PurdueGuy

I don't foresee the US becoming a 3rd world country, but I could see it falling far out of superpower/global leader status. But, as things get tough, people will take jobs for less money, and *some* jobs will come back. We are still a largely educated workforce, and do not have nearly the corruption issues of many 3rd world countries.

I'm looking into a sun visor upgrade for my '99 Saturn SC2. I noticed today while junkyarding that '90's Grand Am's and some other '90's and early '00's GM cars seem to share the same 3-screw mounting design. I didn't get a chance to test and see if the visors really would swap, but they look the same, and I could easily believe that Saturn dipped into the parts pin for their visor hardware. So, what I'm hoping to find is that some model/trim level that uses this 3-screw mounting design (for the swivel end) came with sun visors that had the extension flap piece. I have it in my suburban, I've had it in buicks past, and would like that little slide out extension in the Saturn.

Since when do Americans not want to make things? The problem is management wanting to make every last penny they can, or being forced by competition to lower costs every penny they can, and thus exporting jobs. I don't recall factory workers every yelling "we're sick of making these wigets, take your stupid factory to china!" I also don't recall hearing management go "I'm tired of employing people locally... it would be so much easier if we employed people that required translators and a lot of long flights to places where I might get a new disease I have no natural built up immunity to, let's ship our jobs overseas!" It's ALL about money and greed. If you really don't think americans want factory jobs, you're off your rocker. There are a lot of people out there that'd love to get ahold of a steady factory job.

Google is your friend. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8DtMsRO6A0 http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=33913115840 Both the G8 and Astra were low volume, and neither is really that well known of by common americans. Don't forget the Astra was in Transformers 2. It wasn't without it's own little spots, it just wasn't catching on like the G8 was. I'd be curious to find out final production numbers of each model. All this still doesn't change the fact that both cars will/would be mentioned by most of the mag reviews as "this used to be a x". You don't think people will see the similarities between the Saturn Astra and the Buick if all it gets is a grill & badge job? The new Astra looks just like the old, only with softer lines.

Problem A) Walmart & other "big box stores" funnel money out of the community, and the nation. Problem B) Local business does not provide the low prices or the "one stop shopping" of the "big box stores" Seems like a solution would be a well organized mall, but not one that is filled with smaller big chain stores with even bigger prices, but a more open, cohesive collection of locally or at most regionally owned businesses, all sharing a building and point of sale system, most sharing the same hours. I'm picturing something that looks & feels similar to wal-mart, but the clothing section is owned, stocked, managed by a local person. Perhaps their department has a contract for a set time frame, and another local business person can try outbid them on their contract. Of course, this does not grant the same volume purchasing advantage, customer service is difficult to set up to be shared like the POS system would be, you don't get the consistency from store to store, etc. There are also major disadvantages as well as advantages to limiting the "mall" to one of each type of store (one grocery, one clothing, one tool dept, etc), but there could likely be huge advantages in customer service. Dunno, just thinking out loud. The other question is if it's wise to control the amount of domestic product sold through the store.

Yeah, no one will be able to tell they're different gens of the same model. There's no way that when the Buick comes out, all the magazines will be saying "this is essentially an Astra, which used to be sold as a Saturn." Yes, it's a different gen and a pretty different car, but the look hasn't changed much, and the mags are still going to make that comparison, so if that comparison is the whole reason for "not rebadging" a car that isn't otherwise available in this market, then it is still an inconsistency IMO. It's not that Buick shouldn't have the Astra, but that if there is a market for the G8 in Chevy clothing in the US (as there seems to be, judging by the strong sales of the G8), then this is a silly reason not to offer it.

Yeah, you still don't make sense. You're saying that rebadging a Holden (not sold in this market) for Chevy would be rebadging, because the car was previously sold through Pontiac, which is in this market. Explain to me how that is different than rebadging an Opel (not sold in this market) for Buick, which was previously sold through Saturn. It's the exact same situation! The way you are stating it as rebadging something from Pontiac to Chevy, I can make the same jump over Opel & say it's being rebadged from Saturn to Buick.

Not sure how that would happen, but it doesn't hurt to dream... not until they get crushed like a '95 Olds Aurora in the clunkers program.

Wait, you're saying that making the Pontiac G8 into a Chevy Impala or Chevelle would fit the term "rebadge", but a Buick Astra doesn't fit the definition? Maybe you missed the part where Saturn sold the Astra?

Sounds like it'll be more like a grill & badge job of the Astra.

I had the opportunity to drive a base Sky down the street & back at a Saturn meet a couple weeks back. Nice car, but it needed more power (RedLine trim would be a must for me), and I didn't get a chance to put it through twisties, but I would imagine it's a blast. An older couple brought it to the meet, and drove I believe it was about 9 hours in the car to get there, and they loved it. 'Course they love the Saturn brand in general too. He apparently has a '91 SC that just needs a clutch. Well over 200k miles, and everything other than tune up items is all original including the bulbs. I can't fathom light bulbs lasting that long...

The biggest thing that makes me skeptical of this is that the big idea for Saturn has seemed to be that Penkse would isolate the company from the luggage of direct manufacturing costs, while capitalizing on manufacturers that already had to cover those costs, and added little more fixed cost to increase volume in existing manufacturing plants, aside from tooling to make the vehicles specific to Saturn (which would be almost zero if the cars are direct rebadges of those only currently available in other countries.) Penske buying a manufacturing plant would attach Saturn to the manufacturing costs. Not to say that the game plan can't have changed, or there can't be some twist to it, but it's enough to keep me very skeptical.

While I am also skeptical for many reasons, there are a lot of things that have happened in the last 2 years, 1 year, heck, even the last several months that most of us would've said "no way in hell" about...

Maybe because drag coefficient is just a pissing match that doesn't directly hurt or benefit the consumer, it just contributes toward efficiency, which does benefit the consumer. If the Prius is .30 and the Volt is .32, people like you would get jollys off of retarded rants about how GM is the devil and incompetent, even if the final product is superior in efficiency.

If we ignore all the practicality and infrastructure issues, yes, we would almost certainly get more miles per gallon if those gallons were burned at a centralized power plant and the energy were used to power electric cars. It's a super oversimplified way of looking at things, and the details ruin the idea, but yes, we would get more miles.

I appreciate the consideration you took with choosing someone to sell to. I was part of a forum a while back that got sold to some advertising company, and the whole thing went to crap overnight. They changed the look of the site (made it worse), they fired all the mods/admin & made them beg for their jobs back (I didn't), and were uber-strict about operating the site. It became a ghost town within less than a month.

Aaaaah, a special situation. Makes sense now!

here is my point: -take the cost and material required to build a single large commercial wind turbine -build as many personal wind turbines as you can with that material/cost I bet money the power generation of those personal turbines added together doesn't compare to that of the large scale. On top of that, they aren't likely to last as long, and they will cost more to maintain/repair.

But your point still overlooks the range issue. You can't reclaim gas station land if cars are all electric, unless people no longer venture more than 150 miles from home. Until there is a vehicle with a range of something along the lines of ten thousand miles without a recharge (or whatever), there will be a need for infrastructure. We also already addressed powering electric generation with fuel - it's far from the best option, it's not really even a mediocre one in the world of electricity generation. Home generation of electricity is so scaled down in terms of wind, or fossil fuel based generation that the inefficiency is astounding. The craze may be for people to put up power generating windmills, etc and try to be "off the grid", or supplement their power, but if everyone in the country did that, we would have wasted so much money it would be terrible. It would be comparible to powering a semi tractor by linking together a bunch of 3hp briggs & straton engines until we had enough power to pull a trailer. Could it work? Sure, but it would be such a waste of resources, both in creating the powertrain, and in operating it. Even with wind, which has no operating expense other than maintenance, would waste a lot of resources just in the building of a bunch of tiny wind turbines if every home had one. In general, we can keep looking forward to the day when batteries have such a great range that we rarely have to charge away from home, that our cars don't support a battery swap station on every 3rd corner, but maybe 1/5 of that. Then we can see some gains in land use, etc.

Tesla claims 300 miles on a charge on their newer car. Not bad, but what is the range of a gasoline car? A little more on a tank of gas typically, and then you can refill the tank. With current infrastructure, ICE, hybrid, and E-REV vehicles essentially have an infinite range. For this reason alone we won't see gasoline leave the car for quite a long while. Speaking in longer term "what could be" terms, but sticking to existing technology, battery swapping station infrastructure (along with battery standards across manufacturers) would allow for electric cars to have that same essential infinite range. Fast charging isn't fast enough for this purpose, when "fast" generally means 3-4 hours instead of 8-12. Few people will be willing to drive 300 miles then wait for 3+ hours. Even 30 minutes would probably be too long for most people. Centralized electricity production is vastly more efficient than home generation. It is for this reason alone that hydrogen home generators will be little more than a bridge toward hydrogen tech, but that's another topic. Centralized electricity production also allows for diversity in energy sources. Coal, hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar can all supply a portion of our grid without funding terrorist nations (though last I knew we were still buying a lot of nuclear fission material from Russia, but more for anti-proliferation reasons than an actual need). Petroleum power stations are and will continue to be a small contributor toward the grid, but transferring our use from cars to power plants seems like missing an opportunity to step away from dependence on foreign oil, when so many other power generation means don't require it.

Thanks Ted.

IMO, this is a dumb policy. there are tons of 3-letter words to search for. I just tried to search for "Ion" (as in the saturn ion, but I don't care to search for "saturn ion", because posts may not have included the word "saturn" in them). Other terms I can think of off the top of my head include Geo, LS1, LS2, GMC... *edit* well frack, it's not just a limit on the length of the search, it's a limit on any individual term in the search. So I can't even search for "Saturn Ion" because "Ion" is less than 4 letters. Seriously? Wow...

Oh, Buick Y-Job, you never fail to look beautiful, even next to a younger contemporary. I need to find the sketches of the redesigned Saturn Ion before they scrapped it & brought in the Astra.

A very nice shop out back, an Ariel Atom, a nice car trailer, and a new Suburban to haul it with.

Wait, this may be halfway back through the convo, but is PCS making fun of balthy for saying "typing" when referring to using a keyboard on a computer? Cuz I'm still in my 20's, and I've spent plenty of time around people younger than me, and I don't know anyone who calls it "keying". "Keying" is something you do to someone's car that you don't like, "typing" is what you do on a keyboard or cell phone when texting.