andretti

How about Donnybrook? I don't believe that has been used yet and it has a nice ring to it. "Pontiac Donnybrook" I like it!

This is horrible! This will make the new Cadillacs look outdated. The new "c" must be shouted down and made to look ugly.

If G6 is derived from Grand Am Gen 6, then wouldn't it be better to refer to it as the GAG 6?

Look for the small black plastic box under the dash near the steering column. It contains the relays for the headlights. Remove the DRL relay

BS! Show the study or I have to call you on it. Insurance companies statistics show no appreciable difference. Thats why there is no recduction in premiums for DRL's. In fact I find DRL's just add to the sea of glare and make it harder to pick out a vehicle on sunny days.

[quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] 1) I believe the Camaro will return. [/quote] Do you also still believe in Santa Claus? [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] I agree GM will someday again grace a car with the venerable Camaro name. But rest assured it will fall woefully short of the concept pictured [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] 2) I drive a Camaro, so it's not something imaginary to me. I will not hold this against you! [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] If you don't believe, or don't enjoy it... then why rain on everyone elses parade? I see no reason to prevent you from enjoying the Camaro picture parades into infinitum. But why must you denegrade those who buy and enjoy driving real cars (Mustangs)? [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] [quote name='AAS' date='Dec 9 2005, 06:30 PM'] And yes, I know my comments about the mustang driving dorks helped your argument... But if you can honestly say that the recent Camaro photos wouldn't give a mustang driver buyer's remorse, then you need to have your eyes checked. Mustang drivers are much more interested in real existing cars rather than imaginary photo cars and will not be remorseful over a mere photograph. Now if the bean counters at GM would ever allow this to be produced.... then you might have something. [post="55786"][/post] [/quote] Edit: by z28luvr01 - tried to make your quotes more legible....sorry 'bout that.

Interesting sarcastic response AAS! But you have punctuated my point exactly! While the "diehard mustang/ford dorks" (your words) are DRIVING their Mustangs, as dreadful as you may think they are, the GM/Camaro diehards can only look at pictures and dream about how good it will be perhaps someday. Your response was a pathetic display of provincial attitude and the hope for something that will never be. It is far better to experience the driving of a real Mustang, though fraught with imperfection, than to languish perpetually looking at pictures of an imaginary Camaro that, maybe just maybe if it was ever built, would be the perfect ride.

So...... The Camaro is only in the early concept stages (first showing) this means that realisticly we can't expect to see this at a dealer until, what maybe MY2010? By then the Mustang will be into the next phase and have a huge lead in market share. I can only imagine what other competitors will also be out then. So sad for GM!

I hope this is not it! There is WAY too much front overhang. Contemporary car designs are moving toward less and less overhang. The long overhang style of the 70's and 80's has got to go!

Trojan Horse At GM's Door by Rick Ackerman Thursday, Dec 08 What the heck could GM investors be thinking? A surge in the stock late yesterday cut the DJIA’s losses nearly in half, but you’d have to be a cynic to believe the celebration was warranted. The news that caused GM shares to rise 2.9 percent in mere minutes concerned the growing likelihood that Kirk Kerkorian, a 9.9% stakeholder, will get a seat on GM’s board. Kerkorian’s hatchet-man, Jerome York, managed to squeeze impressive tribute from Chrysler when he was installed on that company’s board a decade ago, but the auto manufacturers were on the threshold of a cyclical upswing then that eventually turned every marque but Yugo into a winner. Before GM shareholders break out the bubbly, they should check out what that stalwart humanitarian Carl Icahn is proposing for Blockbuster. Icahn has been trying to extort a $330 million dividend from the firm, presumably before it goes bankrupt. He also has the chutzpah to suggest that Blockbuster missed the boat when it passed up a chance to buy rival Hollywood Entertainment. But for what? To drill for oil in their mostly-vacant parking lots? If Kerkorian puts the screws to GM with equal recklessness, the automaker is going to be worth less at wholesale than American Motors was when Chrysler absorbed it nearly two decades ago. Having sucked up quite a chunk of GM at $31 a share, Kerkorian is understandably eager to retrieve them from the low-$20s abyss into which they have fallen recently. But for investors to act as though the Midas touch is about to transform GM or even the sum of its part into a winner is tantamount to rolling out the red carpet for the Trojan Horse. link to article: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/ackerman/current.html

Ah... Not quite! VVT is much less valuable on a in the block CAM engine because there is only one CAM running both the intake and the exhaust valves. This means that the valve timing cnnot be varied independently for each set of valves. In a DOHC the CAM timing can vary differently for the intake and exhaust valves. This is a much better solution.

I agree with that! Those were indeed disasters and many customers have not forgiven GM for the initial issues and the poor effort in customer service to correct them after the fact.

WHAT!!!!!!! You must be defining "drivers car" in a whole new way. The TL has more HP and Torque than non-V CTS, lower weight, better skidpad and slalom numbers, etc. Please define your criteria for a drivers car.

Increasing the diameter of the cylinders (punching it out) is not the only, nor the easiest way to increase displacement. The easier way and the way to add a great deal of displacement is to increase the stroke length by changing the crankshaft and connecting rods.

GM Promised that the 3.9 V6 would have DoD. What happened?

Link to article and pictures: http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.c...verfloweth.html Thursday, November 03, 2005 Hummer Overfloweth The word around town was that the Hummers weren't moving. It looked like high gas prices and a White House reversal on fuel conservation meant that fewer "W" bumper stickers would find their exposed sticky sides mating gloriously with the smooth rear bumper of an H2, somewhere between the tow loop and the access hole for a Class 3 hitch. We were skeptical at first. Sources can be unreliable, but the scuttlebutt was that inventory had been building for months now and the local Hummer dealer had panicked. He had begun storing his Hummer inventory at an undisclosed location, far from the dealer showroom so as not to spook jittery, prospective buyers with the mounting number of unsold H2s and H3s. When an anonymous caller phoned in with the location, we were off. "The rear parking lot of the Hyatt Westlake Plaza Hotel", he said, just before the line went dead. TMTGM investigative sleuths Erik Ustin and Ray Pizzuti grabbed your still somewhat skeptical editor, and after stopping at Human Resources to pick up a few "half-off at Togo's" coupons we scurried past security, through the main entrance, and out to the parking lot. A security guard spotted us and yelled, "Hey you three, stop right there!" We froze in place, eyeing our surroundings, thinking quickly, instantly evaluating possible courses of action. "One of you didn't scan out! Get back here and run your badge past the scanner again and make sure it beeps this time!" ooo OK, we're not sure where this was headed or how long and how silly it would be enroute, so we'll just get to it. The Hummer dealer in this part of Southern California is apparently having trouble moving his merchandise. After a row of Hummers was spotted behind the Hyatt Hotel, three of us went on a reconnaissance mission to find out more. Here's the first picture we snapped: Click to enlarge Doesn't look like much - about 25 H3s in the far corner of the parking lot, and the next aisle over was pretty much the same. But then when we came around the corner we saw this: Click to enlarge ... really, click it That's a lot of Hummers, all H3s, lined up neatly waiting for someone to take them home and love them. Looking to the right there were more, so we walked all the way down to the end of the row and snapped this picture: Click to enlarge ... now here, we will insist - click it and make it bigger That's the same view as the previous picture, just taken from about 30 Hummers further down to the right. Behind this hotel were about 150 Hummers - about 80 in this row alone - almost all H3s, along with eight or ten original H1s. A police car drove by slowly - surely he wondered why we were taking pictures and laughing, but then he looked closer, recognized the unthreatening physiques of three software engineers, spotted our badges, and quickly lost interest. Someone from the dealership pulled in with another H3, so we wandered over and asked how business was these days. He said something about hurricanes and gas prices, then we asked where the H2s were. He said, "They're at the other lot". Hmmm... Thrilled and amused as we were, we'd only learned part of the story. After getting directions we proceeded to lot #2, while placing a few quick bets with an over/under quickly set at 60. The thinking here was that the despite looking like a Jeep Cherokee on steroids, the H3s were about $20K less expensive than the H2s and had respectable fuel economy (16 city / 19 highway is what the sticker said) - maybe the dealer had just placed a very large, poorly timed order, a few months back. Surely the H2 inventory was under control. Pulling into lot #2, the "under" looked liked it would be the clear winner - forty, fifty tops, from the first looks of it: Click to enlarge ... this one's up to you Then we walked down to the end of the aisle to see this: Click to enlarge ... go for it That's about fifty H2s on the left, and a bit of congestion in the middle as the Hummers appear to be entering the lot at a rate far exceeding the rate at which they leave. After walking down to the end of this aisle we spied another aisle of about the same length stretching around the corner: Click to enlarge ... again, we will insist, make it bigger When the counting was done, there were about 150 H2s in lot #2, for a grand total of around three hundred Hummers, just looking for someone to love them. In the above picture notice the attendant and the red 5-gallon gas cans - based on a brief conversation with this young man, we didn't sense any love from him. Apparently the thrill of driving Hummers back and forth between the remote storage lot and the dealer showroom wears off quickly, as each round trip requires that another five gallons of fuel be dispensed in order to ensure a complete round trip. We've talked about SUVs in these pages before, having developed a California SUV Fill Up Index which we then updated as gas prices in this area hit $2.80 and then $2.90 per gallon. What a person drives or how much fuel they consume matters little to us, so long as they leave some gas at the pumps for others and don't run us over on the freeway. The reason that the story of rapidly rising Hummer inventory is so interesting and so amusing, is that America's most ostentatious Sport Utility Vehicle, the Hummer SUV, is a metaphor for America in the world today - overweight, overpriced, inefficient, and unloved. posted by Tim at 6:21 AM - Permalink - Home 23 Comments: Link http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.c...verfloweth.html

"How is this a new point of view on GM? This is the same gloom and doom crap that every other auto rag is telling to the public. [/quote] Read the whole article!

A fresh Perspective on GM and the auto industry http://www.321gold.com/editorials/shedlock...lock101405.html MarketWatch is reporting "Ford's SUV Sales Halved in September": "Ford Motor Co. reported Monday that sales of its traditional SUVs plunged 51% in September, as consumers continued their mass exodus from the thirstiest vehicles on the road amid record gasoline prices. "Overall, Ford turned in a 19% decline in U.S. sales last month, to 228,157 cars and trucks. Crossover and passenger car sales actually improved, but not nearly enough to make up for the steep decline of its bulkier SUVs. "Sales of the Ford Explorer and Expedition were both off about 60% from a year ago while the much smaller Escape, which is available with a hybrid engine, shed only 4%. "And the trend doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon, according to Steve Lyons, head of Ford North America sales. "'Traditional SUVs will continue to face headwinds in the coming months,' he said, adding that customers did most of their buying in the summer months when employee discounting sparked an industry-wide sales boom. "Sales of the top-selling F-Series truck fell 30%, to 69,643." Ford was not alone with SUV woes. General Motors SUV and pickup truck sales were down by one-third. Now that sounds pretty bad to me. I would assume it would sound pretty bad to everyone, but that is not the case. GM sales analyst Paul Ballew described sales as "pretty comforting": "'I would describe final industry results as actually pretty comforting,' said GM sales analyst Paul Ballew. 'We're still waiting for a portion of the industry to report, but from the estimates we have, as well as what's been released to date, the industry right now is at or above our expectations heading into the month.' "General Motors posted a 24% decline, to 349,202 vehicles. Car sales fell 14.5% while truck sales plunged 29.5%. "Some of the biggest decliners included the Cadillac Escalade ESV, down 39.5% and the Chevy Suburban, off 56.6%. "The world's top automaker blamed a tough comparison to last year when it was promoting zero-percent financing. The diminishing effect of its employee pricing plan was also a factor, GM said. "GM is looking for its new GMT900 lineup, due out next year, to boost sales in the sluggish SUV segment." It does not take much to get these guys excited, does it? Since when is a 33% decline in sales anything to take comfort in? While GM is ramping up production of SUVs, Toyota and others are ramping up production of hybrids like the Prius. "Toyota Q1 Profits Jump 28.8%." This is what Toyota is doing: "Starting in the April-October 2005 period, Toyota plans to increase its production capacity of its popular hybrid Prius vehicles by 50% to 15,000 units a month from the current 10,000." Yes those are Q1 profits, but I am looking for forward strategy and leadership. Toyota seems to have it. GM and Ford do not. This is just a hunch, but with soaring gasoline prices I bet those hybrids do very well. Mish, is that the extent of GM's problems? Hardly. Let's summarize all of the problems I can think of off the top of my head: 1. Falling sales 2. Enormous debt 3. Union strife 4. Delphi and supplier problems 5. Cost disadvantages versus Toyota to the tune of several thousand dollars per car 6. Piss-poor management 7. Poor quality versus foreign competition 8. Lack of industry vision 9. Medical benefit problems 10. Pension woes Those were the problems that came to mind in about 15 seconds flat. There are probably more. Mish, didn't GM say its pension funding problems were solved and it is fully funded? Yes it did. Unfortunately, "GM and a U.S. Agency See Pensions in Different Lights": "The federal government contends that General Motors' pension fund is $31 billion short of what it owes its work force, according to closely held government data, a figure in stark contrast to GM's assurances that its pension plans are 'fully funded.' "The government's finding of a huge imbalance suggests that the pension fund may have much larger claims on the company than GM's financial filings have indicated. It was calculated by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency whose job it is to insure employee pensions if a company fails to meet its obligations. "Both the government agency's and GM's methods of tracking pensions are legally acceptable, and their ability to produce such widely varying results shows the difficulty that employees or shareholders have in trying to ascertain the true condition of a corporate pension fund. But the disparity in such estimates has grown increasingly important as some large companies like United Airlines have gone bankrupt, leaving the agency, which took over United's pension plan, with far greater unfunded obligations than previously thought. "The discrepancy between the government's and the company's figures is the result of different assumptions made about how long GM would keep operating the pension fund. The federal guarantor made its estimate on what is called a termination basis -- it measured the amount that GM would owe its workers if it were to terminate its pension plans immediately. GM's calculation that its pension plan is fully funded assumes that the fund will keep going, rather than being ended. "Since 1994, companies with weak pension funds have been required by law to calculate the value of their pension funds on a termination basis and to send the information to the pension guaranty agency. But Congress also enacted a measure keeping the information secret, in response to the stated concerns of companies, who argued that the information could be misconstrued if shared with the public. "The pension agency did not release GM's own estimate of its pensions on a termination basis, which continues to be secret. GM said it sent its most recent calculation to the agency about a year ago. The agency made its own calculation at the end of June and released the figure in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act. "In response to questions about the federal agency's calculation, GM released a statement saying it considered it 'unrealistic and not indicative of GM's ability to provide future retirement benefits.' "'GM takes its pension obligations very seriously,' the statement continued. 'The corporation has contributed more than $56 billion over the last 12 years to fund our pension plans and meet our obligations to our current and future retirees.'" Now I don't know about you, but I have a problem taking seriously a company that is comforted when sales decline a mere 33% while banking on selling more SUVs with soaring gas prices. The article continues in explaining the discrepancy. Let's tune back in: "GM's pension fund is actually made up of two big plans, one for salaried employees and one for hourly workers. At the end of 2004, GM reported that the two plans had total assets of $91 billion, and total benefits owed of $89 billion, for a surplus of $2 billion. "The government's calculation involves a variety of different assumptions about the future value of benefits the company owes. Terminating the fund means workers would no longer build up any new benefits, and GM would no longer provide cash from its continuing operations. But someone -- either the government or an insurance company -- would still have the obligation to pay all retirees the benefits they had earned, on schedule, in the future. "(Companies with plenty of money can also terminate their pension plans by paying an insurance company to take over the obligations. In GM's case, the government estimated that an insurer would charge $31 billion in addition to the money in the fund.) "The government says its figure gives the more truthful picture of the plan's condition. The current pension accounting standard specifically cites the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's method as 'appropriate.' "But most companies have resisted using the termination method, both because it can make their pension plans look very weak, and because they say they do not intend to end their plans. Business groups say that reporting pension values on a termination basis would needlessly alarm and confuse employees. "But as big corporate bankruptcies and pension plan failures accelerated in the last few years, weakening the entire pension system, a small but growing number of economists, accountants, and government officials began to take the position that companies with low credit ratings -- like GM -- should be required to disclose the termination values of their pension plans. "Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao called for such disclosure in a speech in January. Access to the termination data, now secret, would 'empower workers, investors, regulators, and the public,' Ms. Chao said. "'The goal is to ensure that the assumptions that go into measuring a plan's liability better reflect whether or not it will be terminated.' "United Airlines, for example, kept reporting its pension values on the usual, continuing basis, even in its third year of bankruptcy, when it was no longer making the minimum contributions required by law and it was clear that termination was inevitable. On this basis, United, a unit of the UAL Corporation, reported a $6 billion shortfall as of the end of 2004. "But when the government agency finally took over the plans this year, it recalculated them on a termination basis and found a total shortage of $10.2 billion. United's work force and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation will bear that shortage." The article said that the PBGC will bear any shortages. That, unfortunately, is not entirely accurate. The PBGC is just an arm of the Federal Government. Pension shortages when a company goes under will be covered in one of two ways: 1. Reduced benefits 2. Taxpayer bailouts When it comes to GM, I expect both to happen. An existing law due to expire in December let companies get away with murder on their pension assumptions. Presumably, it was enacted to help companies tide themselves over while the "recovery" was gaining traction. Well, here we are with a recovery that seems all but dead just as we are about to head into the recession of 2006. By postponing the problem, all we did was make things worse. I guess we will now see if Congress has the guts to mandate full funding of pension plans on a conservative basis, as well as change the rules for pension accounting as applied to corporate quarterly earnings statements, or if it will kowtow once again to industry lobbyists. In the meantime, anyone working for GM that has a chance at an early retirement and a lump sum pension payout might wish to talk to a financial advisor about taking it. I remain convinced that GM is headed towards bankruptcy unless and until it confronts that mammoth list of problems head-on. I see no reason to believe it can or it will. Oct 11, 2005 Mike Shedlock "Mish" email: Mish Whiskey & Gunpowder is a free, twice-per-week, e-mail service brought to you by a team of rebellious brigands.

You have already done it!