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Comments
Toyota Camry has dropped to No. 12 in overall vehicles.
That is exactly what you wrote.
Why bring up Camry as opposed to the #2 through #11 sellers? This is a GM thread.
You made no mention of incentives, year-to-date sales.
Nice blinders you have there.
If an earthquake hit Michigan, the import fanboys would be cheering the destruction of Detroit giving no thought to the death and destruction of their own countrymen. They sure don't have any regard for their financial well-being or that of their families.
They'll come, share a link to a story about a grandmother who shifted in to Reverse, then Drive, with "both hands firmly on the wheel" in a far-fetched SUA story and then when we point out the obvious flaws in their story, no response. They return later with more outrageous stories or to post about Malibu sales.
Fanboys have a complete inability to acknowledge when they are wrong.
FWIW you're not like that, but half the import basher/domestic fanboys who hang out in that thread are.
Meanwhile, I don't know if it's me or if this topic has gotten even more "Oh, yeah?" "Sez you!" of late.....
Sigh.
Because Camry was the former best selling car; Malibu replaced Camry in that position last month. Of course I needed to mention Camry.
Yeah, but you didn't HAVE to get that a/c fixed right away. I don't really think a/c is all that necessary in a car with a convertible roof. :P
On a serious note though, sorry it happened to you. Did it give any warning signs, or just suddenly die? I had to replace my Intrepid's a/c, along with some other components, back in early 2009, but it was partly my fault. I knew it was low on freon, and was going to try to nurse it along until warm weather. But one day while running the defrost, the a/c compressor seized up!
If Ford didn't do anything else right, it did heaters and A/C very well. The A/C should've been spitting snowballs at me with it set for 60F and Max A/C during the recent heat. My 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis got so cold you could actually see frost forming on the vents.
Probably GM Marketing had identified this as one of the main hair colors, of the elderly women who would be riding in the vehicle.
I see GM stock today is under $29/share. Any GM fans running to buy some, to support their boys?
Seems to me, a "hot seller" shouldn't need a price cut... :confuse:
Oh wait...
610 available
I dunno, but I always remember the line "Blue-haired old dragon" from "Mama's Family"! Oh, and the blue and silver candles, that would just have matched the hair in Grandma's wig (Grandma got run over by a reindeer).
Also - over there you ONLY share bad news, always, no exceptions.
Circle Dub could stand to tone it down, but when I see people here who act the same way in the Toyota threads complaining, I have to laugh.
I may be wrong but I believe older ladies whose hair had turned gray often had an odd appearance to the grayed hair--a yellowed color. They use bluing on their hair to try to kill the yellow and actually make the hair appear more neutral gray without the yellow dingy look. I don't know if the bluing was the kind used for laundry or a special blue coloring for hair.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Maybe people liked what they were seeing.
Maybe people saw a longer powertrain warranty than Ford.
Maybe people saw more car for the same buck.
Gotta be some reason.
Yes; do you want to borrow mine?
You post monthly sales for Malibu vs Camry, yet don't mention year-to-date sales, which are behind.
Yes, I specifically said Malibu was the best selling car that month.
Can you imagine if the tables were reversed? 'anything' and 'circle' would be saying "A-ha! Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah! Told you so! Folks have come around to 'our side' last month! What happened before doesn't matter!
Sheesh.
Incentives.
Isn't that why you bought one? You got a bargain, no doubt. I mentioned above with that price advantage I would have picked the Malibu as well, easily.
Why else would a model's sales surge suddenly towards the end of its life cycle?
We can't discuss sales without also discussing price/incentives.
I have never owned a Hyundai/Kia product. 2 Fords and a Chevy, but never a Korean built car.
Huh? I haven't "told ya so" to anyone about anything. Am I missing something? :confuse:
Sales are sales. I think Juices point is the spin that some posters like to take with regards to them. Ignoring huge incentives (4 thousand bucks?), on a fleet queen that has averaged 30% or more every month for over a decade (no offense, I'm glad you like yours) and claiming the Camry and Toyota are in the dumps is exaggeration.
One month is just that... one month.
Well as you point out also, incentives are a huge part of the picture. I can become the #1 gold dealer in the world overnight, by selling gold for $1,500/oz!
Profits is more important than sales. And what's most important to a corporation is cashflow. GM went bankrupt because they didn't have enough retained cash (wealth) to compensate for their losses, and no one was willing to give them loans based on their assets, with such poor operational performance from their assets.
Why are the Cruze and Malibu outselling (at least last month) their Ford competitors? If one really preferred the Fusion, would $1,000 sway them to a Chevy? Somehow, I truly doubt that. I could be wrong this month. You heard it here first!
I think it's a combination of price/value, longer powertrain warranty, and I believe that more Americans than some here might believe are having a backlash against "Made in Mexico". Just sayin'.
Incidentally, although we all post on edmunds.com, I bet the majority of car buyers don't even look to see how much below invoice a car can be bought for. I might reiterate that the two dealers I went to offered invoice less $3,000 in rebates, and invoice plus $200 less $3,000 in rebates. I don't believe the $3,950 below invoice is what anyone could expect at every Chevy dealer, everywhere.
I would tend to agree. Perhaps there are some good reasons:
1 - As a US company, people want to be proud of our biggest carmaker, and GM has often come up very short
2 - The bailout. Don't need to say more.
3 - The years of claiming how good they are when they weren't.
4 - Using apple pie and patriotism as a cover for why you should buy something, rather than quality.
5 - Coddling the union, paying for not working, providing benefits WAY ABOVE the average for most industries
6 - Ceding entire market segments (sport sedan, compact cars, small SUVs) to the foreign competition through totally noncompetitive products
These sorts of things bring up the dander of people. I suspect that most of the critical posters would love to see GM performing with the aggressiveness of Hyundai. And they don't see it yet.
Sad to say but one member here did exactly that referencing Japanese automakers after the Fukushima quake. Pretty disgusting behavior.
Stick around Edmunds long enough and you won't buy any car. They all are junk to read the posts here, the manufacturers are run by criminal CEOs, the stylists all went to the same carve by number art school, and the workers put beer cans and live turtles in the doors. And you don't even want to think about car dealers.
And now you know why my cars were made in the last century. :P
Right on point.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
And we see negative posts all over. Automotive News isn't too bad, since people with gel or bum transmissions mostly go to Sedans or SUVs to gripe.
Toyota gel and SUA and corporate indifference. Honda transmissions (especially Odysseys) and road noise in general. Hyundai and Kia not honoring warranties. Lousy Jeep door handles. Ford's about the only one getting a bye these days, but they all have warts.
If you just want the good stuff, we have a General Motors discussion.
A recent example was about GM 'making the government' pay for warranty repairs on failed engines and head gaskets. No one I know, nor could the poster, cite a single example of such a failure on a GM car since the bankruptcy. But there it gets trotted out, not as opinion, but as fact.
That's what gets me.
My sister had a used Volvo wagon for something like 14 years and she loved it. Was unhappy when it finally gave up the ghost - I forget if she got 300,000 miles on it or not, but she had to be close.
Most people vent a couple of times and move on to the next brand. These days few cars are really all that bad, luckily for us consumers.
In other GM News, the Volt gets a price cut and is going nationwide today. (Inside Line)
That's what gets me.
I agree on the intellectual honesty. But let's face it -- all sides do the same thing. I've been told that Honda deliberately used 4cyl transmissions in 6 cyl engines and that's why they are failing. Also that to get tax incentives, Hyundai promised to build additional plants but didn't do so. When I question those posters and asked for links, they never showed up. Everybody "just knew" that it was true!
It's good when any questionable facts are challenged, as long as it is done professionally and not personally.
GM is clearly making major efforts and is improving quite a lot. Whether it is enough is a function of not only the economy (far from out of the woods), but also what the competitors are doing. And Ford and Hyundai/Kia, in particular, are really staying focused. GM's efforts would look even more impressive if those competitors were not around to compare with.
You're right Steve, I have problems buying Korean products. I'll do it, but each time I have to get over how the country leeches off America and then turns around and screws over US firms trying to do business there (near our troops defending them). I have to remind myself it is their government, not their companies and our country's unwillingness to stick up for our industries and demand fairness.
Regards,
ODub
Regards,
OW
I do not take that lightly. I agree ( with huge quantities of skepticism for a complete turnaround) that they are improving but will continually remind when even a glimmer of any disease rears it's ugly head.
If that irks some, so be it. I apologize for anything taken personally. It isn't personal, just business. Something GM is starting to learn all over again. :shades:
Regards,
OW
"Where the real work of making a car company successful suddenly turns complex, and where the winners are separated from the losers, is in the long-cycle product development process, where short-term day-to-day metrics and the tabulation of results are meaningless. Despite the advent of many new computer tools to speed engineering, testing and certification, the time between "initial idea" and "first unit off the line" is still about 3½ years, depending on the complexity of the product."
Gotta love this quote:
"A Chevrolet Malibu's material cost is within a couple percent of that of a BMW 3-Series."
Life Lessons From the Car Guy
It is sort of interesting the evolution of the makes over the past 30 years or so.
Mazda is becoming the new Honda. (sporty, ergonomic)
Honda is becoming the new Toyota. (softer, reliable)
Toyota is becoming the new GM. (bland, quality slipping)
GM is going somewhere but I don't know where yet!
Agreed. Although trotting to Washington asking for a handout and claiming it was ALL the fault of the economy was galling.
All GM needs to do is two things really well. They're starting to cover one of them, but not sure about the other one:
1 - Take product quality really seriously (starting to do this)
2 - Be very agile. Move quickly with market forces (not looking strong in this area yet). It shouldn't take over 10 years to realize that fuel economy might be important, or Nav systems are expected in cars now, or that even smaller cars can be of high quality, or that hybrids are important.