balthazar

>>"If we rely on only Pontiac Fans you can kiss Pontiac bye bye. "<< You keep repeating this over & over & over like it's a Great Discovery. I think you are missing out on the fact that a LOT of Pontiac fans are not currently buying Pontiacs because there is either not a compelling-enough vehicle, or no vehicle at all in a given segment (Solstice & GTO excepted). In other words, there are far more Pontiac fans out there than recent sales volume would indicate, as opposed to every non-Pontiac buyer being a hardcore Brand X loyalist and a major obstacle to win over.

Looks nice, done the same type of work myself. I don't get to enough, but I enjoy working with stone & concrete.

OK... but what does that mean ?? 'Fans' of A-R ? 'Semi-exotic sports brand' ?? What... who... and that's a new one by me. I just saw the car last week that built up all these fans in the U.S.; the GTV, or whatever it was called. Nothing even remotely exotic about it, and at the time there were an awful lot of Nelsons on the curb pointing and yelling 'HA-HA!'. Car may actually be great, but the price is absolutely ridiculous. Let's see if it's 25% more car than the Ford GT...

>>"the Enclave I think is class average....The Mazda CX-9 is even nice surprisingly."<< If you think the mazda (owner loyalty: 26%, second worse only to isuzu) is 'surprisingly nice', the Enclave will floor you (provided you could experience it without the Mt Everest chip against Buick on your shoulder). >>"If all GM is going to do with Buick is rebadge other cars then there isn't a lot of point to keeping them."<< None of Buick's offerings can be legitimately called a 'rebadge' according to the common sense definition of the practice. >>"If Buick has good models, that sell with zero incentives then they should stay with their 3 car lineup as long as they make profit."<< Even toyota doesn't sell with zero incentives- perhaps it can be canceled as a penalty for 'poor performance'.

Yup- gas goes bad very fast. You are supposed to use fuel stabalizer if the vehicle is going to sit (I believe) 6 months. I bought a car that had sat 15 years; the gas had.... solidified into an inch-thick layer of cracked crustiness. I had it boiled out, used a length of chain, tried coating it- could not get it to stop oozing Slurpee mix into my fuel filter. Ultimately had to find another tank.

Sorry; restate: They were IN the same division, but they were not THE same marque. Countless publications will state openly "...then Oakland turned into Pontiac" or "...Pontiac began as Oakland..." - not the case.

For a car that accumulates VERY low miles in a year (less than the amount normally recommended until your next change), the rule of thumb is change it every 12 months anyway. I believe this is supposedly because combustion develops acids in the oil that are detrimental over longer periods of time. If the car goes zero miles in a year, the oil probably can sit in there indefinately.

The millions (if it is millions) should readily be taken in by those American companies that will swoop in to fill the sucking void left by China's 3-yr absense.

The monster in my current sig: >>"The biggest tank was built in Russia in 1915, too (the designer - Lebedenko). It was the ugly and huge tricycle monster, weighing some 40t; the forward wheels were almost of 10m in diameter! The multuply armament emplaced in the left and right sponsors, and upper (bigger) and lower (smaller) turrets. It was powered by 2x240hp engines. The tank failed the tests. "<< When Cadillac applied itself fully ('30 V-16, '57-58 Brougham), it handily eclipsed all it's competition, without question including bugatti, rolls & bentley. You should read some of Bentley's evaluation of the V-16- he was very impressed. The only exception I can see is the Duesenberg, based on it's extreme performance capabilities. Then again, the Caddy had 165 HP, Duesey had 320 & 400. The '57 EB had no superior. Like I said above, Sixty8, I did find a side-view sketch in a book I have- I don't hold hope of finding anything more, but that's why I posted this: more eyes & fingers are always better.

Fine- as long as every importer passes U.S. product testing and satisfies all business licensing.... Hopefully, the 'dry spell' would put WalMart out of busniess in the meantime.

Without looking these up: '52 Packard, '38 S60S, '63 Valiant

Cadillac V-16~ 1930-1936 : (452) 1937-1940 : (431) Cadillac V-12~ 1930-1937 : (368) Cadillac V-8~ 1915-1925 : (314) 1926-1935 : ('26: 314, '27-35: 341) 1936-1948 : ('36: 322, '36-48: 346) 1949-1958 : ('49-55: 331, '56-58: 365) 1959-1963 : (390) 1964-1981 : ('64-67: 429, '68-74: 472, '70-76: 500, '77-79: 425, '80-81: 368) 1982-

OOps- the "'17" is a typo- I meant to type '32. Don't know what I was thinking. I do not consider Pontiac & Oakland to be the same division, which they were not. The 250 was re-engineered/improved from the '30-31 Oakland V-8- largely the same but not interchangable. They were also cast in '32, whereas Oakland was discontinued at the end of the '31 MY. It's 4 families as far as I am familiar with. '32 is obviously by itelf, the '55-58s are different in enough details (mounts & manifolds to name 2) to render them a separate family, and the 265/301 are low-deck variants that do not share many major components with the tall deck '59-79 family. In fact, there is a also a re-engineering between '64 & '65, but not enough I would make a break there. Different people are going to have slightly different definitions of what constitutes a 'family' of engines.

There is at least 1 error in the above chart (prolly more): CAMRY 41,514 41,892 3.2 378 less units vs. '06 is a -0.009% change, not a +3.2% change. I guess rounding up as above the percent change would be 0.0% scion is really imploding! And in the face of heightened economy focus- what's happening, and how can I personally contribute to hastening it? :wink:

Camino, if that shot was taken yesterday, what was the vantage point? Is what's left still open then? This one is in upstate NY, still handling traffic as late as 1997. I have not seen it in person. (Used to be??) called Moonda:

That's a tall order! You mean like this?: Pontiac V-8: 1932 (251) 1955-1958 ('55: 287, '56: 317, '57: 347, '58: 370) 1959-1979 ('63-67: 326, '68-77: 350, '59-66: 389, '67-79: 400, '62-66: 421, '67-69: 428, '70-76: 455) 1977-1981 ('80-81: 265, '77-81: 301)

OK- I can see $50K, maybe, (alfa has only a rep of light failure here), but 4 times that ??

An alfa... at 200 grand? It's failure is almost going to be boring to watch, it's so predictable. Car does look somewhat dated, but it also looks better than a lot of others in this 'segment'. Some proportions remind me of the Cheetah. But a big no way at 200K.

Everyone note that the above totals of the "toyota division" INCLUDES scion, undoubtedly to mask the landslide decline in sales there. toyota combines & separates at will to suit the particular marketing whim.

>>"The point is that Toyota is serious about being a player in this market and is succeeding despite what seemed like an early failure (low sales and a major recall). Meanwhile, if the past 30 years is any indication, GM will fight fire by continuing to stay the course. Wasting valuable engineering and marketing dollars by keeping the GMC name going is not thinking big. Instead, it's the big sit-n-spin. And it's a recipe for Toyota to take bragging rights away from Chevrolet and Silverado eventually. If it hasn't already happened, it's about to happen with Toyota vs Chevy cars. "<< 1) : who cares who's #1? I've not yet met anyone who purchased major consumer goods (like cars) with this as their criteria. This sort of thing has only a shadow of the marketing importance it used to. 2) : GM has not "stayed the course" WRT the trucks for any 30-year period- so that's not legitimate. 3) : where did you see a dollar figure for what it costs to engineer & market GMC, and what was it? You did know that GMC posted a run of like 10 sales record years out of the last 12 or so- every one profitable from what I've heard. This point has been settled on these boards long ago: GMC sells in the neighborhood of 500,000- more expensive that Chevy, obviously to consumers who DO NOT WANT a Chevy truck. To dump this wildly successful division would be idiotic. You are assuming all buyers would switch to Chevy, but you don't risk millions & millions by chancing it; GM does. Not to mention the mountain of bad press & image damage from canceling yet another division. You sure you thought this thru for more than a half-second? 4) : I say let toyota continue to have large leaps in production- we've all seen what that's done for their vehicle's quality & reliability over the last year plus. Maybe the only way to derail toyota is if they implode. 5) : toyota has only just gotten anything close to what you could call "serious" after a 15-year run of a 'big sit-n-spin' in the truck segment.

Sorry, this degree of unmitigated cherry-picking BS really goads me. autos.yahoo.com~ 2007 BMW 3 Series Sedan 335i : Curb Weight MT 3593 Curb Weight AT 3605 2008 Cadillac CTS : Curb Weight MT 3509 Curb Weight AT 3568 How the hell is the tiny (178") "3-series sedan 335i" so damned heavy?? Check the 5~ 2008 BMW 5 series Sedan 535i : Curb Weight MT 3660 Curb Weight AT 3704 CTS overall length: 190", 535: 191"

Rrrrrrriiiigggggghhhhhhtttttt..... sssuuuurrrreeeee !!! If true, how come 67% of everything Chinese-made I've ever owned or come in contact with has been about as "good" as.... something made in China. Ban everything, wait 3 years for the message to sink in, then let everything Chinese-sourced reapply thru U.S.-designed testing procedures, then charge a flat license fee for the priviledge to do business in the U.S. market.

Again- where are these cars drag racing each other?? I just don't see the significance (like a lot of your points); who cares if another car on the road, one that happens to be in your particular segment, is 0.3 seconds faster? What about all the cars outside your segment that are faster, or the cars that are modded that are faster? How does this ever come into play in the real world?? It seems like the only tools you use to car shop is a stop watch and a tape measure.

>>"Retail isn't up, just the ratio of retail to fleet sales changed. Despite retail sales increasing 15%, overall sales decreased 19%."<< Not that Sharon puts a great deal of interpretation into her work, but clearly the piece says retail is up. Why are you saying "retail isn't up, retail increased"? No where in the piece does it mention a ratio between fleet & retail. Fleet sales could have dropped enough to cause a 19% overall drop AND STILL encompass a 15% rise in retail sales, tho that would be a huge fleet drop.

>>"...it claims Toyota was warned about these issues and failed to correct them."<< Shocking; not like toyota at all !! How would this not also effect it's camry twin?