Croc

2nd-gen Cateras are fine. The first-gens were notorious for problems, and it did not help that dealerships weren't used to the completely different assembly practices in Europe.

Look at the fleet sales and real sales, you know, the ones GM actually makes money off of. Why are you also comparing cars with different price ranges? Profitability...

Why design, build, and invest in a vehicle with zero chance of sales traction in the first place?

OK.

This plan is not only ridiculously shortsighted, but completely ignores global realities that make the plan impossible to implement without costing the company more money than it would to play it forward as-is. I like my proposals with a hint of realism, please.

I have very little problems with the exterior. Even the old exterior was fine with me...especially since they pretty much just changed the front bumper. Why not invest ALL of the $$$ into the car's biggest weakness: its substandard, rudimentary interior. Guess what, fewer incentives needed to sell it, and numbers will go up. Look at what has happened with the SRX: the year they upgraded the interior and changed virtually NOTHING about the exterior, numbers improved dramatically.

How is it extreme in the least? Do you know how little certain things cost, on a per car basis, when allocated over volume? $50 per car is TINY, but if it went into upgrading the interior, consumer perceptions would be much improved. GM has admitted that one of its biggest mistakes in the past was allocating a budget for a car, and then focusing on the exterior to the extent that all overruns in other design/engineering areas came out of the interior budget. Guess what, you spend far more time in an interior, and appreciate the interior far more than the exterior. Exterior only turns heads. How many of those heads are snapped so much that they want to plop down $$,$$$ for a vehicle with a $h!ty interior? But what about people who drive a blandmobile with an incredible interior, with storage and controls in all the right places? A car with an inspiring rear seat? You buy one of those, and shuttle your friends around in it, and you'll get compliments on it constantly. My 3.5 Aurora is a great example of this..."sleeper," though pretty exterior, good proportions, etc., but completely invisible to cops. But the interior is very nice, even for rear-seat passengers. Hell, it's even comfortable, with loads of legroom. And when they see first-hand the performance the V6 packs, and hear about the great fuel economy, I hear "damn, too bad they still don't make these anymore!" More often than not, though, I don't even have to give a sales pitch. 95% of the time I am about 5 minutes into the carpool, and I hear "Wow, you have a REALLY nice car--I never would have expected it!" Contrast that to the G6, a car that feels like it was designed by Fisher-Price, especially in the backseat...yeah you won't hear any of those kind of compliments.

Lame. And if GM spent $50 more per car in the interior, they could charge $3,000 more in MSRP. This car is a turd.

Oh lord, in undergrad there was so much fun with stereotypes and nicknames. There was "Theta Girl"--any girl who embodied everything Kappa Alpha Theta--blond hair, always well-put-together, KAT or the letters adorning her oversized handbag/hoodie/ring/what-have-you, generally kinda ditzy. "Mitzie"--Any girl who looked kinda like a spazz (frizzy curly hair and INTENSE facial expressions) I would always decide her name was "Mitzie" "Newport's Finest"--any douchebag (usually, but not always a guy) who embodied the Orange County Lifestyle® and was often incoherent/drunk/high in class and acted, well, like a prime example of Newport Beach's finest. "Valley Boy"--any dude from the valley who was high all the time and giggled a lot while generally acting very...vacant. "FOB" (pronounced "fob")--anyone who was, or acted like he/she was "Fresh Off the Boat" aka Asian-acting to the max. "Fobby" is the adjective variant. 99% are TERRIBLE drivers. "Little Asia" or "Little Miss Asia"--Asian girls who act reeeeeeeally Asian but not "fobby" "Row Ho"--any girl who dressed like a ho and party hopped along Greek Row...or someone who looked the type. "Beach-Cruiser Retard"--anyone (usually a girl) riding a beach cruiser-style bike on a cell phone or iPod, being a complete hazard to him/herself and others, blatantly disregarding basic bike traffic laws, and mowing through herds of pedestrians while wobbling on the bike going "Whooooaaaaa" "Local"--someone who lived around USC but had no affiliation with the University. "Waste-oid Consumer"--Male, very overweight, someone who did nothing with their life but from their body obviously consumed everything around them and packed it in like a black hole. "Snobby Bitch"--any girl, usually in a sorority, who asked for your account balance before she'd look at you. "Trust Fund Brat"--self explanatory, but stood out because these people somehow managed to be so self-made they were driving around in $60,000+ cars. In college. As freshman. "BFA"--Bachelors of Fine Arts. Similar to a "Theatre Kid," these people are the most irksome, pretentious, obnoxious, ME ME ME! people you have ever met. There are very, very few exceptions to this rule. "Theatre Kid"--see above, but actually IN theatre, so clearly they will be winning 3 Oscars within the next 18 months. "Jazz Hands"--a complete flamer. "Gaysian"--Gay and Asian--usually VERY pretentious with lots of over-the-top mannerisms. Speaks decibels louder than necessary, always in an affected, whiny tone. Think "Oh my GAWD! You're so bad!! Teehee!" "Fat Cat"--Fat and VERY self-satisfied and/or smug. "Stoner kids"--self-explanatory "Nervous Nelly"--Extremely manorexic dude with tight, skinny jeans/girls jeans, usually gay, usually chainsmoking, who just seems to be constantly overwhelmed by everything that is happening around him. "Crusaders"--They are in Campus Crusade for Christ, and you know it. "Slayers"--See "Crusaders," but far more aggressive and irritating. "Refugees"--These two specific midget girls, who were in a lesbian relationship all 4 years, who always ran around looking emotionally ravaged, like pictures of refugees from Bosnia. "Crazian"--Any goofy Asian, who acts extremely "Asian." Oftentimes the sense of humor was just a bit "off" to any non-Asian, especially non-FOBs. "Principesa"--My spelling might be off (Italian, think "Life Is Beautiful"), but any male, usually gay, who walks around like a little princess. I'm sure there are more to come...and wow, my friends and I stereotype a LOT more than I would have thought we do.

Thursday is soooooooooooo clicheed.

I've never even had too many problems with Westsiders. Most of the pretentiousness comes from Studio City and thereabouts, IMO.

Well, I love it, and hope to own one of the first ones down the line.

Not really. Most people will just get them from other states or Mexico. It isn't a huge deal, really...and will probably be enough of a financial incentive to get a lot of people to quit.

I love Kamel Reds. Not looking forward to having to quit in a few months, though. If the rumors materialize, and cigarettes nearly double in price to match NYC levels, I'm gonna have to quit and find another weight management method. I hear clenbuterol is the new ephedra...

Haha that's another "funny because it's true" stereotype, but certainly not universal. You can spot those people just walking down the street easily. I dunno, for me, the thing I hated about Indianapolis was that everyone was so far up into everyone else's business. LA is almost the polar opposite, so I like that.

Eh...while I agree with you on the overall trend of friendly/non-urban, less friendly/urban...I don't think it's even an evolved behavior. I really don't know how to explain it--I've been to many cities, and for example in Houston, people don't have this purposeful, focused aura about them like nearly everyone in Los Angeles does. I have yet to randomly approach someone on the street asking for directions, or something, and have had them be rude in response (happens in Indianapolis far more), but in LA, people just are more distant, more "professional"-acting at all times. Very, very well-mannered and composed when you talk to them, but it's business. I'm getting frustrated at my inabiliy to adequately express this...but like in Indianapolis and Los Angeles, you could ask someone where the nearest bus stop is. In LA, you'll be told where the nearest bus stop is. In Indy, you'll be told the same, but far more likely you'll ALSO be told that it's never on schedule, and if you go in the opposite direction a slightly further distance, the stop is better and the area is better to wait around in. See the difference? There's an element of "oversharing" in Indy that most certainly does not exist in LA. And while in the above example it may be useful, in many other instances it's annoying--like asking for directions to a local bakery, and getting that and a story about how when she was a little girl her grandmother always took her there on Sundays after church. A story that goes on for several minutes beyond your threshold of caring one iota.

Exactly. Also, I have never seen a glowing review of the original VUE.

It's not so much "making an impression" as it is my minding my own business and expecting everyone else to do the same--contrasted to the midwest where IMO I always felt like people asked invasive questions so casually. Like, why is the lady across the street telling me about her medical history and asking about mine? Seriously, none of my business and none of yours. If someone approaches me I'm very helpful and polite...I just don't like being approached on the street.

Look, I don't want to get into some kind of argument on this or anything, but models generally sink and fail to resonate with the public when a) the styling is cheap and dumpy, b) the drivetrains are unremarkable at best, and bad at worst, and c) the interior is a generation behind in design and materials. The original VUE debuted with all three factors strongly against it. The original drivetrains that debuted with it were horrendous--so much so that GM switched out the CVT and the 3.0L pretty quickly. The styling of the original VUE could have debuted with the original S-series and no one would have really noticed anything wrong with that, but it debuted in 2002, when the S-series was on its way out and 10 years old. So a decade behind, style-wise. Interior...oh good lord where to begin. Here's an excerpt from Edmunds: Pretty much sums it up right there.

Poor drivetrain and interior quality do, though.

Linked from wikipedia: From 2002-2007

I think he means the very first VUE...you know, the very 80s boxy one with square headlights and similar throwback interior quality.

Exactly. I can immediately think of an instance where OnStar would be commended for doing the right thing: a serious domestic dispute--crazy ex wants to make life as difficult as possible for the ex, so reports their vehicle as missing, though the owner has not and they are not in fact "missing"--just walked out after an argument. Frankly, if the sole reason for delay here were that the car was reported as "missing" and not "stolen," why did the officers not correct this immediately and call OnStar back? Finally, if the thieves had disabled the tracking on OnStar, and knew how to do so, they most likely did this fairly soon after stealing it. A delay of several hours would not have changed the outcome--police would have simply determined that OnStar was disabled a few hours sooner than they did. The article even says the calls to OnStar were not made until "days after Gillard's dad's body was found in a southeast alley." To me, the real question is why the police didn't confirm that the vehicle was stolen on the spot if they already had recovered a slain body.

False. Under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has agreed to abide by, every human being is entitled to basic human rights that cannot be violated legally. I doubt the case will succeed against him due to his obvious need to defend his property, but one tenant that the rancher, as a US citizen, is held under is that you can only use self-defense with "reasonable force," i.e. you can't claim "self defense" if someone bumps into you and you shoot their brains out (as an extreme example). If, however, the rancher violated the basic human rights of these immigrants, he may or may not need to pay compensation for it, depending on the trial judge and jury. While he may have been robbed/had his property vandalized in the past, there is no "reasonable expectation" that this completely different group of immigrants were going to do the same in this instance. That would be like saying, for example, that just because every Canadian you met punched you in the face, you found out someone was Canadian and preemptively punched them. Or that every driver of a Fleetwood on your block committed a driveby shooting, so the next time you saw a Fleetwood rolling down the block you blew out its tires. There's just isn't a reasonable cause-and-effect situation here...UNLESS he caught this particular group of immigrants in the act of vandalism. ..."BUT THEY WERE TRESPASSING!" Well, yes. But you can only really ask someone to leave your property, and then if they fail to comply, call the law enforcement. You cannot go vigilante and hold them hostage physically and emotionally (through intimidation) until INS gets to your property--that's kidnapping, and as a US citizen, you cannot kidnap someone in "self defense." Another question to consider here is how his property was demarcated. What was the fence like? The article says this occurred in a dry wash--was there a fence across it? Is a fence across a waterway of any sort legal in Arizona? State laws vary on this. Again, with just this article to consider, I cannot jump to any legal conclusion because a) I do not know the veracity of the source, b) I do not know what the full scope of the case is, and neither would a reporter due to the trial process. This would be an interesting case to follow--but like the McDonald's coffee case, when the full details emerge, maybe the "victim" of the lawsuit really was recklessly negligent, or worse, violating the law. That all said, my gut is that the "emotional distress" will not fly, though any violations of human rights (and their corresponding compensatory values) may or may not depending on the evidence to be presented at trial.

But that doesn't matter, since Buick-Pontiac-GMC is ONE division within GM from an operational standpoint. "How many Buicks + Pontiacs + GMCs are sold per dealership?" would be a much more relevant question, though the most relevant question would be "How does the average profit margin of each Saturn sold per dealership compare to that of ___ ?" OR "...compare to that of B + P + GMC ?"