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balthazar

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Everything posted by balthazar

  1. balthazar
  2. balthazar
  3. balthazar
    Watched an Aussie review the 508, he was pronouncing it 'PEE-oh'. Which surprised me; we always called them 'PIG-nots'. The review, BTW, was by a guy wo openly said he was a "huge fan" of the brand, but even he struggled to overlook a number of strange anomolies, like the 8-spd under hard accel sits in the same gear you lifted up in. In other words, punching it for a few moments, pull off the gas, and it stayed in 3rd until he blipped the gas again. 187" overall length, 222 HP 1.6T 4-cyl, 8-spd auto, front wheel drive, 0-62 in 7.3 sec, GT trim... is expected to be $66,000. And you all were squawking about the Blazer RS!!
  4. balthazar
    I'm gonna stick my answer to r74 in here. There's no reason to strenuously avoid 'price gaps'. That's because when you analyze a given full-line brand (say BMW for example), the sales volumes as you move up in price tiers fall off amazingly quickly. All along we're told people 'trade up' from a 3-series to a 5 to a 7, but the numbers don't lie and the buyers don't do that. Brand loyalty / repeat ownership numbers back this up solidly. So price gaps are not an issue, if they ever were. The GM companion marques all faltered and the slack was taken up by the core Divisions. Yet we still don't have empirical evidence that even that 'take up' was necessary.
  5. balthazar
    But a golf & an atlas are not the same model, relative to my point. Pretty sure, anyway. And by "appointments", do you mean every single interior & exterior piece / design? 'casue I'm not seeing where a Traverse & the Enclave are NOT 'not drastically different'. I would not be thinking they were the same platform by the interior, that's for sure.
  6. balthazar
    Yepper-doodle!!
  7. balthazar
    Somebody knows- my god; Thanos hasn't stricken all history past last week, has he? • Not 'platforms'; chassis' & bodies. Unless your want to talk about Nash or Hudson after certain years. There was no chassis sharing until I believe the new '68 A-Bodies. Breezy sources will tell you GM used 'A', 'B', etc bodies across the Divisions --and they did to some degree beginning about 1933-- and while non-enthusiasts might think that means they were interchangeable; they were NOT. • Up until the 1970s (when Cadillac's volume became unwieldy), there was only 1 Cadillac plant at one time. Don't think of it as 4 brands with the same (guts) vehicle. Instead, think of it as ONE vehicle with 4, unprecedentedly different trims (bodies & interiors). Who else offers this level of individuality on one model??
  8. balthazar
    • The Lasalle brand was created to sell at a price point lower than Cadillac that Cadillac actually manufactured, right? • "actually manufactured" - what? LaSalles were not built by Cadillac. Or are you saying 'LaSalles sold cheaper than Cadillac did'? • The brand stopped being produced because of WW2, right? But when WW2 ended, Buick just just took over that spot, right? • Not quite, no. There was no '41 LaSalle, and it wasn't WWII that did it in. LaSalle was outselling both Cadillac & Lincoln in '40. If you look at the years '36-40 (discounting the recession year of '38), Cadillac's volume was pretty consistent at around 12K units/year. LaSalle's varied a lot more, but seemed to be on the upswing- over 20K in '37, 39 & 40. Buick did overlap LaSalle in price range at the end of it's run, so it did have a dampening effect from below in that regard (LaSalle still sold very well- best year in '37). But Cadillac also edged downmarket a bit here by pricing the '41 Series 61 notably less than it's entry '40 car, and into the prior LaSalle price range (the lower 50%, too). Unlike the Packard 120 (that arguably saved Packard, tho at a terminal cost in the long run), the Series 61 was of no degradation to the brand's image, and was not heavily promoted. Volume was very low within the Cadillac brand. By the last few years, LaSalle was using Cadillac engines IIRC, and the decision was to 'enfold' LaSalle into Cadillac. I'd have to bone up on the back story, but I believe there was some concern LaSalle was grabbing a bit of the Cadillac spotlight, as it were. In this era, Cadillac was still firmly holding the 'SOTW' banner high. It's not viable to compare immediate pre- and post-war sales volume, too many strong variables involved, but Cadillac shot up to 61K in 1947.
  9. balthazar
    Musk needs to be on Ritalin.
  10. balthazar
    1 of reputedly 2 '58 Plymouths, this one surprisingly a Belvidere vs. a Fury, wearing FUEL INJECTION emblem on the front fender. Original owner had it for a few decades, put over 100K miles on it. Whereabouts today: unknown. 2nd car was reportedly smashed while still relatively new. - - - - - Original '58 300-D FI car, converted over to 2x4 carbs, but owner retained not only the iriginal FI set-up, but picked up a 2nd set-up. Note FI emblem on spare tire cover. Reportedly, (57) 300-D FI cars were built. These set-ups are outrageously expensive if you can find one. Reportedly, a NOS '58 Dodge D-501 FI emblem sold online for $1000. The induction set-up might be worth $10K (I have no idea- not enough market info to establish; they probably sell privately among the model enthusiasts.)
  11. balthazar
    ? Not at the price conversions I posted above. It'd fall against Audi, not VW. Who shopping in that price tier is going to look at peugeot?? I'd be surprised mightily if peugeot did any better here than fiat is floundering around at, volume-wise. It also has zero image/rep here- will take a decade to build anything up even IF they had the offerings to do so. They don't.
  12. balthazar
    I'm almost 100% onboard with you here. I think the ATS was a very nicely done product/design, but I agree that Cadillac should NOT be in this segment- same for the XT4. If nothing else- they're too small for 'Cadillac's. This is why I've been vehemently hopeful that the downturn in the sedan segment would end up with the cancellation of the CT4. Cadillac doesn't have the volume to spread down to the ATS level and still justify the investment, I would have to guess. And while I'm sure the XT4 is generating profit (ATS also), I still believe that Cadillac's market position should 'prevent' them from going there. While the XT5 I'll allow, I would have cast my vote to roll the XT4 money into the XT5 & the 3-row XT5 (XT6). And that's also where I think Cadillac should have gone- made the XT6 an 'XT5 ESV'. WTH is it a completely new design?? The proliferation of so many models per brand cannot continue long-term, ESPECIALLY when you have a reputed upcoming period of EV transition, where the IC & EV version of the same brand/segment share so little. Pare down the lineups.
  13. balthazar
    Should have stuck to coffee mills. Seriously, what does anyone expect them to bring to the market that's not already here 25 times over? Yet another plate of generic, plasticized, alpha-numeric FWD 4-cyl/ hybrid/ eventual EV sedans and CUVs? Isn't there already an oversaturation of CUVs and a increasingly rejected sedan pool? And it's not from India or China, so it'll be positioned upscale, price-wise. The '19 508 starts at $35K in the UK, the (0-60 in 8 seconds) GT starts at $48K. They'll be more here. Who's been out there in the US market, wringing their hands/ praying on their knees that their sedan needs would ONLY be satisfied if peugeot was available?? Drew- do you in any way feel there's a shortage of brands/models on the USDM?
  14. balthazar
    That's been ongoing since the late 1950s tho. Blame the Impala, if you like. You could go farther back when the '41 Buick Limited exceeded the entry level Cadillac in price (and didn't return after WW II). Pricing overlap was so non-existent prior to WWII that GM brought out the 'companion makes' to fill those gaps: Pontiac, Marquette, Viking & LaSalle. Now (globally speaking), brands overlap brands & models overlap models. It's the way the industry has been for decades.
  15. balthazar
    What a colossal waste of time.
  16. balthazar
    The last pic I posted; picture walking in a narrow lane between 2 decrepit buildings in a large junkyard and seeing a car covered with a tarp. You lift the tarp and that view & emblem greets you; an unrestored but very solid black fuel injected '57 convertible. In '57 that means only one model- the 1st year Bonneville- all of them FI'ed, only 630 built. The line is they were built only 1 to a dealer, but there were far more than 630 Pontiac dealers; what's more accurate is dealers were limited to just 1 and not all of them got one. The other unverified scuttlebutt I've read is that out of that 630 cars, only 3 were painted black at the factory. I asked at the office but as soon as I mentioned it, they interrupted me to say 'Don't even ask about it'. Yard was crushed out sometime around 2000, but I have zero doubt that Bonneville was NOT among the flattened junkers- far too valuable. I have yet to see this car resurface, however. - - - - - There's also this car- proposed but reportedly none were built. '57 Rambler Rebel, sign reads 'Electrojector Fuel Injection, 288 HP' :
  17. balthazar
    .
  18. balthazar
    What do you want it to start at; $19K??
  19. balthazar
    This wagon is already half in the grave ~
  20. balthazar
    Wait- is it all about HP? Or is it all about torque? Where & when does HP/liter enter into it? And how does one weigh those things against sales? Gets confusing, doesn't it? That's why I like to blindly accept whatever slop a brand shovels forth, as long as it's the SAME, ONE brand. Keeps my head-lid from getting too sweaty.
  21. balthazar
    Nuttin gets by you, blu! - - - - - Really big '65 Pontiac station wagon ~
  22. balthazar
    Why IS that base engine so bad??
  23. balthazar
    Hmmm, there's this Blazer RS... what else comes to mind?
  24. balthazar
    Here comes the 800 lb Ironic Gorilla :: this is exactly what a lot of the domestics were HEAVILY derided for doing- same platforms under many models/brands. Now that most of the rest of the world has caught on, it's 'great, efficient job, guys, makes total economic sense! Why are the domestics always behind??' Such lame bullshit.
  25. balthazar
    I'm not sure the 'seen as green' thing is much of a thing anymore WRT the prius. Used to hear plenty of chatter along those lines, I don't anymore. Seems now more like 'yeah, yeah, you got a prius' So what? - - - - -
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