Croc

Astra only has one cupholder. Sorry, but GM should have fixed this BEFORE launch. There is no excuse for a vehicle sold in the US market to have less than 1 cupholder per front seat, AND lack an aux input jack in this day and age. Myers, you might sacrifice your lone cupholder, but I wouldn't. For the money I would have to pay to own an Astra, I should get both...and then some.

You're very lucky those books only broke your nose! Glad to hear everyone is fairly alright...modern cars sure do crash well.

Again, though...where are they located? Pittsburgh is one city. Los Angeles doesn't have one anywhere near me, and I live fairly centrally. There are a total of 6 SAAB dealerships within 50 miles of downtown, and only one is actually in Los Angeles--but it's all the way out west past Beverly Hills. The rest are, well, within 50 miles of downtown Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks, Santa Ana, Mission Viejo, Pasadena, Sherman Oaks all have one, but that isn't very good coverage. Chevrolet and Cadillac dealerships are in much better locations, and are much more numerous. Indianapolis? 40 minutes away, and again, I lived centrally. One dealership. And where is it located? Waaaaaay up in the northeastern suburb. Different county than Indianapolis.

...is very happy that I'm keeping myself pretty busy these days? Why yes, in fact, she is.

smk, how many dealerships sell SAAB? Where are they located? In urban areas or on the periphery? If SAAB were joined with every B-P-GMC dealership, I'm betting they'd sell a lot more than 800 cars in a November.

:sigh: People who provoke people on the internet for kicks clearly aren't working hard enough and need to get a job with more hours. Too much time on their hands...

I have no problem with the CTS interior. Whatever miniscule deficiencies the buttons may have in tactile feel (never felt less-then-perfect to me), the CTS' ergonomics more than make up for it. M-B interiors are very user-unfriendly with button size and placement, and the CTS is very user-friendly. I'll take a good layout and convenience any day over better-pushing buttons. They're all going to feel the same anyway after I've gotten In-N-Out grease all over them.

If GM dumps SAAB, then all SAABs should get ported to Buick, trading the sporty interior for more woodgrain. That's the level of interior refinement Buick should have. SAAB also commands a similar pricepoint as I would like to see Buick compete in.

Thread necromancers.

Uhhh...disagree. Most of the drivers of those vehicles are actually leased, and they get them just to be driving the badge around.

Oh I know...but it doesn't hurt to start now in case something turns up between now and summer.

Hmmm...what happened...oh yeah, that's when it took the Japanese to get us out of our self-imposed isolationism to finally do something about the genocide that was going on in the rest of the world, right?

That's not setting Buick's sights high enough, I'm afraid. This does nothing but increase GM's glut at the middle pricepoints of the market. Cadillac's survival and prestige is dependent on one of GM's brands moving up a price bracket to give it breathing room, and IMO it might as well be Buick. If Buick can move into the 30k-60k price range, Cadillac can finally move to the 45k+ bracket where it belongs. "But M-B and BMW have sub-40k cars!" you say? Well, have BMW and M-B been strengthening or diluting their brand's image and prestige over the past decade? I think you know the answer to that question.

If that's the face of "fat and pregnant at 18" then there must be a lot of regretful single 20-somethings out there.

No, not changes through translation, but intentional changes in content. Also, there's a book out called Misquoting Jesus, that delves into many of the changes to the Bible over the years. Here's a link to a writeup on it: http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr2006/feature_05.php

Not knowing what CTS you test drove, but the fit and finish in it is head and shoulders above anything Mercedes offers. I drove a Mercedes for a few years, and it was quite the POS with interior trim falling off or popping out. The engines aren't that great either...ours was always getting the spark plugs replaced on an almost annual basis.

+1 I used to think that, but when I learned about the whole process of how the Bible came to be, I realized that there was so much at play that I couldn't find it credible anymore. Most of the New Testament was written well after Jesus' death. There were also several other gospels and books written that were "removed" or "discarded" from the current compilation. Who's to say the right decisions were made? Knowing how rife the early church was with corrupting political influences, and knowing what I know about human nature and contemporary examples of churches becoming corrupted through politics, I can't call the Bible anything more than a compilation of allegories that may or may not have a loose relation to any reality that may have occurred. Not trying to be argumentative, but the Bible has changed a lot over the years, especially during its earliest years, and then again during the Protestant Reformation when a couple minor books were discarded from that Bible.

Too broad. Buick needs to be tightly focused on mid-lux...unless all those small cars are going to be incredibly luxurious inside. Which GM is too dumb to do... I like the Electra idea, though. GNX and Riviera? Combine them on the Zeta and call it Riviera.

Your work load is heavy, but layoffs occurred preemptively (or so you were told)? You were told pay cuts may be next, and you know your workload will drop precipitously? If I were you, I'd start shopping my resume around to more financially-stable firms. Good luck.

One year out, I thought? It's marketed as the 2010 Volt, and that means it's released between 1/1/2009 and 12/31/2009.

Lutz didn't kill the S-series. Saturn did that to themselves with the ION.

People also forget that Pontiac isn't even part of the original GM; it is the only "Companion Brand" (Pontiac, Viking, Marquette, LaSalle) that became more successful than its parent brand, eventually superceding Oakland. What GM needs is someone with the balls to return the company and its divisions to a Sloane model of pricing and focus. That would pretty much solve everything, instead of nearly every division overlapping with another and selling something at nearly every price point.

One of my friends wants to hang a bag of pot as his freshener. He was stoned at the time, so I doubt he recognized the sheer idiocy of such a move.

I have a suggestion, and since it's occurring in this thread, I'll say it here: For the following cases: 1. Political violations, where: a) Members disregard mod requests for nonpartisanship, or b) Begin attacking, or 2. Non-political threads in which (a) member(s) choose to make political Instead of just locking the thread, how about the mods delete/modify the offending post and warn the member? It isn't too hard to keep things apolitical or refrain from making non-political discussions political, so instead of "punishing" the thread starter and rule-abiding participants, why not go after the problem? Because the board gets cluttered with "Since my last thread was locked, I'm continuing the discussion here, DON'T MAKE IT POLITICAL" threads. My $.02

Yup. I can't stomach it. And I can't even use my default coping mechanism, humor, because that's just not appropriate. So denial of existence, my back-up, it is.