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No way. Just like there's no way I'm adjusting VW valves every 3,000 miles when I go twice that long or more between oil changes now.
The good ol' days weren't. I'm looking forward to the day when there are no seams between the front fender and the "hood". Maybe when EVs are common. As it is, the oil gets changed in a Volt every 24 months. Not much else to do other than inspections until it's time for new plugs at 100k and a coolant flush at 5 years.
My '66 Beetle (bought used) ran to 106K before breaking a valve. We rebuilt it and I drove it to 235K with no additional work until I sold it. And never any transmission issues, just one new clutch.
My friend's '74 Vega (I've spoken of this before), looked better, ran better, handled better than my bug, but rusted in a few years. We are not talking fenders here, we are talking holes around the main body (front windshield) and rear hatch window. Then his engine went at around 75K.
Maybe not, but one must look at things in context of other things happening at the time. I'd go back to those days for:
1) Far more choices.
2) More interesting vehicles IMHO.
3) More maintenance, yes, but less catastrophic things it seems like happened then.
4) More work that could be done by the owner himself.
5) Reasonable pricing...my folks were a one-job family and it was not a problem for us to buy a new car every three years or so, even while I was in college (and no student loans here). I feel we had more 'pride of ownership' then than now.
If you can't remember how fun 'new car introduction' was each fall, then you won't get what I'm saying. Now...who gives a damn.
Now we get crossovers, boxy rigs, asymetrical stuff and the all important minivan. And we still have the rest. Not to mention hybrids, diesels and EVs.
Having a head pull apart in rush hour is sort of catastrophic - at least you were less likely to get shot by a road rager when you broke down and blocked the intersection.
Soon I'll be able to maintain my car with my laptop. I already assemble my desktops so I'm good to go there.
Everything is relative but I agree that cars were more affordable but there's more bang for the buck today with a $15k Sonic.
Longtime partners Government Motors and Isuzu, which had a 35-year relationship that only dissolved in 2006 as part of GM’s restructuring that year, are once again looking at a potential capital tie-up, according to a report from Reuters.
Problem is, when that short burst of energy is used up, and the competition responds accordingly with in-house talent, it's back to square-1 for the company.
History is full of examples of companies that "bought their way to the top" and then imploded.
At the end of the day, no creativity = certain failure.
Parts were cheap and easily found. I really enjoyed working on them. Overall, the engines were pretty forgiving "tolerance-wise" in assembly...
Still, I wouldn't want a car I had to maintain in such a manner today...
I wouldn't be afraid to put money down on them bringing Pontiac back...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577289593348669150.html
As the article states in the end, GM is searching for the "low hanging fruit".
Notice that the article says both companies are posting losses in South America. Now, they can both lose money together, rather than separately...
Looking back to 1965, arguably the apex of the domestic auto industry, and one can see what was lost. To begin with, color and powertrain choices were almost obscene, seems everything had about 20+ possible paints, several interior colors, at least 4 engines and at least 2 transmissions. At that point in time I also see a lot more difference between say an Impala, Galaxie, or Polara compared to something like Camry, Accord, Altima. You could get small, medium, and large variants of convertibles, hardtops, wagons, not to mention conventional cars.
Variety was greater then, durability was not. Rust is all but gone today, anything mainstream should hit 100K with only the most routine maintenance. I guess that's the price you pay, lose variety for ease of use.
Not sure what compares to the original xB. Or the Soul. There was the VW Bus before minivans, but the flat floor stopped at the rear seat. How about an FX-45 on 22" dubs? Remind you of a Chevelle SS?
If you miss rust, move to my neighborhood. :shades:
Convertibles today are mostly converted coupes with much of the back seat area used for top storage.
Some are all but impossible to use the back seat for anything but storage area. It would be nice to see a production 4-door convertible designed from the ground-up to seat 5 or 6 passengers comfortably. It would be a miracle if 1/2 of the over 65 population could get into my 328 convertible's back seat with the top up. Children in car seats? Forgetaboutit...
Probably not enough demand for such a vehicle today.
Minivans were just big wagons. An FX on big wheels might be the equivalent of a big block wagon - surely doesn't have the style of a Chevelle, and big dub style wheels just means lack of sense, which often comes with being a "high earner" in this dumbed down new world.
Do many post-2000 cars get rusty there?
I'd wager we won't see a production model 4 door convertible ever again.
I wonder what a 4 door convertible Maxima would look like, or maybe one based on the Infiniti M. With my luck, they'd base it on the ghastly QX.
Still, you have to give Nissan some credit for bringing something different like the Rogue convertible to the market, instead of the same old bland, build and design by the numbers vehicles that are mass produced nowadays.
In the age of FE maximization, cars are probably going to increasingly resemble one another, all in search of the most aerodynamic body shapes.
Reminds me of a show I watched a few years back on the Science channel, where the Russian "Buran", their version of the Space Shuttle was being explored. One blowhard was claiming the Russians simply stole the plans from the US, and he was countered by several aerospace experts explaining how the laws of aerodynamics cross international boundaries, and that was why the 2 ships were so similar.
Heck,it's even getting increasingly more difficult for me to identify a brand nowadays if I can't see the company logo on a car.
I wonder... If we took the top 15 selling vehicles today, removed all forms of manufacturer identification, and then asked "men/women on the street" to identify the vehicles' manufacturers, how well would the average guy do?
Wagons, like my '97 Outback, lose a whole lot with that tunnel running down the middle. FWD cures that problem, but sliding doors are an innovation that just didn't get passed around to other vehicles.
And don't mention the 1972 Brubaker Box. Cool, with a lot of yikes. And it had to accomodate the VW engine in the rear.
But in lots of ways, there's nothing new under the sun.
He died a couple of years later and the car passed to his grandson, who proceeded to trash the car as rapidly as possible. By the time the family had decided to sell the car, it was nothing more than junk... All rusty, beat up, wouldn't run and several pieces (especially the top framework) missing.
Some folks...
Not well, if they had no badges.
Identity now is about the little details. For Audi it's the LEDs, for instance.
The List: Last Month's 20 Quickest-Selling Cars
There also are signs that GM's comeback from a 2009 government-funded bankruptcy could be slowing. In the U.S., GM's most profitable market, sales for the quarter grew just 2.7 percent, even though industry-wide sales rose more than 13 percent. GM's U.S. market share fell from 19.4 percent last year to 17.5 percent, according to Autodata Corp.
Slow sales can be blamed on Cadillac and Buick. Cadillac sales fell almost 24 percent while Buick was down nearly 17 percent. Chevrolet sales in the U.S. rose 8 percent and GMC sales grew just over 1 percent.
Regards,
OW
I'm not sure what relevance Sales figures of BMW X6's and Porsche Cayenne's have with sales figures of Imprezas and Elantras. After all, how many X-6's does the average BMW dealer keep on the lot? If you're tossing out $75+ Large, how many buyers want to order their specifically-desired model with options? Does anyone know of someone specifically ordering unique Elantras or Impreza's from the factory?
Those are two entirely separate and distinct market segments.
I guess there is some significance to the complete absence of any Big-3 products, but without a complete ranking it's impossible to tell to what degree.
This isn't really much useful information at all, at least to me, maybe because I have a background education in statistics.
If anything, I'd say a crossover is simply a re-birth of your typical 1940's/early 50's car. It harks back to a time when cars were tall with a high-up seating position, good ground clearance, but so over-sized, length-wise, as they'd get later on in the 1950's. Back in those pre-interstate days, cars often HAD to have good ground clearance to navigate the crappy roads of the time.
Actually, I wonder if your typical 40's/early 50's car might actually have better ground clearance than most of today's crossovers? I can squeeze just far enough underneath my '57 DeSoto to get to the oil drain plug, without jacking the car up, and your typical pre-1955 car sat up higher than that.
Toyota was up 12% last month, GM and Ford were down.
It almost makes more sense to compare to April numbers from 2010. 2011 was an off year.
Days' supply is important but it really compares the automakers' forecast (or supply constraint) with actual consumer demand.
Fewer sales might not matter. Car companies -- though, in a switch, not Honda and Toyota -- are cutting profit-killing incentives, notes TrueCar.com. As a result, the average transaction price for a new vehicle in the U.S. in April jumped 4.2% from a year ago to an average $30,303. That was down 1.4% from the record in March, though, TrueCar.com noted.
Regardless, less inventory means higher profits because of less cost in inventory and probably less incentives on the fast movers. Win/win.
Not GM, however.
GM said it sold about the same number of new cars and trucks to individuals in April as it did a year earlier, but its multi-car fleet sales to rental-car companies plunged 25% "because of the timing of rental customer deliveries."
Selling to fleets buoys sales tallies, but those sales are less-profitable than what the industry calls "retail" sales to individual buyers.
Only GM's GMC truck brand was up in April -- 4.5% better than a year earlier.
Details:
Cadillac, GM's showpiece brand, was off a hefty 25% (World-Standard Not Withstanding, of course). It's awaiting two new models, the ATS compact and the larger XTS sedan. Caddy says the latter will be its most technically sophisticated model ever.
Chevrolet, GM's mainstream brand that accounts for more sales than the three other brands combined, fell 8.4%.
Buick, which is undergoing what GM hopes is an image change from fogey-mobile to hip, slick and cool, was off 16.1%.
Regards,
OW
Still, lumping all cars into one bucket for this exercise seems a bit like attempting to determine how your income level compares to those in the community, then defining the community as the entire US, including folks like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. It's a meaningless comparason (at least, if one is doing this with my income...).
Including really high $$$ cars like Bmw X6s and Porsche Cayennes is truly comparing apples to grapefruits, IMO...
Agree the premium vehicles are the outliers since their inventory is low in most cases anyway. But the CR-V, Accent, Elantra, Prius and the 2 hybrids reflect the more robust sales units and the favorable DTT.
Point is, GM is a no show.
Regards,
OW
It reflects where brand loyalty ranks in buyer consideration and the value proposition.
I just read where a Cruze is a few thousand more than the Corolla but GM does not want to discount the Cruze to the detriment of profit. Their words, not mine.
This position is reflecting in lower Cruze sales this year. It will be interesting to see GM's profit per unit if they stick with this tact. I still think they need to re-price many of their vehicles and reduce the incentives.
Regards,
OW
The D-3 still may not appear, but we can't tell... Maybe those slots would be taken by more imports, or by the D-3.
We just don't know. If one is truly in search of the facts, that should be an important factor to them.
That's the issue I have with improperly compiled reports like this one that don't reveal the true nature of the environment.
Maybe it's a biased report, or just not well thought out.
I don't know...
But given 2 vehicles in the same class, equipped similarly, and with the same general attributes (space, hp, mpg), I would choose the Honda or Subaru, IF the price is the same. In order to sway me to the GM or Ford which resale-price usually takes a beating due to fleet sales, and historical quality issues, a domestic vehicle had better be 5 - 10% lower in price.
Put a $25K Malibu against a $25K Sonata and the choice is very easy. Put a $20K Cruze vs. a $20K Dodge Dart and even that's an easy choice - for our Italian friend.
It's more meaningful when a high volume car makes that list. Low volume cars often just have a limited supply. High volume cars are often built in more than one plant and don't have supply constraints.
Since the info is readily available it makes me wonder why the article didn't post a link to somewhere so that the reader could get a broader, more accurate picture of the situation.
I'm neither pro or anti D-3, but if someone's going to write such an article, seems that either their intent is to mislead the reader or the writer doesn't quite understand the idea of "full disclosure" ....
BTW, how's the Chrysler 200 convertible doing, or have I confused you with another poster? The car's on my wife's "possibility" list when she trades next time.
It's a bigger car than I remember. Rented several LeBarons and Sebrings over the years. This one feels pretty substantial, good thing the Pentastar has plenty of oomph.
Would I trade it for the Miata? Nope, much too big for my urban commute. I prefer smaller cars.
They got a loaded up folding hard top so it's about as nice a 200c as you can get. I do with the window on the hard top were bigger than the soft top models, but they're all the same, so visibility is still compromised.
She drive so slow it doesn't matter - even if she hits something she'd have time to stop before any damage was done.
Maybe those 100 salaries will help pay for their next acquisition. :sick:
R&D, too, the worst possible place to make cuts.
What a crock of "corporate speak psyco-babble"!
It goes back to GM spending $$$ to acquire tech from other sources by buying companies .vs. developing technology in-house.
Long term, it's a loosing proposition for any company dependent on competitive technology.
BTW, thanx for the 200 update. Maybe my wife can wait a couple more years and buy your inlaw's 200... Sounds like it'll be just like new!