regfootball

see I totally disagree. 500 bucks more spent on the car may mean 500 less in incentives to move it out the door. i guess record bonuses serve the customer more than enhancing the product. any improvement on a product has to have a cost / benefit / ROI analysis. Of course they have to make the business case for the improvements but in this case I see management as just being dumb and lazy and lacking foresight and not caring about the repercussions to the brand. I actually never saw PROOF they had to make the powertrain switch. In my mind, it's justified because it improves the product. Not because it satisfied Dan's itch to consolidate engines. I have a hard time believing you can justify the powertrain switch before you can justify changing seat cloth or gauge faces. another example of how completely asinine the decision making must be at GM. they can't even put a real steering wheel and seats in the Corvette, which sells at prices or 55, 60, 70k and up. they put a unique steering wheel in the new camaro but botch the function. So now they put in what is a new Cruze parts bin wheel that has no style match to the rest of the interior. And yet the ZL1 will prob sell for 60k plus. So the Camaro has had (after like a 7 year absence) now two steering wheels, and neither of them are right for the design or the car. GM wasted money on design and engineering efforts both times and couldn't solve the problem. To top it off, there never was a thought of a NAV screen in the Camaro. Even though very few people will spend 2k on it there should have been a space alloted in the dash for a large display.....clearly auto design was trending that direction. NAV had been out long before the Camaro hit production. HHR, they put window switches on the dash, and then they finally wise up and put em back on the door. How much $$$$ did they spend not doing it right to begin with? Cruze, door lock switch is on the dash. What are they gonna pay to fix that screw up? G8 window switches on the console, why didn't they wise up and put em on the door where they were supposed to be? We could excuse this crap for Mitsubishi. How is it the world's largest car company bankruptcy or not has to be continually subject to this sort of management? No wonder everyone used to mock GM all the time. I saw a gorgeous red G8 today that had just gone through the car wash. Why it stayed clean is odd since the massive snow is melting in the 40 degree sun. The car was so stunning and I am like, they couldn't find a way to keep selling this car here some way? Does it really have to go away for 5 years before it comes back? I actually am looking forward to seeing how the Impala moves out with the 3.6.......but I suppose there won't be any tweaks to the ride and handling either.

yet bob lutz said if chrysler had spent 200 dollars more on the interior of the 300M per car it would have been a knockout instead of merely average. VW if they would have spent a dollar more on each door insert in the new Jetta would have made a huge difference. If GM pays 75 bucks for an Impala shifter right now I have a hard time believing to redesign it or at least tweak a bit would could 275 bucks. The Malibu got a new shifter this year and no one complained about the cost of that. To change the stupid looking gauge faces on the cluster would hardly cost them more than a couple bucks. To simply change the seat cloth, and plastics grain and quality and put decent plood in there instead of the garbage that is in there now would hardly classify as a hardship and it wouldn't require little if any redesign. Go sit in a 2010 Mazda6 interior (puke) and then go sit in a 2011. Subtle but significant changes and now its not barf anymore. Chevy needs to take the same approach. Everything sensory needs an overhaul. the seat fabric, the plastics, the gauges, the radio and CC, the shifter, the steering wheel. If Hyundai can ante up the funds to choke out a whole new interior on maybe a couple hundred thousand cars on a dying exterior design, then GM can certainly choke up a little bit of dough for an interior makeover to go along with the powertrain revisions. GM is the world's largest car company this is a project that their middle managers and their summer interns should be able to do in their sleep.

Avenger and 200 are tweeners as the old Sebring and Stratus were. Something like a Kizashi or a TSX is probably a tweener. They did an ok job making lemons out of lemonade with the 200. I just hope it drives better now. The Sebring I drove at a ride and drive about 3 years ago was complete barf.

cruze LS residual is set absurdly high right now, like 56% and it has cheap interest. there is also a lease subsidy. And according to info elsewhere, it seems like on the LS model, GM is waiving the down payment for some folks too off the advertised lease. BUT YOU CAN'T GET CRUISE on the CRUZE LS! Dealer i was at a couple weeks ago said Regal resid was 50% however there is a 3100 lease subsidy plus cheap interest. Both cars are HEAVILY incentivized on leases right now and you're almost a fool not to. In the case of the Regal, Lease that 28k car....it's 14k after 3 years. In 3 years that car will be on a used lot for 18k or more. So you can buy the car cheaper, or sell it and make a profit, all while having 3 fully warrantied years of hassle free lease of the best miles of the car. IMO you cannot pass up the Regal deal right now as an alternative to say a Cruze or a Focus or a Malibu. Speaking of, Malibu leases are cheap right now too. I actually saw the Traverses are leasing shockingly cheap now too for the LS model.

fat lady sings, pigs have wings.......still it came out faster than we see a new Impala hope the Bims and Buffies of the world who drive these things make sure to put premium in the tank so the motor doesn't blow apart on them.

nice review. i'm amazed at how well it sells around here actually.

as long as it doesn't look Asian.

there is still a lack of conventional 5 door hatches in the US........ not expensive A3's, and not over the top Mazda3's.....

frequently in vans, often in transit, the parents get up and walk to the back to tend to kids that may have expressed a bodily function, or are whining, or all sorts of things, so that is why the consoles on vans have been smaller or fold down, and not as obtrusive. I prefer full consoles with floor shifters myself, but if the armrests are beefy and wide enough on a van and comfortable then I like the fold down trays and such. The armrests here look a bit narrow. they did make some nice improvements but in some of the pics on the vans it does seem to show that aft of the front row (aka, the ones who make the car payments and make the buying choices) they really didn't improve the plastics and trim a lot. but maybe it depends on the trim level. i doubt the kids care much. I like the upgrades but now that the Routan gets the new Pentastar too, I would take the Routan in a heartbeat. I'm not a Stongo fan the Routans second row seats are nicer to sit in. And I dig the exterior on the Routan more. I'd just as soon they do away with the floor cavity, drop the floor for my feet instead and hey they could even drop the roof height then as well. If you bought a couch or table on a whim the sto n go is a plus. But often times all you need is the length so to fold down that second row seatback you can still get long rugs, lumber etc. I am curious to know if the front seat back on the passenger side folds forward. If not, then its kind of lame to have sto and go but not be able to extend the hauling capability to the front row. I actually think someone should configure the front passenger seat like the second row sliders in the Lambdas, if you could choose to push the whole seat to the dash as an option to folding down the seat back that would even add another level of flexibility. Even though the sto n go can fold into the floor, you also have to take into account that the floor cavity has to be clear of pretty much anything......if there is a place to store junk in a van it will have junk in it. Between having to clean the junk out of the floor and having to remove and reinstall things like infant car seats which is a PITA (women often can't figure it out or manage it efficiently), the desire to put that seat into the floor where it would be better served as footspace is not as attractive as its made out to be.

or they could have not paid off fritz and red ink rick and instead spent the money on something that would have benefit the customers. and 200 bucks a unit for a new dash and door panels is hardly too much to ask at this point.

i've warmed up to the a5 / s5.....it is better than the c class. big time.

my point being rwd is on its way out the door globally

Mercedes really mailed this one in. Are German cars becoming irrelevant? Should be interesting to see by how much the ATS coupe or hatch whatever it is, outdoes this. Just as we are ready to witness the decline of the in line 6 in the 3 series, i am quite befuddled as to why this thing has such a gargantuan hood. "We want 50/50 weight distribution so bad we'll just push the front seats back another foot" G6 coupe to me is still one of the best modern coupe forms, despite its functional drawbacks.

Bland design, archaic proportions. Gunslit windows aside I wouldmuch rather have A cts coupe. The g8 had proper modern rwd proportions to me.

kudos for getting a real VW!!!! the CC is awesome...congrats...

IMO this is the single biggest thing GM should be concerned about right now. the regal feels like a quality piece in german form, but you know how the michigan beancounters like to mess everything up.

So GM spent money making CTSv's but neglected one of it's five most important products.

my 85 yo father in law wants to unload his GP for an Impala. Problem is, building brand equity correctly means never having holes in the presentation. Inconsistency or dated product weakens the entire brand. At least keep the interior and powertrains up to date. At least they are doing the right thing with the powertrain. It will have taken GM from 2000 to 2013 to basically replicate the Olds Intrigue.

the bankruptcy -reason-, excuse, whatever fits one's perspective..... the flip side of all of what you just said is that the Impala is one of GM's 5 core products. Despite bankruptcy, the Impala is a product that should be a continuous priority and always relevant and up to date. If GM sells 200,000 impalas and it costs them 40 million for 2 years to redo the interior or at least the dash.....then that is 100 dollars a car for two years. If that keeps them from slapping an extra 500 or 1000 in incentives.......

it sure cross pollinates nicely.

i should check, maybe was........i havent opened it. prob will take it back. edit, yes it was. cheapie.

I saved it and will post it, but i did google the code and the only real thing it gave me for useful info was what someone said above......check the memory and the dust and such. strangely since this thing adjusted its display settings by itself seemingly, now it has been relatively stable for the last couple days. Is it possible the display driver got corrupted? Regarding new laptops........the one i bought which i took back has an AMD vision processor. Is it ok for general web use and itunes? Some laptops have 'Pentium' some have the i3 and i5 and i7.....are those worth it? I have had great luck with AMD machines in the past and saved some dough in the process.

you mean BEYOND the limit. Hyundai gave the last gen Sonata a new interior for basically only its last year or so.....it barely took them anything to do. Why can't GM mobilize and afford to just put a new frickin dash in the car?

it may be somewhat virus related too, yes. I did buy a 350 laptop from BBY this week but have not opened it yet. They have cheap financing. I might take it back though. i dislike their sales practices and overall approach these days. yu can't just buy a computer, they try to upsell you on 20 things before you can get out the door. I just got emailed the preview for next week's office max ad. they always have killer laptop deals too. sometimes better than best buy.

it was running fine for quite awhile with a full hdd. i recently uninstalled and reinstalled the virus software as I thought it was related to that. I will look into the memtest. I have indeed read that dust and reseating the memory may be needed. I may need to get some canned air. I just don't want to spend any more money on this piece. We bought a new power cord and supply last year for 100 bucks. waste of money. the battery is probably going to crap out before too long.