regfootball

that is a SMOKIN VW that needs to be in the USA, instead, VW is dumbing down their lineup and fattening it up, that alone should tell you what VW thinks of the USA.... I love that Scirocco....HOT HOT HOT

wrung out a used Outlander today at a local car broker, lots of the same impressions. good vehicle once up and cruising. very good front seats. space efficient but needs interior update and some NVH and things like better sounding door closing etc. am going to take a serious look at the outlander sport when it arrives next month.

yesterday i saw another new Jetta out in the wild. this time, white, must have been an SEL....a MUCH better impression. the turd brown color i saw the other day brought out everything bad in the car. the new Jetta in white in motion was not bad. Again, sort of a poor man's A4. Not that the A4 is stunning....... but the new Jetta in white made a much better cause for itself than the turd brown.

everything i hear makes me think France is the worst possible example of a society in the world. an entirely sidetracked sort of priority system that if it yielded a productive result could be defended. wine is nice and the women put out, do kinky $h!, and let you have mistresses. but they revolt there, unemployment is insane, and the rest of Europe hates France. they don't have any solid economic background, and they really don't lead or innovate in much. i don't get the impression they have a success based culture, or any sort of real drive for self reliance. You never hear of French being pleasant, and often you hear of French being self absorbed. I dunno, I have relatives that visited Ireland, all of a sudden, that was the place to move to. SOme other friends went to Austrailia, and they came back and said, we want to live there. I visited California and thought the wine road was cool and thought wow i should move here (and since i haz wisely come to my senses). All the annoying scandinavians think their point of view is the way to go and they may be the most backwards jerks on the planet. We started a new country to get away from Europe, i see no reason to want to emulate them now. Real truth is marraige requires compromise to work, the same analogy has to be drawn to politics. No one side will ever fully get their way, and in order for it to work and be FUNCTIONAL, there has to be a balance. Note how all the extreme swings left and right in this country have left us in a huge mess. France does not offer solution examples to us that are in the middle. And they don't really have much in the way of success proved on a global scale to offer them as an prime example either. Maybe some aspects of French way of life are worth considering, but holistically I would never pattern society after France. THere is not a buttload of French women I have seen that I find stunningly hot either. They all seem to have a sort of underfed and ungroomed sort of look to a lot of them that I am not hip to. Laetitia Casta is OF COURSE an exception to this.

"you had me at hello" "you lost with graphics and flow charts" seriously though, in concept, why not try it? i truly believe electric motors will ultimately be a major force BECAUSE they are so doggone simple.

all of the above powertrain tech - GM is getting there, but they just don't apply tech fast enough across their model lineups. interior quality - where GM has failed the most, and one that gives buyers the biggest initial impression on the quality of a car. reducing weight, hows about not using so much cheaper steel? bold exterior designs, sure, but then you have issues like the camaro with no back seat, or the sky solstice with no trunk, or the CTS coupe with no view out the back. warranties, GM is not bad but it is behind a few key competitors. AFFORDABILITY - GM is not stocking entries in cheaper segments like other makes are. and GM keeps trying to push prices up for stuff they shouldn't be. GM is going to be getting seriously undercut in pricing in lots of volume segments. they can't maintain their market share unless they go where the customers are.

cadillac has more dealers in the US to support so volume is important, and they do not have the global sales BMW does for the brand. So each model Caddy sells in the US has to do its part not only with profit potential, but also with volume. that just underscores why the XTS matters. if caddy makes 10k on each of 40k XTS the first year, that adds 400M to the profit ledger for GM.

a cadillac coupe of any kind is never going to sell more than 10-15k units a year now. and one with a price north of 50, I'll be surprised if they sell 5,000 of them. a- very few people have any interest in coupes, crossovers, sedans, and trucks are what folks are in tune with b- if they do want a coupe often they are young and broke c- and then there are those that buy BMW's, Camaros, and Mustangs anyways. ATS coupe may have a shot at selling. But CTS coupe exists more in the lineup for gravy sales and for image more than to generate an assload of sales volume. that's probably exactly why it has polarizing styling and a useless rear. those few that want it and will pay for it, will want it bad.

They are likely right. FOGM i am sure your girlfriend is taking that Arch degree and looking forward to an immediately lucrative degree and getting filthy rich in this building friendly environment! the economy will not rebound any time soon. double dip is eminent. when will the retards figure it out. if jobs become stable and pay comes back.....THEN we will stabilize so many things and see improvement. I wonder what brand of vehicles I will be selling (with my degree) soon....

If the Volts shape were on a non hybrid model....(cruze and volt share platforms to a degree) then the non hybrid 'Volt' would seat the same 5 in theoretically the same space. so the heart of my question was more about which design do you think would be more appealing to the market as chevy's mainstream compact. there were some 2nd gen Saturn Ion sketches that went public before the broohaha and GM's crisis and I almost wonder if GM didn't salvage some elements of those 2nd gen Ion designs and give them to the Volt.

do it

any coincidence this looks suspiciously 'similar' to a 2 generations past sonata?

i picked chimney soot interior over stale biscuit.

http://www.subaru.com/content/static/fightmediocrity/index.html I'm gonna price one out, i think this will be a good camry competitor.

i was thinking the exact same thing chrysler needs to tell us the price of the 200 v6. cheapest (real world prices) midsize/tweener available with a high hp v6? of course you can buy a new taurus for 24, 25 grand so it would need to be cheaper than that. fusion with v6 is cheap too but the fusions' v6 is not that powerful.

the SEL i sat in had the same cheesy bad door panels as the others i think. they were bad. interesting tidbit. i saw a new Jetta in the wild today. brown. i gotta say this, it looked pretty bad sitting there mixed in with other cars at the stoplight. it looked dated and bland, very generic, in fact it had all the charisma of a toyota. totally has changed my mind on how i feel about the design of the car. i thought that was interesting considering it doesn't look too bad on the lot surrounded by a bunch of other vw's. needless to say, no buy a jetta for me. it has all the road presence of base model toyota. i will now classify the Jetta's design as the same level of epic fail as the chevy cruze's backseat and powertrains. it is if you are a consumer reports subscriber. disclosure- i once owned a what would now be a 21 year old prism.....

200-300 dollars worth of better plastic, especially in the doors, and maybe people won't -perceive' this car as going downmarket.

SOMEBODY should refresh the 9-3

xactly what prompted that part of my comment

if chrysler makes the detailed parts of the car substantially better, and it drives better, it will help the retail sales a little. nice plastic, padded armrests, fancy stitching, nice steering wheels, expensive looking wheels, clear expensive looking displays, all that kind of stuff. another way to pull off a troubled reskin, in addition to the new power train, stuff like option packages being friendly. like heated seats for cheap...etc.

here is the purpose of this redo. it takes the look that chrysler wants to establish in the future, and the new model name, out in the dealership now. this means a smoother transition to the next all new car and it introduces the 200 name on the market to get the name recognition on that. while i admit these new photos don't fix it as much as i originally thought, considering what they had to work with, it's a good job. look at even what hyundai did with the last gen sonata, they updated the interior the last couple years before the new model, and they established a little of the interior design theme, so when you look at the old and new interiors side by side there is a little consistency. i want to see the interior. if this v6 hits close to 300hp and with the 6 speed, this car might be a sleeper stealth machine. kizashi and sebring / 200 are about the same size. a car that size with close 300hp under the hood could come close to hitting 5.5 on a 0-60 sprint. unless it weighs like a pig. even then it will still be a 6 second car. again i want to see the interior. a new batch of lemonade, seems like it will be ok for a bit.

i've been desperately wanting to see a real live Mercury Sable Voga....... about as close to white leather i have come across on recent domestic vintage cars. At least the Mariner Voga I sat in it was pretty much white. Pretty nice too!

500 was a decent looking car. the aztek was not attractive, but it swallowed more cargo than 90% of vehicles out there, ran great, and was a great buy for me at the time. Quiet and comfortable too. Besides, the question is about hybrids so the 500 and aztek (spell it right next time please) are irrelevant, Mr. troll. Fact is if you want a stylish hybrid, or one that is a real car, you will get a Fusion or a Volt. If Nissan wants to allay fears of Leaf drivers being stranded, they should hire the Verizon guy for commercials....when their Leaf goes dead, he is there with the tow truck. "can you charge me now?"

I am interested to know if the Volt design had been the Cruze, would you consider it more interesting, or functional, or desirable than the Cruze? I am not at all bringing the hybrid into the question. If the Cruze had arrived with the Volt's styling (with obviously more interior space returned because of no battery) would the Cruze seemed more attractive? I have to admit. On styling alone and with the hatchback, the Volt as a Cruze would have actually been the game changing small car for Chevy that is still the jury that will be out on the Cruze. Please vote (volt) for your favorite.....

the volt and fusion hybrid to me represent the two best hybrid solutions out now. but really if you are considering volt vs prius, just look at pictures. the volt looks real. the prius is a TURD