riviera74

Take the Lucerne (and get a slightly lower price on it). Ever since Buick discontinued it, demand for that large car is still fairly high. Second-gen LaCrosses are great, but expensive right now. If I were to replace my 99 Park Avenue Ultra with a Lucerne, it would be fairly tough down here in FL since they are surprisingly hard to find these days.

57K in sales for Mini. Wow. I am without words.

People buy Corollas and Civics now just like they have for the last 40 years for the same reasons: habits and perception. It certainly sounds like this is not the POS the '81 Escort was. Ford will need to get more aggressive in getting more compact buyers to get into the Focus.

500,000 Fiat 500s sold in Europe in two years?! Wow, no wonder Opel is desperate (or smart) to follow Fiat. I do hope they can pull that off, over there. BTW, does anyone know how many Mini Coopers and Fiat 500s sell here in the USA in 2011? 2012?

$29,995 for a base ATS makes sense. Once established, Cadillac can raise it to $34,995 to start.

The ATS will probably be priced at current CTS prices (with a small discount, maybe). Once the ATS is out, the 2013 CTS will be priced similar to a BMW 5 series (maybe).

Good luck to Opel for selling that car in Europe. Anything that small (especially the Fiat 500!) will not sell all that well here in the good old USA. Why do Mini Coopers sell here anyway?

Early '60s Corvair, since it was a rear-engined car.

Cadillac Cien

I do hope that the ATS AND the CTS are not just price-competitive with the 3 and the 5 series. Both need to be better than those BMWs just to get luxury buyers into them.

That would be great except for two things: where are the CNG stations if you lack the land to have a home fueling station AND how much is it to convert cars from gasoline to CNG?

$5000 to convert a gasoline engine to CNG? How will that work with, say, a supercharged engine such as the 3800 Supercharged in my Park Avenue Ultra? More importantly, conversion will have to be cheap and CNG stations would have to be plentiful in order for me (and most of the USA) to convert gasoline cars to CNG. Automakers would instead have you buy NEW cars instead of converting old ones.

Not quite true: Scions are sold as Toyotas in Japan. Example: the xB is sold as the bB in Japan's domestic market. Saturn started as a far more radical proposition than Scion ever was, even though at the end that was no longer true. Scion is more like Mercury in the last decade or so.

Given that the 2012 model 300 (all but the 300C) have 8AT instead of 5AT, there should be no problems here. Too bad GM has not done the same thing in a sedan yet.

That sounds intriguing. Looks like they borrowed GM's playbook from around 1962: the birth of the the Buick 231 directly derived from a Buick V8 of its day. (1962-2010). Does anyone know if the newer GM V6 engines are derived from those 4-cyl engines from Opel?

I suspect that those Holdens will be built in China rather than Australia. If they are built in Australia, that is even better.

I miss velour seating.... sometimes. (Some days I do miss my '84 Cutlass Supreme.) The cloth that GM replaced it with now may be more durable, but I am not a fan of it. One look at that '81 5-series interior reminded me of GM interiors of that time.... and the GM ones were cheaper and a little worse. All automakers have come a very long way from cheap spartan interiors dating from 30+ years ago, mostly because customers wanted better interiors.

I agree with you on the styling vs. other needs (particularly MPG) issue/divide. The "Green beating" would be less acceptable if the kids were less distracted by modern conveniences (especially MP3 players and smartphones). Prior to 1975 or so, the car was the ONLY thing to take pride in. After 1990 or so, that pride went into other things and cars are still fairly expensive. There are still some people who take pride in their cars --- for different reasons. Exterior styling is nice, but a great interior is far more important. At least with older cars, upgrades can be made with relatively little fuss (especially car audio systems). As long as the United States is not as small as Britain or France, cars will never be a necessary evil. Why? Freedom of movement will always be a good thing.

That Caddy is fab. Before I got my 99 Park Avenue, I was also looking at Caddies of that vintage. Prices were rather high, and so were the miles on them back in 2009.

Caddy looks fab; the diesel engine ruined it. A REAL diesel engine (rather than the pseudo-diesels that went into Olds and Caddies at the time) would make them a classic. When I lived in NJ, I heard stories of people swapping out the Olds/Caddy diesels for a Caddy V8 engine and it worked out great for them.

Oh really. I did not know that. As for Baby Boomers and cars, health care will be extremely high and stay high for a long time because it seems to me that they would like to avoid death. What impact financially: more catering to elderly needs at the expense of almost everyone else. If you don't believe me, drop by SW or South Florida sometime.

Funny how Audi is aping BMW only in reverse. Prior to 1925, BMW was motocycles only.

Other than SH-AWD, there is almost no real difference between Honda and Acura (except maybe a slightly nicer interior). And people wonder why Acuras do not sell anywhere nearly as well as Lexuses. . . . .

What do you recommend: repealing CAFE standard entirely? CAFE is not a reason new car prices are higher. A factor that does count is all the safety features and technology that goes into them now. A cheap stripper car that could be bought in 1990 or 1980 can no longer be bought in 2012.

Wow. 3 Quadrillion dollars! (That is 3 thousand trillion.) Hyperinflation, he we come (if this were done). 300,000,000 * 10,000,000 = 3,000,000,000,000,000