regfootball

Hyundai still lacks the finer points of interior quality, even though the design is quite good here. With some more go juice and better manners all around, I think they would have come closer to the mark. The 3 door is unique and still i find it a complete bitch to get in the back of this car. This car would have more appeal in today's world to me as a cheap entry level car with super gas mileage. In that regard, the styling is a huge bonus over say, a Fit. Hatchbacks are still a tough sell to a lot of folks. If done like an Astra, I think it works better. The cargo hold here is a bit compromised, as is interior space.

XTS does not feel roomy like the devilles of a few years ago. Cadillac across the board has tighter interiors, although the XTS is good sized. ATS is tiny in back. CTS I would hope is an improvement over the ATS.

Not typically a Japlux fan, but I have like the TL, TSX a lot in their latest gens. They possess the quality feel that i feel Honda abandoned. To me the ILX has a different feel, and that feel is probably just as you described it. In some ways, this is the future of motoring as people get less and less connected from the details about hardware. Not to say the ILX probably doesn't drive alright, just that the other things you mentioned are more prominent to the consumer. Every mfr needs a car that they can lease cheap and then recycle it as a CPO. And, there is brand entry. Acura used to have brand image to each of their models. Legend, etc. These days I just sort of think of them as premium Hondas, but considering how bang up Honda does......to have a premium Honda is a good move. I think Lincoln is trying for the same thing but you know that won't work the same way for them. Buick is probably a parallel to Acura. A friend has a 13 year old Toyo Solara she might actually be getting rid of. Mentioned leasing, I tried to steer her towards a Verano, or a Mazda. But she is so Japan biased, the ILX is probably right up her alley. Japanese brand, mpg perception.

meanwhile, in these parts today, ethanol blend average gas was 4.39.

Err.... Right. Problem is Chevy is not German or VW. Besides 30% is far too few. Where is the other MPG going to come from? Is GM and the other going to higher Penn and Teller? i will guess about 5% of cruze production is diesel. Reason? Standard leather and a 25k price tag. Oddly enough, today, diesel is 40 cents cheaper than gas a a few stations in these parts. i think Chevy will be just fine sticking with v8's in the trucks and the new v6. I don't think GM -needs- to do a gas turbo truck. GM would benefit from a light duty diesel i think. I suppose the Taurus Drew speced out has massage seats too. Notice the AWD. And go to any Ford dealer that is worth its salt and by July that Taurus will be 10 grand off.

stick to the basic segments. Sedans, in a few sizes. Crossovers, in 2 or so sizes. ALmost have to keep the Escalade, it is just a Suburban trim package. Coupes? 1 for sure, 2, not so sure. ATS best coupe. Caddy does need an indulgence car like a convertible. Whether it is an XLR or a 4 seat, don't know. It should be unique. ELR is a given. A good way to sell Volts and justify the price. Cien would be awesome, but doubt they could swing the production budget. Audi, Merc, and BMW, their model proliferation will come back to bite them someday. Too many models, the well will run dry. We may be at a point where a sub SRX crossover is needed, and yes even a FWD based subcompact car..........

new Lancer and Galant needed badly. Subcompact? Neee....... especially with 84hp? wtf

say 50% to rile up the troops (in hopes of achieving 20%) I hate that style of management. Drew and Rivera are spot on.

Perfect non SUV family rig except my wife don't like em.

Stop playing dumb. LOL! You know as much as I that one factor is the price of fuel and the other fact is we would not have these smaller cars if it were not for the looming CAFE average of 52 MPG average. The one other factor also is the price as few people can afford full size anything anymore. The many people have down sized as their incomes are not what they used to be and increases in taxes are also taking a chunk. The fact is people have less to spend today and will have less to spend in the near future. Hell not all that long ago a well equipped Suburban could be had for $35K now you would be lucky to find a Nox stickered for that price. Now answer me this, would we have the Volt, Hybrids and Spark if it were not for the looming CAFE average in 11 years? The fact is some folks think if the present party is voted out that they average will be dropped. It might but not by much as the genie is out of the bottle. The new genie is that the government wants us to save fuel and conserve but now with the higher MPG cars we have driven more miles as a country than ever. The market is not shifting on its own. The fact is Ford outside of the Mustang and truck does not offer a V8 anymore and not because people would not buy it. If you want a V8 in a GM car you need to spend well over $30K for it and that price will rise as GM and other will want people to opt for smaller cars and engines. The fact is the MFG have to find a way to get people to buy small and high MPG if they want to meet the government mandate. The public to day is like a rat in a maze. They may make the choice of what direction to a point but they will all be force to the same place no matter what. You think GM is limiting the SS with a high price because they just want to sell only 5K cars just because they want it to be rare. No they made it clear a while back that they had to limit the car due to CAFE issues. What better way to limit a car as saying we will build what ever you want but we will have a price much higher than what we could sell it for. Do you think the SS price will be reasonable after what they already showed us how cheap they can sell the base model in OZ or even the G8 just a few years ago? The root is Gov mandated CAFE and the control is the economic factors of gas prices and car pricing. Anything in the future that has a V8 or excessively low MPG that affects CAFE will have added cost to help limit sales but still offer the car. You can get it but you will have to pay for it. No one is going to do a gas tax while in office to let people choose the cars they want. This is why Lutz and others want a gas tax to let the consumer choose what they drive. first three paragraphs spot on. world pressure is for US to reduce fuel consumption and then there is the whole CO2 thing. People typically have shown in the past they will buy as large as their wallet allows. Nowadays people buy a Cruze because that is their budget. While I do agree with some about some cars are too large bit (for example I would prefer to drive a Kizashi instead of an Altima for example but the Kizashi at least has enough room for me to sit in back as the same for my kids) most of the shift to smaller cars is due to forces beyond the control of the buyers declining income and purchasing power rising fuel prices rising taxes and other daily expenses CAFE globalization of powertrains and the Eurotax etc. on displacement. I love the idea of a car that gets great Mpg. But there is also first cost, and there is also function, is the car large enough for what i do ....more importantly if i load it up with 4 people and bags for 3-4 days. I think CAFE needs a repeal. Let the market work by itself. Gas tax is probably one of the more fair ways to encourage or discourage fuel consumption.

the v8 ones, the v6 ones have bling mods. huge market price diff between the v6's and v8's.......the v6's, a huge percent were fleet. Not that that is bad. We were always able to move a Magnum, once the price went low enough. The 2.7 is not entirely bad. Lacks grunt but i hear it got very good mpg. I am not sure if the 2.7 demons were gone by the time it hit the Magnum. I always wanted a 2008 (interior mods) AWD v6 magnum. the 08 had the nice new interior and the nicer front end. But it was short lived. AWD is impossible to find with v6 in good condition. It is probably easy to find a good cheap v6 RWD one. LOVE the cargo area. Tons of seating room inside. Drives very nice also. I would have wanted one with moonroof also since the interior is sort of bunker like.

I decided I wanted my pay to double what i was making 4 years ago too. WOOHOO! HOW HAPPY I AM!!!!! Altima and Sentra are great toyota alternatives, but the rest of Nissan's lineup don't warrant double sales. Versa? LMAO!!! Cube? Juke? LMAO

all changes that will affect sales, but to not change the powertrains really shows how little effort they put into it.

i think i have seen this on one BMW, a dual solution in the back end. A 'twin hatch'......one you can open most of the time as a trunk and the other to open the whole hatchback when you have large items. hopefully done far better than this

the v8 onces command a lot more dough. the 3.5 is not a bad idea.

the center is uncomfortable.....

ford has a 2.3 ecoboost in the pipeline also. the 2.0 turbo was nice in the edge i drove. to be honest, the 2.0t would be nice in the Impala also.

Impala has Epsilon disease, too narrow, but you notice how they kept the door panels thin and carved out to get as much width as they could inside in the new Impala. You mentioned the Captiva, more and more i think it is a stroke of genius. Buick said they did not want the Vue, so they turn it into fleet only and move 5k of them a month and resell them a year later as CPO. I was just in my hometown lot checking and they had 6 captivas, almost all with v6 and leather and like 10k or so miles on them and these things are selling close to 20k. For those who are not crazy about the Equinox, the Captiva is a great alternative. Likewise if you don't want a new overpriced Impala you can get the slum Impala. no way they would have sold 60k buick vues. and saturn fans have a gm they can still buy. With those CPO Captivas if I had been selling Chevy I would have pushed the used. They would have been great switch cars for Equinoxes or move ups from Cruzes and Malibus. Then you'd get paid for a used unit instead of the lesser you would get selling chevy new.

i would have gotten one of these, would have driven like a car.....

None of them are worth that. Dinner for 3 at Arbys is not worth $19.00 but welcome the change everyone wanted. The best things in life are not free and if you want government health care, higher min wage and a party paying back union support you are going to pay for it no matter how much they raise taxes on the evil rich. LOL! The fact is that today with wages, taxes, benefits, increased government regulation and energy cost the price of everything is going up and will continue do so. The impala in 10 years will be smaller and closer to $50K. So get used to it as there is no turning back now. And the FED RWD debate is subjective in the non enthusiast area as there is a lot more of them and they want FWD. But I will not be surprised if a non SS RWD may be offered once they change platforms if they can move production to this company and share a line with the Caddies and the Camaro. What is in play here is more than what we know and GM knows a hell of a lot more on the next move or two we have not even been hinted on. As for the fleet look for very few to be fleeted in the Impala. Who would want them when most companies are looking to cut cost. Most companies and cities are going to small FWD cars with smaller 4 cylinders to save fuel cost. and purchase cost. Cities are broke and most will not buy the larger stuff out side state police and some local departments. I am not sure we will even see a police package on the Impala. Something else to consider is this Impala may not be around really long. This is a old platform and the Impala has gotten to use all that is refined on it. But in a few years who knows a NA built Alpha based Impala could be added to the SS line and that would give room for the next Malibu to have a large niche between the Impala and Cruze. Lets face it GM has to do some changes here as the 3 segments are almost on top of each other. There is a lot in play here and we have a lot to learn and see yet. I would recommend lets watch GM play this out more and we will have a better understanding. your first paragraph is spot on, until we change the direction of leadership back the other way for awhile..... even though new car average price is higher, let's determine how much of that is driven by higher prices of crossovers and luxury car sales. bread and butter car transaction prices are not on average going up as fast but to be fair on that a lot of people are buying cruzes and such now instead of the midsizers. Volume bread and butter cars, the average prices will be going up but competition is so fierce it tends to keep the average increases in check. I think a fair amount of these will become fleet over time, although for now they need to fleet the Malibu so much more to make up for the lack of sales there. The Impala was older so it needed to be fleeted to keep the plant running. Now that is the Malibu's job. But in 2-3 years there will be plenty of Impala fleet cars. Actually, I have seen a $h!ton of new Malibus lately. GM is doing a good job moving the car in spite of the flaws. Cheap leases, fleet, whatever it takes. The Malibu is a good car with some flaws but if I had a fleet car i would damn happy with a Malibu. I like the Fusion, but there is a quality about the new Fusion that I don't like and I think the Malibu is a very divergent and attractive constast from that. Crazy thing is the Impala and Malibu are REALLY close in size, just that the Malibu has a larger airy cabin, more of a touring car. The Malibu is more of a bunker with less space and claustrophic. Malibu's dash is a cockpit and the Impala's is more horizontal and spread out. If Chevy can position some of its Malibu as an affordable sports sedan, i think they can hit a portion of the market that is being neglected right now. New Impala is precisely for those that may have driven Bonnevilles and Auroras before. When i was on the lot checking it out yesterday, a dude with a fairly new pre 13 Malibu and his family stopped dead in their tracks to check one out. Taurus needs an interior gut and redo to keep up with the Impala though I think. The Taurus interior is a bit overdone and intrusive for a car that is supposed to have size, and they need to reduce the bunker feel in there also. The Impala's big advantage over the Taurus is how airy feeling it is in comparison.

That's for fleets, I would think. Still going to be some fleeted, I would think. I see the 4 cyl as a huge draw for the Impala . Many buyers come in now thinking 6 cylinders drink gas. The Impala is larger inside than the BU and it won't be much heavier. It will have plenty of power. Impala is not a luxury or near lux car either. Chevy is still the high value division. There is a limit to how much Chevy can emphasize lux over value before the shopper bolts to a higher brand. Impala's interior plastic needs an upgrade if they want to be considered near lux.

agree on the damn nice car part. but not 40k nice. and this is why interior is not quite 40k nice. and there are caddys and buicks above it. To use the Taurus again as a reference. My old dealer group is currently selling Taurus at several thou off sticker. This is the price where these cars will sell. Impala will need the discounts like this to move, maybe not right away. GM is still inflating their stickers. Most 12-13 Impalas sold in the low twenties retail. The new Impala will not command a 15k real price jump. Maybe 8-10k. But that is still not 40k. AWD Taurus Limited 33k +/- http://www.appleautos.com/2013-Ford-Taurus-Limited-Apple-Valley-MN/vd/13910692 GM's sedan strategy is unique. They plan to sell an equal number of Impalas and Malibus. Toyota sells many times more Camrys than Avalons, Nissans Altima is many more than Maxima. Ford even blows out several more Fusions than Taurus. This more even split for GM means lower prices will be needed. Plus the LaCrosse and Regal are somewhat in competition too.

I did check out the Impala quite thoroughly at the Auto Show. Nice car, inside and out. Practical, attractive. Saw my first one on the lot this evening, yes, it was loaded. I think it was a 2LZ or 3LZ... THIRTY NINE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!!!!!! wth. how is GM gonna get 40g for an IMPALA?????? The 2012 with 20k on the lot is 15 thousand...... So this is just asking opinions on whether you think Impala can make a huge leap in actual sale prices. I'm not sure they can go that big. Taurus' are selling for 6-7k off sticker right now.......

I really liked the old Mazda6 hatch. To me, it was like a sedan in looks and feel, and it had a huge cargo hold when you put the seat down. And it did not look like a wagon. After another long trip in the company Journey again the other day, I am convinced there are very few crossovers I would prefer to drive everyday instead of a sedan or nice hatch. My Taurus X is the closest thing I have driven yet to a car, and that is probably a wagon.

sweet