Croc

I'd be all for more colors in interior leather. Hell, La-Z-Boy offers furniture in colors other than neutrals. GM could really differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack by offering neutral carpets/dashes with colored seats and door trim. The 2001 Aurora offered a very rare green/neutral interior color called Mint for its first year. That was novel.

I don't think there should be a "rule" per se, but I would agree some people go overboard with thread titles. That said, many are copy/pasted article headlines reposted/quoted here, and I don't know how comfortable I'd be with re-titling other authors' articles to shorten title length on here.

Get some Bug and Tar remover from your local Autozone (I know they have it...other places will too, I'm sure). That stuff also works on getting window paint off your rubber seals, paint job, or trim pieces.

I had a $10 a day habit this summer. Thank god for the freebie coupons!

Agreed and agreed. The only people I feel bad for in this situation are the victim, and ayone sympathizing with the attacker. This is inexcusable.

OK good! I like that philosophy. BTW I'll be back in LA within a few days.

What do you think it means when you use the quote feature? I dare say I'd be laughing face-to-face. Seriously...if you relented on your constant "I/me/my ___ is better than you/your/yours" line of posting on this site, you'd be taken a lot more seriously. When you argue with someone for no reason other than you think you are better than them, without even addressing the points of their hypothesis, you won't be taken seriously. I can't take you seriously. As it is, you are the most one-note poster on this site, responding to anyone who disagrees with you with an irrelevant and semi-incoherent rant about petulant teenagers who hate the Japanese and blame them for all of GM's problems. Which generally isn't even the case on this site.

Those annoy me so much...and I see too many in LA. THAT SAID...I think it would be totally hilarious to see one of those with two mommies or two daddies.

Looks like it's in GREAT condition! Is that one of the side-saddle gas tanks, though? Because if so, boo. That thing is freaking PIMP!

Wait for sure? You didn't ditch that beautiful Camaro, though, right?

Or you could buy the 9-3 SportCombi, or the 9-5 wagon. The Astra would probably count, too. Isn't there a CTS wagon coming soon, too?

Yet again your reading comprehension is virtually non-existant. I've never asserted the above. Never. And I've never blamed the Japanese for GM's poor management decisions. Never. Pompous fool.

Again, this has almost nothing to do with what I've been posting about. You may very well be an A+ accountant, but as with previous "debates," your reading comprehension and logic skills seem unusually lacking. I'm not even going to try spelling it out for you again, because if you still think knowing the details of the one-time charges has any relevance whatsoever on the logical argument I have been making, then you are not following it at all. Really? How so? Show me anywhere that I've asserted any of the media narratives. I've never complained about "too many brands," "Pontiac is dead," "Buick is dead," or that "GM is going bankrupt." All I've pointed out is that GM's financial situation is not looking good and has not for a while, and that's something anyone with half a brain can figure out. 55 year historical lows with regards to the stockprice show that. Cutting dividends hint toward that. Selling brands/divisions illustrates that, as well as the massive quarterly losses. OK, you just illustrated in technicolor that you have no knowledge of the situation I am referring to, whatsoever. Pandering to unions? Yeah, not what I was suggesting at all. Maybe you should read up on the strike threads regarding Fairfax, say THIS THREAD. Here's a good quote:

CTS.

Oh, I really don't know about that...

ES and Camry are very easy to differentiate at night. They have totally different headlight and taillight shapes. The Intrigue and GP have very similar front ends, especially the early GPs with the "bottom feeder" air intake and no proper grille. The Intrigue's headlamps are slightly more slit-like, and I believe one amber bulb is located differently...but otherwise they are extremely similar. You're missing my point; it isn't the dollar amount I'm quibbling about, but rather how those dollars are being spent. Another example: the original CTS. The general consensus is that its interior was "cheap" for its class. BUT! That was a very expensive interior with a lot of high-end materials and details. GM needs to spend its differentiation money not on three different body panels that are non-interchangeable though they share the same styling vocabulary...but on using maybe the same body panel for all three cars with different cut seams for other hardware to better differentiate things. Or creating three distinct panels with entirely different styling vocabularies.

I concur.

I think the problem is that GM does not maximize its investments in differentiation. For example, as you correctly state, the Intrigue and Grand Prix share virtually nothing. Yet, they look almost the same on the road from the front and side profiles. I'm fairly good at identifying cars on the road, and yet even this trained eye has a very difficult time differentiating between an Intrigue and GP at night. Same thing with the T-360s. The only exterior panel they had in common was the roof, yet they all looked the same. That said, I would say the AURA and G6 sedans are rebadges, but the Malibu is not. I saw two parked next to each other in a parking lot today, and the rears are 99% identical in appearance. The taillight housings were the only differences I could really see. The front doors of the G6 differ in that they have the beltline dip, and the noses are unique...but the interiors are very similar and the rears are practically identical. Other than the aforementioned beltline dip on the G6, the profiles are nearly identical as well. Regardless of the number of "on-paper" differences, the two look like clones to the average person.

The only differences in the seats that I can discern are the new belt buckles and possibly added stitching. Lower third of door panels looks carry-over to me, too. At least the side mirrors look revised. Honestly, the photo is of such low quality and depicts a monochromatic color scheme that it is difficult to pick out what's really changed. Until I can experience the new interior in person, I really think it looks like Chrysler took a D+ interior and turned it into a C interior. Unless the tactile differences are radical, it just looks like a slightly better design when a complete overhaul was needed. It will be interesting to see what the effect (if any) on sales is.

Fascinating. And what does this have to do with my being familiar with the basic principles of business accounting? They are always out to sell stories. Yeah, where did I do that, exactly? GM could have easily prevented the strike. But as always, it chose to place itself in a situation where it would be caught with its pants down.

GM certainly could have prevented the strikes that occurred recently by having a more iron-clad contract that did not include such easily exploitable loopholes as has been discussed ad nauseum on these boards. By the way, you are talking to someone with a business degree. I am well aware of all that accounting entails, and I am also very aware of when to call "BS" on a company's spin doctoring. If a company is in such financial straits that it has to cut the meager dividend it was paying to shareholders, well that really does speak volumes about their financial health. This management team needs to go, like yesterday.

Maybe I need to make it big and bold to get my point across: "GM IS DOING GREAT EXCEPT FOR THIS ONE-TIME CHARGE LEADING TO MASSIVE LOSSES" X 8 QUARTERS = GM IS NOT REALLY DOING GREAT The "one-time charges" may have all the merit in the world. But the fact remains that GM needs to do one of the following: 1) reduce the amount of these one-time charges to a more manageable level i.e. so a profit does not turn into a massive loss, or 2) make enough of a profit so that the one-time charges are absorbed. GM is a business, the goal of a business is to make money; GM is therefore not accomplishing its raison d'être. And by suspending dividends this past month, it isn't making its shareholders too happy, either.

You can be a smartass all you want, but successive quarterly losses are ALWAYS successive quarterly losses. "We'd be doing great EXCEPT for this one-time charge" is fine and dandy until you've heard it for like a year and a half and suddenly it starts becoming, "so...when ARE you going to start doing great and knock off the massive losses?" This isn't a case of journalists not being accountants, but rather accountants making excuses for continued poor financial performance. GM will be gone if it doesn't stop with the excuse-making about, oh...just about EVERYTHING.

GM has been "studying European interiors" for decades and only recently got it right. IIRC, Chrysler was owned by M-B when the original cheap ones were approved. Also, photochopped renderings always make interiors look better than they are. If you go to the Chrysler website and look at the Sebring interior, it looks kinda nice in those photos.

Why does Rick Wagoner still have a job?