be sent to the local ethanol plant.
I would think that the global-warming crowd would like to se ethanol fail because it does not help that problem. It would delay the adoption of the electric-only car that would reduce pollution by a bunch. In the grand scheme of things, we need to get away from burning things for transportation.
see this
The basic problem with synthetic fuel is that building the plant to make it is expensive. The cost of running the plant profitably requires that oil price remain high (over $40 per barrel).
BTW: I am in favor of nuclear because it is the least polluting energy producing technology that is proven to be reliable as a backbone of the grid. Solar and wind are all fine and dandy as a secondary system, but they rely too much on outside influences for my tastes to be the core of the grid.
BTW2: Taking the GHG aspect out of the evaluation, you are far better off environmentally with a fleet of cars powered by coal power plants than by burning gas. The air quality in urban areas would be improved dramatically by replacing cars with electrics. It is much easier to plan and mitigate emissions from a few power plants than thousands of cars. You can also relocate these emissions from already bad urban areas to better rural areas. It is a winning formula no matter how you slice it. Worst case you are break even with regards to GHG but MUCH better off with regards to everything else.
Since oil is at $100 bring it on!!
We agree completely. Issue it will be 20 years before we get most of the US fleet turned over to Volt type vehicles and we will still need some kind of portable fuel. I sure cannot see people driving cross country and stopping every 40 miles for 4 hours to charge their batteries. And we still have to come up with powerplants for all those new battery powered cars and it takes 20 years to build some powerplants. Anyway you look at it if we want to greatly reduce oil usage in the next 10 years E85 is the ONLY current technology out there at this time to do it.
-Rocky
The dealer only got some coupes and the 5 door. The 5 doors in XE trim only, but with several (most) of the options installed. And this is what I went for.
So mine is the XE with AT (thought long and hard on manual but with the LA traffic here.. no way man :-) ), heated seats, dual panel moon roof, stabily trak(tm), A/C, 16-inch twin spoke alloy wheels.
Hmm now that I look at it, this is the XE with *all* the options.
The dealer is giving me an iPod support install for free ($299 USD where I am). I was skeptical if that would work on my iPod nano, so we tried it on a Saturn Sky, and Apple must have a nice dev protocol because the Saturn logo showed on the screen of my nano.. then the play list and song names showed on the Sky amber computer display...
They are setting an appointment for me to do this and should be done this week or early next week so we'll see how that goes. That was my only deal breaker- since the XE CD player can't play MP3's, can't have 6-cd changer, and the Astra doesn't have an AUX input.
They were also going to install blue-tooth for $500 (USD) - ouch.. but I decided to pass on that- for now. One reason is that my phone has no blue tooth though I am going to buy a new phone soon.
- Raist
I sat in the five door they had in the showroom. These are light years ahead of the Ion. The 3 door is the prettier of the two, I thought it may just be the pictures I had seen making the 3 nicer looking.
It did not have a sunroof and my hair still brushed the ceiling. Could be the deal killer for me.
The great thing about going electric is that we could care less about the Middle East and all the baggage they have over there. When Israel nukes Iran we would feel bad about the loss of life and do some hand-wringing about innocent civilians getting vaporized. Then we would not care after a week or two. Just like we treat sub-saharan Africa. There is a lot more genocide going on in Africa than the Middle East, but we don't seem to care too much.
True but China and India and the rest of the world will take up anything the US stops taking and the price would probably remain the same. But no doubt that OPEC could do as they did before and turn up the spigot and drop the price to kill the new technolgies.
The benefits are huge. In the five years between 2005 and 2010, the Center for Automotive Research estimates that GM will cut its per-vehicle costs by as much as $5,000, essentially closing a yawning gap with its Asian rivals.
"At GM," says Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Consulting, "what they're taking out of structural cost is phenomenal."
A ranking GM executive, with detailed knowledge of the issue, doesn't dispute the numbers. And the provisions allowing all three companies to essentially pay new hires a third in wages and benefits what they pay traditional union hourlies will dramatically reduce labor costs.