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Rocky
The optional swivel seats were supposed to make it easier for women to get into & out of the car gracefully. (You have to remember that in the late 50s, most middle & upper-class women didn't leave the house in pants.) When the driver opened her door, the seat would pivot to the left.
I didn't realize "gadgetology" was features like swivel seats back then.
Rocky
As you might guess, it didn't work too well.
Rocky
Didn't Monte Carlos have swivel seats as an option.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I think that you're right, although my memory fails me here.
T-Birds in the mid 60s also had that option, I think.
From 2006 -
Japanese Cars to Outsell U.S. for the first time
Californians will buy more Japanese cars and trucks than domestic models in 2006, something that has never happened before despite the state's long-held reputation for loving Toyotas and Hondas. By the time the year ends next week, state residents will have bought 938,839 Japanese brand vehicles and 859,206 from the traditional Big Three nameplates, including Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, according to a forecast by the state's auto dealers. That would give Japanese automakers a 44.8 percent share of the California market, compared with 41.0 percent for the Big Three. Nationally, through November according to Automotive News, domestic brands have a 53.9 percent share of the U.S. market, while Japanese brands have 34.8 percent share. The state numbers come from a forecast prepared for the California Motor Car Dealers Association by Auto Outlook, a Pennsylvania researcher. It includes retail and fleet sales.
Don't forget, Rocky, that back then a heater and outside review mirrors were seen as luxury options. Heck, I remember when power windows and a tape player were luxury items in the late 1970s. Putting a record player in the car had to seem like a pretty high-tech idea.
The way my lower back feels today I think those swivel seats sound like a good idea. Maybe with a little booster, too?
This car had nothing. You name it - air, power steering & brakes, power windows, whatever you can think of - & the Rambler didn't have it. Three-speed manual on the column ("3 on the tree") with non-synchro 1st gear, 4-wheel drum brakes, rubber mats instead of carpeting & rear windows that didn't roll down. Dad agreed to pay for just 2 options: a cigarette lighter ($8 extra) & an AM radio with 1 speaker ($25 extra).
Dad wouldn't pay $30 extra for electric windshield wipers. The standard wipers were powered by engine vacuum. As you drove up a long hill (of which there were many in upstate NY), the wipers would slow down & eventually stop. Then, after you had reached the top & started back down, the wipers would speed up. Every other manufacturer had dropped vacuum-powered wipers 20 years earlier. Not American Motors, though.
Even by 1960s standards, that car was a stripper.
It was slow, noisy, uncomfortable, handled badly, had lousy brakes & failed to impress women. I don't feel at all nostalgic about that car.
The dealer claimed you do not need air in Alaska. What he did not realize is it works great to keep dust out which was a big issue where we lived on a dirt road.
Even the cheapest cars are equipped with AC now.
You should have ordered the "impress women" option, $36.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
-Rocky
After sales started sliding in the mid-1960s, AMC attempted to liven up its image with peppier engines, and one move was to stuff the 343 V-8 into the 1967 American.
One problem was that the hardtop body wasn't stiff enough to handle the engine's power, so aggressive acceleration would flex the body and crack the windshield.
At one of the Carlisle shows there was an original-condition 1974 Gremlin for sale. The interior workmanship was unbelievably awful...parts merely overlapped each other, instead of fitting together, and there were huge gaps between the various parts of the instrument panel.
I learned to drive on a 1973 AMC Gremlin...made my aunt's Pinto seem like a Lexus.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit a head of Lexus :shades:
-Rocky
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
-Rocky
-Rocky
http://www.jdpower.com/autos/ratings/sales-satisfaction
-Rocky
Wheres Infiniti or Acura????
-Rocky
I have noticed the tides are turning the last couple of years. The Japanese quality has been matched by the others and now car brands like Toyota are slipping and sliding back to reality. Toyota may be the sales leader right now but I think their time is coming and GM will take that top spot once again as sales leader in the not so distant future.
-Rocky
I live in a well-to-do area. (Regrettably, not much of that rubs off on me.) I drove into town this morning to run my usual Saturday morning errands, & I spotted 8 E-Class MBs, 4 5-series BMWs, 2 CTS Caddies & l Lexus GS.
There's a lot of Wall Street money around here, & when the big bonus checks are cut in December & January, we see a lot of new German iron. The hot-shot young investment banker might buy a $45K Lexus RX for his wife, so that she can negotiate the speed bumps at the mall, but he wants at least a $60K BMW 550i for himself. If he's had a particularly good year, he might drop $100K or more on an S-Class.
It might be different in the South or Midwest, but on the East & West coasts, nothing says success like an expensive German car.
If you want Cadillac to be Number One again, you have to figure out a way to get today's rich folks out of the German showrooms. Because even if Lexus & Infiniti disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, Cadillac would still be a distant #3 behind Mercedes Benz & BMW.
Of course, the militant Toyexus & Hondura supporters will just say, service-wise, it's a non-issue for their cars since they never have to see the inside of a service department.
??? How did you come up with that?
For '06
BMW.......274K
MB........248K
Cadillac..227K
Not quite so distant.
In April '07, the E-Class Benz, which is the sales leader in this segment, moved more cars than Lexus & Infiniti combined. Together, the E-Class & 5-series accounted for more units than the other 4 cars in this price bracket put together.
Keep in mind that I'm sympathetic to Cadillac. I like the STS, which will be significantly improved for the 2008 model year, & am looking forward to seeing the new CTS. I'd like to see these cars succeed. But you can't win the war unless you understand your enemy, & in my area the German brands enjoy overwhelming dominance of the luxury market. I suspect that this is true in all of the key coastal markets. That's why I don't understand why some of you focus on the Japanese brands.
BMW is already there, IMO - they just retain a solid share via their focus on handling.(ie - it's prone to break, but dang what a ride)
Mercedes... People are just about to go elsewhere, and soon. I give then 3-4 years to fix this mess they are in or it's over. In fact, at this point, as much as I love Mercedes, I'd buy an Infinity or a Cadillac because they'll cost half as much to keep running over their lifetime.
-Rocky
http://blogs.automotive.com/1012614/exotic-cars/porsche-28k-per-car-jackpot/inde- x.html
They didn't really make that much per car but some magazine took how much their stated profits were and divided it by how many cars they sold. The thing is not all of those profits caome from building cars and not all of those profits were even real profits. You have all kinds of weird accounting business going on when buying 30 something percent of VW.
-Rocky
The A-B class, caliber, patriot, compass, ect share parts.
If DiamlerChrysler is still around, maybe the Pacifica and R class will share more parts.
There were rumors that the next M-class and next Grand cherokee may share parts too.
Cadillac is a great company and I finally figured out why the 1967eldorado's hood was a mile long! Thats when GM was planning to use a v12 engine!! Now gm is combing its 3.6l engine to make a VV(W) 12 engine! I predict that this engine will see use in the next Cts-v, corvette, and XLR.
-Cj
This Artfully Road-Ready Xover with 260+hp, 30MPG highway, AWD, 6speed auto, and a nice shape will be great. Imagine The equinox shape, CTS(2008) headlamps, Escalade grille, and priced at $34k. That automatically improves cadillacs sales!
-Cj