Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/22 for details.
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/22 for details.
Options
General Motors discussions
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Again, not the way to run a company. No surprise Saturn is on the chopping block.
The SS is a different beast altogether, with some 4-5K in engine and suspension upgrades it is a pretty fearsome little track car and recently won a car and driver comparo against the Caliber SRT, The Mazdaspeed 3 and the Civic Si. Mostly based on achieving better lap times on the road course they used.
The Caliber has about the worst looking interior I have ever seen on a modern car. The driving experiance is subpar as well. If anyone thinks this car drives well. Please throw it arround some curvy roads, then repeat the same exercise with a Mazda 3s Five Door. You will learn all you need to know about what works and does not work in an entry level car. The Mazda plays in a whole different league altogether.
And people wonder why no one is rushing to a Chrysler dealership to buy cars......
If someone tries your entry product and does not like it it, he or she will then go elsewhere when they are ready for something a little nicer. If on the other hand you make a high quality good driving econo box, then that favorable impression will translate into that customer looking at the rest of the lineup when they seek somethng more.
The Cavalier and the neon were awful cars. Ford almost had it right with the prior Focus but decided to cut costs and keep the current model on the old platform, the one that underpinned the old Mazda Protege. Meanwhile the newer version of the "C1" chasis sits under the far superior Europeon Focus, Volvo C30 and the curent Mazda3.
The 2009 Mazda3 is a five year platform that still can wipe the floor with the much newer Caliber, Colbalt and Focus in a comparison test anyday of the week. Unfortunatly for all of them Mazda is upgrading the car this year (2010) and that one is going to pack features that only a few years ago belonged on high end luxo cars and interior quality looks miles ahead of anything else in the economy class.
Love the retards that flip you off because you passed em and had to use the right lane to do it.
If....not gonna happen but if.
Company jets.......sell em......we make cars dont we?
Fire everyone in the styling department.
Do what GM does best....V8
Take the same engineers who made the latest V8 and have em make 2, 3, and 4 cyl engines.
And give ME a truckload of cash................and I'm gone!
Well as said GM Asia/Europe etc sells plenty of Diesel powered vehicles. Yes they aren't yet of the "clean type" but it's on the way if I'm not totally misinformed.
I don't know if you all do hybrids because it's greener or because it's cheaper. If it's the cheaper line then it's not hard to understand you wait and will applaud the arrival of "clean type" diesel to North American shores.
However if it's because it's greener then you all better write your Congress man, the President etc.. because "clean type" diesel or not diesel will never be green sorry clean in the long run. It might pass the type inspection when it rolls off the assembly line but two years down the track it's not clean anymore.
I live in London UK and I drive my LPG powered Seville (1999) or pedal my bike (very green with the exception of some amount of BioMethane). I daily need to breath the noxious fumes of year old "clean diesel" engines and trust me they aren't clean anymore. It might be the performance chip, it might be bad maintenance, deliberate acts etc.. but the fact is that you can feel the amount of NOX, unburnt fuel, particles!! etc that they spew out and it's not fun especially when you are on a bike just behind them.
Sorry carbon foot print my behind, I rather breath then save a 20% of CO2 running a dirty diesel, because diesels are dirty no matter what you do! Sure you can run them on cooking oil, but do you think that will emit less NOX, unburnt fuel, particles!! etc ?
Sorry just had to say it, I know it's negative but I hope you guys and girls never get a lot of diesel cars over there,,
Cheers
Dyna
Not really buying the 1-year and they are dirty again. I drive behind dozens of the last-gen Jetta TDI's and they aren't even of the cleanest technology available and they still don't stink by my standards. And they are each 4 years old or more.
Here is the truth standing next to the exhaust on my 1 year old Passat TDI was not as unpleasant as standing next to the exhaust on my new Sequoia gas guzzler.
Na not every car will be dirty again after a year but quite a few are (especially high mileage once). Diesel is a lot harder to clean that a gasoline engine, it's therefor easier to break.
In the US where just a few % of the fleet is diesel there will no doubt be more smoking gasoline engines than diesel once. If it was the other way around there would be no point talking which one is cleaner -- it would be kind of self evident.
I'm just speaking from the experience living on this side of the Atlantic where diesel make up nearly 50% of the sale. I simply don't wish the same thing happened over at your end...
I'm all for green stuff, but diesel ain't one of them in the long run.. Rather see, E85, biogas etc.. Well will use the zip lock now and try to not voice it again .. I know it's negative and they probably are some die hard diesel fans here
Cheers Dyna
Please check out the What would it Take for YOU to buy a diesel car discussion too. (see the link for that in a post above this) if you want to discuss diesel specifically.
1) Keep Chevrolet and Cadillac and dump the other brands. GM's market share only justifies having two active brands.
2) Eliminate all bonuses and stock options for executives. They make enough with just their salaries.
3) No more unions. The UAW can fight it by striking which would bankrupt the company and everyone would be out of work or they can accede and save jobs. Modern labor laws can protect these workers, but do away with ridiculous perks like job banks.
Then, a series of bad missteps (not redesigning the S-Series after 5 years, the Vue and L-Series being too late, etc.) and then when Saturn got folded into traditional GM and the polymer panels went away, I knew that was the end of the road for Saturn.
Saturn really should have been a car company that stayed to its roots- affordable, reliable, plastic-bodied cars (and the Vue) that were somewhat quirky and brought non-GM buyers into the GM family. Once those buyers got in, Saturn could upsell them into a Chevy, Buick, Pontiac, etc. after a great ownership experience with a Saturn.
The Relay and Outlook are/were mistakes. Not having a well-defined mission for Saturn is really what killed it in the end. That, and becoming folded into the rest of GM. Having the separate plant, labor contract, dealer network, product, etc., really helped Saturn get the number of buyers it picked up in the 1990s.
Since Opel is the primary source for many Saturn products, drop the Saturn name and re-introduce the products as Opel if line is not discontinued.
2. Reduce passenger car convenience and power options. Only offer the most popular ones. Too many options increase consumer purchasing and operational confusion and adds to manufacturing, mechanical and servicing complexity unnecessarily. Many are never understood or used by end users.
3. Reduce or eliminate excessive or bizarre exterior colors and interior fabric choices. Three grades of fabric should suffice. Restrict fabric patterns to three per fabric grade. Bizarre exterior colors and equally bizarre fabrics damage resale values.
4. Eliminate any trim line that fails to sell without reservation.
They do need to cut brands. If that needs a government assisted bankruptcy then do it.
Right now they are nibbling around the edges. They need to make some deep cuts.
I wonder if it's actually a contractor setup where GM has nothing to lose and makes a percentage. Sort of like the departments in a store like Lowes or HD where what appears to be part of the store is actually a contractor/vendor taking the risk with merchandise and all.
Frankly if OnStar were priced more like a Walmart product, I suspect the penetration of the potential market would be much, much greater and overall profits higher despite having a lower price to the individual user.
You've brought up a good subject and I hope someone has some data.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Can Paying for a Telematics Service Actually Save You Money?
Not sure what data you can gleam from the lead story since it focuses on potential driver savings, but here's the link:
What's the Best Value: Paying for a Telematics System or Buying Separate Services
Sorry I'm late in responding to this, but I just came across it today. Saturn's 3.0 V-6 was deceptive, in that while the hp might have seemed low, at 181, the car itself was actually pretty quick. Edmund's did a comparison test back in 2000 of 9 family sedans, and the L-series was the quickest of the bunch, both in 0-60 and quarter mile. The results from that test can be seen here, and on that page there are other links to the test.
Now overall, the L-series didn't score so hot. It came in 7 out of 9, beating out only and Impala and an Intrigue.
And also, this was 2000. The Accord was greatly improved for 2003 (even if a lot of people complained about it being too big; I was thinking that finally, they made an Accord in a size that Iliked!). Anyway, even with the 240 hp 3.0 V-6, I've seen 0-60 times on the Accord/automatic around the 7-7.2 second range. The L-series did it in 7.3. So they were pretty close.
The L-series was also on the low-end of the midsized spectrum. I don't remember width really being a problem, but do recall the backseat being a bit tight for legroom. It was probably more of what the Europeans thought of as a midsized car, moreso than what the Americans would have thought.
I guess if I were to give GM ANY long term chance, and I were the theoretical CEO, I would axe everything but Chevrolet and Cadillac, and focus on those two brands as soon as was feasible. This is pretty much how everyone else that you'd want to emulate does things...one lower scale brand and one upscale brand (Toyota/Lexus, VW/Audi, Honda/Acura, etc). The rest is a waste of resources. Focus is what is needed and the best way to achieve it is to have two core brands. I probably also would have pursued some kind of pre-structured bankruptcy. That's the only way to fundamentally restructure fast enough and cheap enough to matter. Yes, you'd lose some customers. But you would emerge with a viable business plan. As it is, you may lose a little less customers, but your business plan is a bottomless pit. Long term, I think the "bankruptcy-phoenix from the ashes" approach is more viable than the current Titanic school of thought (we can't sink/not enough lifeboats/into the fog/refuse to face harsh reality). In other words there are just too many problems with GM internally to fix at once no matter how dedicated or intelligent they are. Too many holes in the boat. They need a totally new, smaller boat. Customers will come back post-bankruptcy if they see that you have REALLY reinvented yourself. As it is now, most people just see this as more of the same old, same old, and hoary GM will continue to croak along only with continued taxpayer infusions of cash.
In truth most car electronics are now realatively cheap to manufacture and install. I personally prefer Honda's packaging style for these things rather than having them a'la carte, I think in the end it makes the car cheaper on a feature by feature basis.
But you are correct, in the sense that I am not sure how many people pay a lot for an econo car that has power leather seats, xenon headlights, 5.1 ss, etc...
But Mazda seems to think so, hence for arround 24K the 3 can be outfitted like a Lexus or Caddy.
Keep in mind that the 2003-2007-Accord to my knowledge never lost a comparrison test against the same generation family cars and even defeated the redesigned 2007 Camry in several tests.
The one thing that Honda has always been very good at in the past is engineering its cars ahead of its competition. It is that engineering, along with the fit and finish which makes these cars have a higher resale value and worth the extra money. In a sense the 2008 is a disappointment, the car is still really good but the competition, has in many ways caught up, especially the Altima, the Malibu and the Mazda6 which are excellent products.
The Aura is a good start and corrects many of the faults of the LS, it still is not there yet and the Mailbu appears to be a better application of the platform. In my opinion if GM took the funds expended for the G6 and Aura and poured them instead into the Malibu, the 'Bu would be the clear top of the class in the family sedan division, it is pretty close to the class leaders as is.
Bought a Nissan Altima instead.
What more could they have poured into the Malibu? I've driven all three and they all drive the same which is to be expected given the identical underpinnings. Out of all of them, the Aura had the best driving position and the interior was the least rental feeling. But none of them are anything sporty, except maybe the Aura with the bigger wheels and quicker steering that I was surprised about. They're all too big to be any fun though, same goes for the Accord and Camry btw. The only real blast to drive in the segment is the Mazda6 and maybe the Altima (this one you'll pay for in ride quality)
They haven't put any money into the G6, other than its refresh for 09 models. Which I believe was a waste of money, when they should either get rid of the car or re-do the whole car. It needs a make over, not a new gaudy bumper and mixed matched interior radio and dash. The Aura has some major potential, if they had just took it a bit further, it could keep up with the rest. I seriously was impressed when I saw it first come out. But, that WOW factor didn't last long. Its sorta blah. But, with that said, the Accord is also sorta casual. But, it can hold its own. You can get a base model Accord or civic, and still feel the engineering.
GM tries, they really do, but they put a car out, but its just half effort. If you are going to do it, then find out if you have the money to do it all the way. Its been said before, but if they downsized, get rid of the some of the duplicate SUV's, they could have some major money to really put some great quality in their new cars.
After driving my 08 G6, I have a rare version of it, it has the 4cyl, leather, roof, sound. I actually love it. I can see why people buy them, or GM cars, because GM really does think about what the driver wants with all the features. But, I think all those features sugar coat it. Without them, the car wouldn't be much. A G6 in a base model would not compare to a base model Accord, or civic. Its not like the engine is anything to really get excited about with its crazy picky transmission. Certainly not like my 06 Accord or 08 Jetta I have had. The new 6spd transmission probably fixed alot. I have not driven that yet. I plan to though. Just to compare.
So....lol... my relationship with GM is sorta like a love hate, I think I want to love them, because they have some major potential, but mad that I am supporting them now. I hope for us, that they do some major thinking, and show us what they have.
I find it odd that of the three epsilon cars the Malibu gets really good reviews and ranks highly in CR while the Aura and G6 are heavily critized.
The platform has a lot of potential. I Believe that Chevy could do an "SS" type Mailbu with more aggressive throttle response, firmer suspension and 18 inch low profile tires, ground effects package, faux carbon fiber trim. This would be one for the TL/ BMW 3 Series wanabees.
There should be a Malibu coupe as well, to replace the G6 and take one the Altima 2 door and Accord 2 door. I believe that in the next few years that personal semi-luxury sporty coupes will become popular again.
The front drive Pontiacs are a waste of effort, all of the resources allocated for these cars should go to Chevrolet. In GM's lineup Chevy should be the Toyota/Honda/Ford/Nissan applinace fighter.
If Pontiac survives its best use would be niche outfit, with high performance RWD sedans, coupes and roadsters. If not then Pontiac should be dropped altogether. What is the point of it selling inferior versions of Chevy products?
The point is Buick/GMC dealers wanted "Chevys" to sell to their customers, but couldn't become a Chevy dealer, usually because there is already a Chevy dealer in close proximity.
I think there really should be only 2 applications of the Epsilon chasis, one should be a "Joe Six Pack" version, The Malibu, this would be GM's Accord/Camry fighter. and an upscale version (Buick possibly) to take on the ES 350/ Acura TL. Any badging beyond that is a waste of resources.
Same thing with Lambda X-over, there is no need for 4 itenerations of this same car. Concentrate on 2, Drop the GMC and Saturn ( The brand is definately going anyway) Keep the Chevy version to go against the Pilot/Highlander/CX 9. An upscale version to go against the MDX/RX.
No company should produce products that compete with itself. GM needs only one model for each purpose, and to target each specific demographic. Eliminating excess duplication cuts costs. If GM is to survive it must shrink to fit the times.
Are you saying Toyo shouldn't market the Camry and the ES? They're essentially the same car. Honda shouldn't market the Civic and Accord with models parallel in the Acura line?
Are you saying Marathon shouldn't market Speedway gasoline? SuperAmerica gas?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
In both cases, they may be the same platform, but they don't compete with each other directly. The Lexus/Acura versions are much higher trims, more expensive, with features not found on the "peon" version. That's like marketing an Enclave and a Traverse: they're in different price strata. While you really COULD get away with making them both trims of the same model (and they do in some countries), we Americans are snobs and our luxury cars must have different nameplates from the cars for the unwashed masses.
However, what difference is there between the Cobalt and the G5? Malibu and Aura? Equinox and Torrent? 99% of the time the only difference is sheetmetal and badge.
In the General's case there is too much price overlap in the Aura, G6 and Malibu, which actually dilutes the platform and is confusing to the customer. It has always been a flaw in GM's strategy not to specify its brands. Every brand trying to be everything to everybody does not work.
When I was ready to trade my BMW, I tried to buy a Cadillac CTS but it would have cost me $5k more than the Mercedes C350 I ended up buying (and about $2k more than the BMW 335 I considered). The MB is smaller, but much more opulent. When I went to trade my 2006 Honda Odyssey for a 2007 GMC Acadia, I again found the difference to be about $5k (versus a loaded 2007 Odyssey Touring). So, although I really wanted the Acadia, I bought the Odyssey.
When GM's 0% financing came out again, the dealer from whom I bought the G6 called. I took the Odyssey up to the lot and found that loaded Acadias were now stickering near $50K! Are they nuts? I can buy a Mercedes ML350 and have enough left over to put 50% down on another G6 for my other kid! I actually felt bad for the salesman
Advice to GM? Try putting realistic prices on your Moroney sticker and reduce dependency on silly incentives. I'm not suggesting you use Saturn's "No negotiation" strategy, but you've got to realize that no sane person is going to pay $50K for an Acadia.
The point of that, I think, is to get the "big score" in rural areas, where they can negotiate less: car dealers almost NEVER negotiate around my area, because there's comparatively few. Luckily, I work near White Plains, and can always hit them over the head with that and get them to move, but a lot of people are not willing to drive an hour-plus to go to another dealer.
Of course, even here GM shoots itself in the foot: though one must drive an hour to look at another Acadia, one can drive 2 minutes north and look at an Outlook, or 1 minute south and look at a Traverse. Curiously, the Chevy dealer doesn't tend to move much either...
Stolen :shades:
generation Aura (Opel Insignia) to Buick who will market it as a
2010 LaCrosse. I have a 2007 Aura XR and guess what.........it
has virtually NO trade-in value even though it only has 10,500
miles on it and 3 years left on the warranty !! Anybody want an
Aura XR ???
Saturns did not have high resale values even when they were doing ok. Sorry you had to find out the hard way.