riviera74

8 hours ago, regfootball said:

https://www.motor1.com/news/588614/custom-chevy-caprice-pickup-four-door-el-camino/

 

Whose idea was to turn an mid-90s Impala SS into a pastiche of a mid-80s El Camino?  This is SAD!

On 5/29/2022 at 10:26 AM, oldshurst442 said:

The Maxima was a terrific sleeper of a family hauler in the 1980s and 1990s. It even became a sexy sedan in the 1990s.  Too bad they mucked it up.  I mean, I like the looks of the Maxima of today. It doesnt follow the usual lines of eveybody else's sedans.  But it lost so much of its 1980s and 1990s identity.  

I used to love this car back in the day.   Many people didnt know how fast this car was.  My friends were all geeking over the German crap, I was geeking out over this and the Impala SS.  Albeit, I was not so vocal about geeking out on the Japanese sports sedan...   I, however, was SUPER loud on my hatred of BMWs back then!!!

The Impala SS in black and the Maxima SE in white.  Throw in a Pontiac Bonneville, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Aurora and we round out my favorite more or less mainstream sedans of the day. 

 

 

 

I would take a first generation Aurora any day over anything Nissan, then or now, especially back in the mid-1990s.

27 minutes ago, surreal1272 said:

So a CT6 with a Camaro nose. 
 

Um, no. 

Needs work.  Like a real Chevy nose, not a Camaro one. 

Also, it looks too much like a racing car, rather than a stealthy one.  No need to advertise that to police or insurance companies.  If you want one done better, see the Chevy SS (or last Pontiac GTO, based on the late Holden Commodore).

4 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

That’s because, after you take away shared components, it costs just as much to engineer and design a Corolla as it does a RAV-4, but the RAV-4 sells for twice as much, so Toyota has to build many more Corollas to make the same profit.

Same with GM and Ford, which is why both have essentially ditched the sedans, outside of Lincoln and Cadillac, for CUVs and SUVs.

Well, the race towards great crossover sales at the expense of sedans started at least seven years ago.  In a country of aging boomers with arthritic joints, the three-box sedan may well end up extinct by the end of the decade.  The sad times for the sedans are here.  Coupes are already DOA at this point.  Buyers are already paying a premium for crossovers; I do hope that they steer clear of even more expensive BOF SUVs.

How come Honda always seems to come in second to Toyota in every segment both compete in?  As for the CR-V: all-new or simply an MCE?

So, why did US customers ditch wagons for crossovers instead, especially in the last seven years?

I hope it all works.  The more software you put in, the bugs and strange errors can happen.  It is a good thing that GM is using Red Hat Linux, avoiding the mistakes Ford and BMW made in trusting Microsoft for their infotainment systems in the last 20 years.

On 4/10/2022 at 2:15 PM, Drew Dowdell said:

The AFM in Chevy V8s does not take well to deferred maintenance, but if changed on time with proper spec oil (that means full synthetic) they run fine. The Turbos should have shorter oil change intervals but GM has kept them about the same when using the oil life monitor. And that’s where the difference is. You can run a 5.3 down to 0% but I wouldn’t run a 2.7 below 20%
 

Even the older 5.3 in my Avalanche is plenty sufficient for me. I wouldn’t mine the extra litre, but it isn’t necessary.

I still have no idea why AFM is used at all, only to save maybe 1-2 MPG.  It seems unnecessary when anyone could buy a vehicle with a smaller engine and lower curb weight to improve fuel economy.

Regardless, GM failed to understand that if a customer wants a BMW, he/she will get one.  GM failed to understand this when they released the Cimarron in 1982, the original STS in 1992 and the original CTS in 2003.  Neither Buick nor Oldsmobile should have tried to turn Acura/Lexus owners over for the same reasons. 

I would argue that if Olds/Buick had a RWD large car (NOT the old B-Body!), I believe that both could have done better in the near-luxury market.  (An upgraded Intrigue and Regal would have helped too.) Wood (when done right) is good.  Why anyone my age or younger hates wood is beyond me.  Why would anyone settle for black plastic and maybe a little silver trim and call it luxury?  The Lexus (from an interior standpoint) did the luxury thing right, especially the LS and probably the ES as well.

The saddest part is that, if GM had any real foresight and imagination, Olds could have been saved (or repurposed as Aurora).  Buick had China already, so they would be OK from a sales standpoint.  Then again, Buick in China is arguably better than Buick here.

I have to agree, oldshurst442.

and Henry Ford II saved Ford from doom just after WWII and was a very good steward until at least the 1970s.

I'll take that mid-60s White Riviera, please.  The last ones (made in 1995-99) do nothing for me.  I would rather have a same model year Aurora over the last Rivieras.

How many products will GM have running Ultium before Honda gets it in 2027 to use in their vehicles?  More importantly, how soon will GM products using Ultium be available at somewhat affordable prices?

15 hours ago, David said:

You are not wrong, part of the problem was securing all rights to the name, auto, etc. That they did clear up at the end of 2019 and then the pandemic hit, so I figure this is a good sign that they are finally starting to move forward with all the talk of a pure electric Delorean car. 

They have also said that a SUV is possible, but that I believe is true vaporware at this point. Let them get the car out and see how it does.

If this is real as opposed to vaporware, would the late John Z DeLorean approve?

The competition might break Tesla, but the real questions are Who and How?  Is Tesla only competitive in the USA, or Europe and China too?  Which luxury make will drive Tesla sales down in the next five years?  We will have to wait and see . . . .

Sounds like great news.

Tesla does not CARE about interiors like the others.  They want to be the Luxury equivalent of a Prius.  On that basis, they are quite successful.  That does NOT mean that their success will last forever, especially if Tesla does not improve their fit and finish and their self-driving features.

So why are Cadillac and Benz and Lincoln sales falling?

I was going to say that Mercedes needs a lower tier model, but then I remembered that Mercedes IS the lower tier model across Europe.  CNBC has a video on how Mercedes has lost its luster.

It helps to have VW as your parent company to deal with making BEVs across Porsche's lineup, whether it is now or in 2030.

4 hours ago, David said:

The Hits keep coming and Tesla has appealed the verdict, but we knew it was bound to happen. German Court has ordered Tesla to take back and refund the $69,000 Euro's for an owner who has proven that the auto self driving does not work with the existing hardware and is not safe.

Court Makes Tesla Buy Back Model 3: Owner Unhappy With Autopilot (insideevs.com)

I suspect Tesla is going to find themselves in a very difficult situation as they push forward the crazy self-driving cost of $12,000 and a yearly fee to have something that is still in Beta form and not allowed for most people yet even though you have paid for it.

Never promise what you cannot deliver.  I do hope that Tesla and Elon Musk have learned their lesson.

4 hours ago, smk4565 said:

Lincoln has better differentiation from the Ford counterparts now than they have in decades, so in that regard they are better.  However I don't see much being done to gain brand recognition, they are down to a 4 vehicle line up and are killing the Nautilus next year, and the segments they do compete in they aren't even near the top. 

I wonder how Lincoln can actually fix that.  Cadillac does not seem to have that problem.

On 3/25/2022 at 9:42 PM, balthazar said:

Lo-ooong term transition; most independent owner/operators won't be able to afford a BE semi.  You force what can't be afforded and you basically bankrupt people from their livelihoods.

I would be shocked if BE Semis replaced ICE versions in the next 25 years.  Cost/Benefit might not be good enough right now.

26 minutes ago, surreal1272 said:

Yet none of what you said explains how direct sales (the simpler method) directly led to the downfall of the companies YOU listed. It also doesn’t change the fact that companies have come and gone since the beginning. EVs are no exception here but the implication that direct sales are the issue is highly suspect at best. 

Direct sales have nothing to do with it.  State Agency shop laws that protect dealers essentially prevent direct sales on NEW vehicles.  The downfall of car companies require crashing market share with few repeat or conquest buyers.  (See Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn in the last 25 years.)

4 minutes ago, David said:

I agree that the low end of the market will need to have a portfolio. Not totally sure that an American or German/European will do it. I also as @oldshurst442 agree that Tesla will not do it. I expect South Korea and China with Japan maybe doing something later.

Well, I think that GM or Ford COULD do it.  Whether they will is another question entirely.

You may be right about one thing:  China, then Japan and/or South Korea are most likely to sell a $20K-25K BEV sometime in the future.

On 3/19/2022 at 12:44 PM, David said:

Seems that Tesla 4680 cells are finally going into production April 2023 and Panasonic says these cells should help achieve the $25,000 EV.

New Tesla (TSLA) Battery Key to $25,000 Electric Cars Prepared by Panasonic - Bloomberg

It's about time.  We all need cheaper BEVs in order to replace the used car fleet of ICE vehicles.  I do hope that competition can drive a $25K vehicle down to below $20K.