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Rats! What about the one in West Podunk?
Ironically, Porsche itself isn't in hot shape. A certain Dr. Wiedeking, former master of the universe, CEO of the only automaker to make more money than cars, and humiliater of all things hedge fund is finding himself in big, big trouble.
Regards,
OW
One of NYC's famous candy store concoctions comes from Brooklyn-where I grew up, 3.5 blocks away from Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers-it's called the chocolate egg creme:
Put some U-Bet (or Hershey's) chocolate syrup in a tall glass, add about an inch-inch and a half of milk, fill up with seltzer (club soda) while stirring vigorously. If done correctly, you should produce a nice foam on top. Adjust the milk and syrup according to taste. Sooooo good!
Of course, the above drink tastes best with the seltzer being added with velocity from a soda fountain. :shades:
Oh can I still remember my Dad's Candy Store on Central Park Road in Plainview, L.I.!
The cars were the best part because they would gather each Sat and Sunday before the morning ride out to National Speedway @ exit 70 on the LIE!
Those were definatly my best days!
Regards,
OW
Pity those folks who didn't grow up in the NYC area. We may have been rude, but we knew how to live!
When I went to PS 161 in Brooklyn, my mom had a charge account at the nearby candy store. I ate lunch there every school day. Chocolarte malteds were their specialty... ah yes... Rudy and Hy's luncheonette on Crown Street.
Picture's too wide. I think 640px is the maximum width the board supports, outside of that it will cut off the right edge.
Then comes a sudden down turn and having a gazillion Porsche's out front on the lot and more coming in "on the water" isn't really a good thing. Moreover, because the credit crunch is worldwide, the factory doesn't want to take any cars back and certainly other dealers don't want them.
Incidentally, someone said in a post above that FL has 13 (or 14?) Porsche dealers. Wow! Florida's population is 18 million people, not all of them the beautiful, moneyed people you see in Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Miami. Talk about over-dealered! How can a Porsche dealer make any money and offer good service with those kinds of odds, especially when one of these dealers (ie., Champion) is huge and has all the allocations?
Oh, well. Since the guys at the factory seem to have a lot of time on their hands now, I wonder why they don't buy VW? Ooops. Sorry. I guess they went into debt and did and some bonds are now due. VW is now royally teed off at Porsche for having the gall to try this and so THEY are going to buy Porsche.
Yes, that's what I was alluding to earlier. Mr. "most profitable car company in the world" bit off a bit more than he could chew, and now Piech wants him gone. Today. Porsche actually ran completely out of money at the end of March, and was saved by a temporary $700M loan from VW (who they were trying to buy) until they could beg for a $10B bank loan - made possible by handing over some control of the Porsche family mothership.
The German government is also starting to look into Porsche's stock manipulations. It's a big pile of not good.
The Germans sure make great cars, but they are lousy at running their companies. You would never see somebody like Honda pulling these kinds of stunts, or getting into bed with Chrysler, or Rover.
I was never really a fan of the classic EC to be honest. When I was a kid, it was all about the chocolate milk shake.
Regards,
OW
The problem may not be German management as much as an uninformed attempt to ape their American reference group ("Helmut, if these damn American private equity groups like Carlyle and Blackstone can do it, we can to. Just shuffle the cards and deal! Come next summer we'll all be flying NetJets").
Of course. It's not a real shake without real ice cream. They all used to be that way at the soda fountains and malt shops.
They are definitely similar to the American companies in that when times are good, they go on buying sprees, with little to no thought involved. When the times turn sour, those sprees come back to haunt them. Schremp wasn't that different from Nasser.
Honda operates on pretty much the exact opposite philosophy. Reportedly, back when Chrysler was desperately trying to get someone, anyone to partner with them, Toyota took 30 days to reject the offer. Honda rejected it after one day.
Honda certainly has their share of problems. Acura is a mess, they've forgotten how to design a good interior, and they let Toyota and the Prius become synonymous with "hybrid". Another problem is Honda is often too cautious for their own good, leaving room for an upstart like Hyundai to take sales away from them.
05/01/2009 - TORRANCE, Calif. -
Total Acura sales for April were 8,813, down 32.3 percent compared to April 2008, with Acura year-to-date* sales totaling 33,333 units, down 33.4 percent. The all-new TL performance luxury sedan remained as Acura's top selling model in April, a three month sales trend, with TL sales reaching 3,105 units, down 27.6 percent as compared to last year.
The TSX sports sedan continues to be a popular choice and was Acura's next best selling sedan in April with 2,429 units sold; TSX total sales for 2009 are 9,684, up 5.7 percent. Acura light truck sales were led by the MDX luxury SUV with 2,337 units sold, while RDX crossover SUV sales tallied 740.
For media information and high-resolution photos of Acura vehicles, please visit www.acuranews.com. For consumer information, please visit www.acura.com.
*Year-to-date sales based on 101 days for 2009 versus 102 days for 2008. The daily selling rate is calculated with 26 selling days for April 2009 and 26 selling days for April 2008.
Regards,
OW
It seems like it's doing just OK for a brand new model, especially considering most of the competition is a few years old. The BMW 3 series outsells it nearly 3 to 1. Acura still utterly depends on the TL and MDX for survival. The RL and the RDX have been disasters. The ZDX will most likely only sell a few hundred a month. I don't really understand Acura's thinking there at all.
May it never, ever find its way into a 3 Series vehicle. :surprise:
I guess the German word for "improvement" translates literally as "needlessly complicated". I hope this Rube Goldberg shifter never appears in 3 Series vehicles.
Just curious, what are your thoughts on the MB column shifter?
I've been following this turn of events (
Also, it is interesting that the name Auto Union has been brought up as a new name for the Group. Considering that Auto Union relates specifically and only to Audi as its forebearer, one wonders what that is all about. We know Piech is an Audi man, and Audi executives now control all the major top management positions at VAG from Chairman of the Board (Piech) to CEO (Winterkorn), Finance, Marketing and Sales, Design (D'Silva) and so forth. I guess Audi will get the last laugh as it becomes the grand Auto Union. And so it should be.
The MB collumn shifter, to my surprise, is pretty easy to use. Unlike BMW's you can still feel which gear you're into. No I haven't tried the latest one but I tried one in the ML and it's ok.
But overall I agree the old style shifters (both auto and manual) are the best. Hope Audi doesn't come up with anything strange to match.
I just hope it doesn't mean that future products such as R8 successors are killed for encroaching on Porsche territory. Piech has interceded in the past to let Audi do what it wants over Porsche's objections. I wouldn't want to see Audi become Pontiac to Porsche's Chevrolet.
I can't believe the intelligence of these leaders of industry. When they think they know everything, that's when they fail, individually or collectively as a group. Greed seems to rule the day, unfortunately.
Regards,
OW
Indeed. Their latest concepts still have their usual PRNDS layout with a conventional shifter, so it appears they haven't lost their minds yet.
Speaking of wacko shifters, Jaguar's Drive Selector apparently can be shifted into any gear including park while driving! The car's electronics know that you don't want to suddenly park at 70mph, but accidentally selecting P causes the XF to go into "limp home" restricted mode, and I think it has to be fixed by a dealer. Supposedly they are "working on it". The J-gate was dumb, but not that dumb.
The JDS was apparently designed by Apple, and like many of Cupertino's products, it's a lot more form than function.
True, but I think if they did that it would look even more like a taxicab or an old minivan, none of which use column shifters anymore. It's a personal issue I know, but I just can't get past the fact that to me, column shifter = Chevy Caprice. I know they are trying to provide more room on the console, but I'd rather have a real shifter than a few more cup holders.
I'm getting excited (doesn't take much) over the new wave of double clutch shifters like the ones in the GTI and Cayman. I have to experience one for myself.
Right idea, wrong OEM. I think the Jag thing was an ideo concept.
Apple to Revamp BMW's iDrive with iPod-like Interface
I also think you are 180 degrees off, most Apple products (iPods and laptops) are based off human centered design and tasked based analysis. The iPod click wheel makes it extremely easy to navigate 15,000 songs while walking or jogging or riding the bus.
To each their own.
That said, I do agree with your more favorable perspective of Apple products. While they certainly have room for improvement, they clearly offer a lot of functionality... well beyond just good-looking designs... which, of course, they also excel in.
If BMW were to actually give Apple full control over the iDrive design and its user interface, I have no doubt that using an Apple-designed iDrive would be a much-improved experience... in fact, it could easily become the benchmark for others to strive towards.
TM
:surprise: :surprise:
I wouldn't exchange my MacBook for any other laptop. Much more function than form in it, and there is a lot of form. And, durability.
:mad:
Regards,
Jose
Regards,
Jose
PS: I just clicked "edit" for this post with an Apple wired mouse. I didn't get wireless because I didn't want battery problems. :shades:
Je m' Apple
hpowders
Actually in this current situation, Porsche is done unless VW saves it or it raise the necessary capital to sustain itselt. Audi has nothing to worry about as Porsche influence will be diminshed. If anything Audi will excert influence over Porsche in the future if it plays out with Porsche being sucked into VAG.
Regards,
OW
Apple is very good at designing interfaces that make it easy for generally non tech oriented people to use their products, I understand that. If you want to buy somebody's mom an MP3 player, you get her an iPod.
The other side of the sword though is that you are generally limited in what you can do with the products. Apple is extremely controlling (see the ridiculous App store approval/denial process) and that just isn't my idea of "functionality".
The Nokia E90 isn't a particularly pretty phone, but its functional capabilities are nearly endless, and they don't require "jail breaking" the phone or anything of that sort.
I also don't like the "Apple Tax" that comes with their computers. Apple buys their hardware from the same Chinese OEMs as everyone else, they just exploit their software monopoly to charge 50 - 100% more for what underneath is the same product. They could hide it more easily when they were still using those atrocious PowerPC chips, but now that they are Intel like the rest of the world, it's pretty transparently obvious that its all the same hardware.
I've been playing around with the Windows 7 RC, and everything Leopard does, 7 does as well or better. Apple will have to come up with something else to complain about in their "I'm a Mac" ads.
But yes, to each their own.
But my favorite OS, & the one that should keep the boys in Redmond & Cupertino up at night, is Ubuntu Linux, which I'm running on an elderly Dell that I use as a music server. Each release (there are 2 each year - the latest is 9.04) is more polished than the last. Installation couldn't be simpler - for anyone who's killed a weekend reinstalling Windows, it's a laughably easy 30 minute task - & the price is right: free.
I'm no gearhead. Linux used to scare me, but Ubuntu makes it simple. Try it on that old PC that's gathering dust in your basement.
To go straight to the bottom line, we know from intense experience that the PCs are generally better at most things, but when it comes to audio and video production, the Macs do stand out. Most business software simply runs better on the PC, and even the creative graphics design software nowadays runs better on the PC. This was not always the case.
Apple gets tremendous credit for its iPod and iPhone, not as much from its computers. That's the bottom line. That said, their laptops are sweet... and I have no doubts as to why so many folks love them so much... although I'll personally take a Windows-based notebook please.
Also, bottom line is that the folks at Apple have known for years how to make a very good GUI. It has taken Microsoft an eternity to figure this out, and I believe the latest OS from Microsoft, Windows 7, will finally be their best OS to date, and might actually be better than anything Apple has come up with so far. Just a note... I have altogether avoided Vista at my company. Our PCs will go straight from XP Pro to Windows 7, once I know the early glitches are worked out, and all the drivers are available and stable.
I think it's fair to mention that Apple actually developed the first "Windows" interface... but Gates and crew simply stole the idea and got away with it after winning the epic lawsuit.
BTW, the "Palm Pre" PDA/cell phone that is about to release looks very interesting, just in case any of you are into cellular devices or are looking for an "iPhone killer"... LOL. In fact it looks to be an awesome device... maybe even a game-changer.
Consider that Ford's Sync is Microsoft based, and is a very good product. Perhaps BMW will indeed use Apple to help them out with a better iDrive interface. I think I would likely welcome Apple's contribution to an improved iDrive.
TM
You should hurry and grab the release candidate from Microsoft while they are still offering it. It's totally free, and you have a full year to play with it before it expires. 7 is a big improvement over Vista (which is flawed, but nowhere near the horror its been made out to be), and makes XP look absolutely stone age.
I've been experimenting with Ubuntu since the Feisty Fawn release. It is definitely getting better, but there's still a lot of polishing that needs to be done before it can be considered a mainstream alternative. In Windows, if something doesn't work, you download a driver, double click, hit next a few times, and it works.
In Ubuntu, the occasional piece of hardware that doesn't work can be an absolute nightmare. That, and there's still far too much use of the command line. Ubuntu is perfect as an email machine or file server, and it's excellent at keeping the average user out of trouble without requiring a bunch of security software. It's not ready to be a work horse yet, though.
Here's a shameless attempt to be vaguely on-topic:
Apple almost certainly "borrowed" the idea from Xerox, which developed the 1st GUI back in the early 70s at its PARC research facility.