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Comments
I guess it depends on what you prefer. I like cars that can handle and stop as well as they go fast.
With this ineffectual nerd:
either. I think it looks cheap.
In an earlier post you said the RDX's interior was only twice as good as a Cobalts, and you said the Cobalt was 1/3 the price (nevermind the RDX is bigger, has more power, ect).
You also said the Cobalt's interior was "nice" to you. So if that's nice, and the RDX's interior is 2X as good, how can the RDX look cheap?
Sounds like someone's been caught with a double standard and PRO GM bias here.
I seen no reason nor evidence to supsect SMarty666 has been anything but 100% honest here.
That being said, if he did buy all of his GM's used, he still had horrible reliability and dependability. That is no excuse for GM anyway. I know many Toyota and Honda owner's who bought their Japanese vehicles used and they have all had wonderful experiences. This fact is captured in resale values of used vehicles. GM's = worthless used while the Big 3 in Japan all have good resale values.
I get tired of hearing it for a different reason. I get tired of knowing GM is still around thanks to my tax money when all of these people had all of these problems and GM stuck them with the bill to fix it.
Everytime I hear these stories I wonder why GM treated them the same way Chrysler treated me (with indifference). Why did they never STAND UP and STAND BEHIND their products????
It is a shame to know that these two companies never stood behind their own products and always left their customers footing the bill for things that should not break down so commonly and frequently.
I always worry and wonder why a car is on a flatbed truck if it is new? Why couldn't it be driven?
Oh come on now, how tall are you? I'm sure everyone else is perfectly fine with the height of the doors and window frames.
Regards,
OW
Not necessarily.
The Cobalt Starts out at $15 grand, whereas the RDX is about $32,500. So relatively speaking, the RDX CAN have a much better interior, yet "look cheap" for it's price point, compared w/ other vehicles in it's class, like the X3, Q5, RX 350, Enclave, etc. And the Cobalt's interior may strike him as nice compared to the base Corolla, Civic, Accent, or Sentra.
Hey, they've always stood behind me and my cars w/ my service needs.
Don't forget, CHrysler was doing OK when they "merged" with Daimler. The Germans gutted that company, and left them for dead.
Have you actually stood next to this car? It is a tall vehicle. My wife is only 5" tall. I am 5"8". The door corner is at a dangerous height.
I wouldn't say they were doing OK back then...would you? By the way, the then-GM Chairman was AGAINST bailing out Chrysler.... :surprise:
Regards,
OW
I wouldn't say they were doing OK back then...would you? By the way, the then-GM Chairman was AGAINST bailing out Chrysler....
One thing I'll say for the first bailout, was that Chrysler actually DID pay their loans back, and in full,with interest, in 1983, years ahead of schedule. And didn't cost the taxpayer a dime. That time, at least.
And back when Daimler took them over, Chrysler was on top of the world. They had the most up-to-date fleet of the domestics, the biggest marketshare in ages, were sitting on a ton of cash, and were building fairly reliable cars for the most part.
What Daimler did was push back new designs, raid the cash, mortgage all the property to the hilt, and then toss the rest over their shoulders like an empty beer can.
As an example of products getting pushed back, the replacements for the Intrepid/Concorde/300 were originally supposed to come out in 2002. They would offer a choice of FWD, RWD, or AWD, and engine choices would have included the 3.7 V-6, 4.7 V-8, and the Hemi. And there were going to be two different styles. One would be a low-slung, sporty style, in the vein of that late 1990's Charger concept that was making the rounds before the DCX takeover. The other would be a more upright car suitable for duty as a full-sized family car. Dodge and Chrysler would both offer each style.
Instead what we got was a push back to roughly March of 2004, when the 300 was launched as an early '05. Sales seemed strong at first...until you take into account that one model, the 300, was now filling the shoes of the departed Intrepid, Concorde, LHS, and 300M.
But I thought your GM vehicles never had any problems like Lemko?
Absolutely NOT TRUE AT ALL. You are so far off base here that it borders on the ludicrous. Chrysler was never on top of the world, they went bankrupt in 1979 and got bailed out, then proceeded to go bankrupt and be bailed out again for the 2nd time in 2008. That's less than 30 years of patheticness. Owens Corning sells asphalt roof shingles that last longer then that!
They were sitting on a ton of cash because they built vehicles for about $2,000 to 4,500 dollars of such low substandard quality, and then sold them off for $15K to $25K. It was all a big fraud.
Also, Chrysler's reliablility rankings were always in the pits, and they were always bottom feeders when it came to dependability. I can pull out old CR magazines and yearly summary books from CR if you want. Chrysler always got black dots all over the place. Their vehicles were always on the "Used cars to avoid list" year after year. I should have listened to CR.
to relate this to GM, i would not consider any post 1975 mopar car over a GM.
i hear there might be another domestic manufacturer too, but let's not go on another non-GM tangent?
Don't get me wrong these are all great cars but what % of car buyers can afford these vehicles or are willing to spend that kind of money on these vehicles???
Last time i checked the average income was like $30,000 a year. Now is someone making this amount likly to buy a vehicle listed above? Its just simple math.
And yes im well aware that they have the 2008 Malibu 2010 Nox and 2011 Cruze but they are so damn late to the game that everyone else are too busy enjoying their CRV/Rav4/Sportage/Mazda3/Camry/Sonata to even give GM a 2nd chance.
How was GM #1 for decades and decades? You old guys know better than me so lemme know. From my understanding GM's sucess started at the Chevrolet Impala because it was a very attractive automobile that was practical and everyone could afford.
Lastly i would just like to point a finger at Hyundai and Kia an Ford. Have you noticed their recent market share gains and recent releases/upcoming releases and market focus for their new product line????
Nice. :sick:
I wish I had a stash of Obama bumper stickers around so I could go put one on every single one of their cars they had on the lot for sale.
Government Motors baby :shades:
Yeah, but they had the "Grand Sport" models....
2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 / 2023 Mercedes EQE 350 4Matic / 2022 Icon I6L Golf Cart
Rather than make a turbo Vette, and OMG get help from Buick engineers to do it, keep making a profit on cars that were selling at the time, and there would be a reason to pay much more for the Vette nope, you made our Vette look silly, you gotta go.
Aerodynamics saved Ford's butt in the 1980's, with cars like the T-bird, Taurus, and yes, even the Tempo. But I think they had the opposite effect on Buick. An '81-87 Regal has sort of a tough, muscular look to it, even with the standard skinny tires, wire wheels, and landau roof. It's a car that can be almost anything you want it to be, with just a few simple changes. In base form, it was a decent coupe. In Limited form, it could be quite luxurious. Get a V-8 and the F41 suspension, and it wasn't a bad handler or performer. Or go with a T-type or Grand National, if you want something faster. Throw whitewalls and wire hubcaps on it if you're old (or like that sort of thing), or go with some rally wheels and blackwall tires if you want something a bit more youthful. (Or nowadays, throw 22's on it, which seems to be all the rage. :P )
I think the problem though, is that all of GM's personal luxury coupes in the 1981-87 timeframe were like that. Sort of a mix-and-match, to where you could take any Regal, Monte Carlo, Cutlass Supreme, or Grand Prix, and turn it into a cheap coupe, a luxury car, a sporty car, young person's car, old people's car, and everything in between.
That muddled the image in a lot of buyer's eyes, so GM tried to get each brand to focus more on a target niche. Pontiac would go back to performance. Ironically, something that had been missing from the 1981-87 Grand Prix, as it never got a hopped-up engine like the Monte SS, Cutlass 4-4-2, or Buick T-type/Grand National did. Olds was going to try to go for import buyers, with all that "not your father's Oldsmobile" nonsense that alienated the traditional buyers, but didn't fool enough import buyers to sustain them. And Buick was going to concentrate on a bit more mature, traditional market. Unfortunately, I think they went TOO mature. Those faithful to Buick stayed with them, but as they got older they either quit driving or bought cars less frequently. And the newer crops of 50-somethings, instead of buying Buicks, were going for BMW's, Benzes, and Audis if they could afford them, and Toyotas if they couldn't.
The cars were selling............we gota pull the plug.
We need better EPA numbers, yeah thats it.
Nobody wants a V6 Buick thats faster than a V8 Vette in the 1/4 mile that happens to cost less also.
We're GM we can do no wrong.
Well yeah, not by 1960's musclecar standards. But by the early/mid 1980's, a midsized car with 180 hp that could do 0-60 in 8 seconds was starting to look pretty tempting! Chrysler wasn't building anything like that anymore, although they were starting to go the turbo route with their smaller cars, and some of those could be pretty quick, especially with a stick. Ford was getting some pretty impressive numbers out of the 302. If you bought it in a Mustang or a Mark VII LSC that is. Otherwise, you were stuck with the generic 140-150 hp engine that went in T-birds, Crown Vics, etc. Closest thing Ford made to an affordable musclecar around that time would've been the 1984-85 LTD LX, a 4-door sedan with a 165 hp 302 and quicker gearing that would do 0-60 in about 9 seconds. Laugh if you want to, but back in 1985, it was a pretty big deal if a car could break 10 seconds in 0-60. Heck, a lot of them were still pushing 13-15 seconds or more!
Unfortunately though, sales on those personal luxury coupes WERE falling. The coupe market in general was drying up. The Cutlass Supreme was the #4 selling car in 1984, and it dropped to #9 for 1985, and continued to slip. Now granted, that includes sedan sales, but the vast majority of these things were sold as coupes. Most sedan buyers went for the Cutlass Ciera.
Ironically, the performance versions kept seeing increased sales! The best years for the Monte SS and the Grand National were 1986-87. I'd have to look up the stats to be sure, but I think something like 35-40% of all Montes were SS models by then, while the Grand National accounted for something like 25% of all Regal sales. The Olds 442, however, never did too well. I think it only sold maybe 3-5,000 per year. And Pontiac's Grand Prix 2+2 of 1986 fame was a joke. It looked like a more awkward version of the Monte SS Aerocoupe, but just had a standard 150 hp 305 under the hood. Same engine as a 1986 Monte Carlo base model I once had. Not a bad engine for what it was, but not a performance car.
It's a shame that GM didn't update these cars to keep up with the times, rather than just rake in the profits and slowly let them die, before replacing them with FWD models. They could have gone the same route Ford did with the T-bird/Cougar, keeping them RWD but still advancing them. Ultimately I'm sure the plug would have been pulled, as it was with the T-bird/Cougar, but if GM did it right, they could've gotten maybe another 10-12 years out of those RWD coupes.
I did mean '98, not '79. When I say OK, I mean OK, not stupenous. The first gen new Ram truck was selling like hotcackes, compared w/ the previous gen, everybody was Hemi crazy, the LH cars were well received, and the Neon's were selling well, not to mention the Caravan was still on top then. That's not to say they didn't have their issues with quality, as we all know.
But Daimler, instead of treating them as equals, treated them as the red headed stepchild, then when things got ugly, they sold them. How can you "sell" your "equal" partner?
Uh, honey, you're going to have to wait on that new LaCrosse...
How many miles on it? Has it done any towing?
Regards,
OW
Heck, I thought stuff like that was just a normal part of the aging process in a car...although I wouldn't expect it to be happening in a 2007 car.
I'm impressed that GM is stepping up and replacing the parts, though. I wonder if there's something they do to the brake lines and fittings and such these days to make them last longer than back in the old days? Galvanized lines, maybe? I know rubber technology has improved as well, so hoses should last longer than they used to. So I guess GM just goofed and accidentally put in a part that's substandard...by today's standards, at least?
Now that I think about it, my uncle's '97 Silverado needed a bunch of brake work done to it back in 2003, when it was only 6 years old! It had brake lines that were rusted through in places. My '85 Silverado lost its rear brakes a couple months ago, but I think it was partly my doing. After we had the first blizzard back in December, I got a bit lazy digging the driveway out. I dug out just about to the snowbank that the plows threw up, but then figured I'd just get a running start with the truck and knock through the rest of it. NOT a good idea, when a lot of that "snow" was actually chunks of ice! The truck hit the snow bank, smashed through part of it, but then ended up riding up on it and had to be dug out.
Then, just to test the truck's braking (yeah, that's it...it was all in the name of safety.
But, that truck's also 25 years old, and this was the first time it needed any brake work other than just pads and shoes. So I'm not gonna complain to GM about it.
GM and the Buick dealer took good care of us. The rep from GM called me every other day to keep me aprised of the situation. It did take awhile for the parts to come in.
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/25/quick-spin-2010-buick-lacrosse-cxs-gets-hiper- -w-video/
Chevy Cruze
Chevy Volt
Buick Regal
Cadillac CTS Coupe
Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon/ Escalade facelift ?
Acadia/Enclave facelift ?
2011:
Chevy Orlando?
Buick Cruze-based compact?
2012:
Cadillac XTS
Chevy Malibu
2013
New CTS?
Not many new vehicles in the pipelines now that GM's divisions got cut into half. GM should now be able to use the development cost to create outstanding vehicles, where previously had to develop so many cars to please all dealers.