KillFort

This is the first time I've ever seen a GM product make the front page news on CNN's website and not be a bashing or recall article: http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/carreviews/1..._z06/index.html

I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE ACURA RSX! The interior is horrible and the material quality poor. The door panels feel like cardboard. I have no idea why my friend bought one. He is such Honda humper. So get this guys: My first car was a 1986 Pontiac Parisienne, bought brand new by my dad in 1986 and I bought it off him when it had about 90,000 miles on it around the year 2000. We kept it pretty low mileage for a 20 year old car. I had to sell the beauty unfortunately though because I couldn't afford the gas anymore as a college student. My friend's first car was a 1991 Honda Accord Coupe. We raced against each other. I smoked him. Boy was he pissed. My 2nd and current car is a 1998 Olds Intrigue and my friend's car is now a 2002 Acura RSX. My friend was sure he now had the faster car. But he was so diluted, he thought he could out accelerate my other friend's C5. This is his ricer mentality. We raced against each other. Once again, I smoked him with a much heavier car "family sedan." He had a six speed-manual and 70,000 less miles. Once again, he was super pissed. He'll never beat me with his Honda's. The so called "top-of-the-line" Honda felt cheap on the inside, was slow, had road noise and rode rough with hardly anymore cornering and handling edge over my older Intrigue. Not to mention, his hood wouldn't even shut properly because it was misaligned and his stereo sound had half the quality sound as my Bose. This brings me to my point. Why do people praise the Acura so much? It's junk for being supposedly being the best Honda has to offer.

I think it is reaching a point where people just assume a higher number means better for transmissions. There will be a maximum efficiency point. Six-speed auto is fine.

There's been a lot of bullshit said on the boards recently but here's my piece based on this quote: Ok, that just shows the ignorance of the American consumer. If there are no American workers with well paying jobs, they won't consume, thus there will be no American consumers. We will be 3rd world and everyone seems happy with this anti-union rhetoric rather than marching on Washington to protect this country's standard of living. Secondly, everyone says "It's so easy to be an assembly worker, anyone can do it." Bullshit it is!! Most of the people who say this have never tried car assembly work and are most likely some sniveling little finance person making 10 dollars an hour for easy ass data entry with their biggest complaint that Microsoft Excel keeps crashing. As a Michigan State University grad in Mechanical Engineering, I can honestly say those workers deserve every penny they get. I worked at Oldsmobile assembling Aleros and Grand Ams for two summers before moving on to get nicer internships with large corporations. I have been on both sides of the fence and most of you who bash auto workers are misinformed and even more uneducated than that of the auto workers who you so jealously bash. Most auto workers are proud of the work they do, assembling the vehicle to the best possible standards put in place by management and engineering. How many of these CEO's and executives are proud of approving the Aztek and Cimmaron? Hell, it's not the assembly workers fault of the crap-box Cavalier of yesteryear. Thank these glorious educated executives that we can drive around in our Cobalts now! Only took them 20 years to give the Union workers a nice small car to assemble so let's just make it easy on ourselves and bash the Union for that too.

A service economy? When the factories go, so do many of the salaried "degree" jobs. Engineering, you won't need that in a service economy I guess. I know this is a difficult connection to make with some of you. Oh well, when all the Union people lose their jobs, they will know who to rob first. It will be the so called "jealous" degree-holding people--the white collared workers. And if they run out of food, the poor folk can just cannalibize their bodies. You know the rich will taste good because they have been living high on the hog this whole time. Ever see a whole state look like Flint, MI? Ever see a whole country look like Flint, MI? Soon enough.

How ignorant can some of you possibly be? Why do so many of you want the Union to go, these companies to file bankruptcy? It's like all of you want the U.S. standard of living to deteriorate. All these people who make this much are big consumers and the middle class drives the U.S. economy. You invest in your workers, they turn around and invest back. How hard is this concept? If GM didn't waste it's billions on stupid decisions like robot automation while the Japanese invested in process improvement and their labor force, and wasting billions on Fiat ordeals, GM would have the money to have respected products, a great PR machine working, and still pay all of it's employees great wages while supporting the U.S. economy and standard of living. The U.S. is becoming one big sh*t pile, and it's like half of its citizens for some reason are rooting for it. Like it's the cool and trendy thing to do. As for the stupid "Take some classes at community college." That is the most retarded response I've ever seen. How will that help a damn thing when a person has been at a company 27 years goes and takes a few classes at a college. The f*cking line work is the same if they are educated or not. The problem is with the whole U.S. government's stance on trade policy, the greed, and politics of this country. And then just the pure ignorance of the U.S. citizens rooting for their own demise. We are #1 and we damn well be better doing everything we can to stay that way. Why do we want this country to become 3rd world just because other countries are right now? The policies and mentality in this country seem to rather have this country go down to other countries levels rather than stay above. Look at the media and how they always have to put negative spin on GM's products regardless of how good it is. This country is its own worst enemy. If I were to visit Japan right now, I bet I'd be hard pressed to find a citizen that roots for their own companies to fail. Do you hear any of them saying "I sure hope Sony and Toyota fails." They love their country and support it. F*ck this free trade policy. The only thing it's free for is the other countries. The U.S. pays. There is no such thing as free trade.

Tahoe definitely wins in the exterior. The GMT900 Tahoe looks modern and sophisticated. I think I know what looks off on the Yukon and Denali. It's the headlights. They are too big, and melted looking. I covered up the headlights with my thumb on the computer screen and the Denali looked much much better. Perhaps it's the angle here. It's nice to see the Denali gets the tap-shift 6-speed. We'll have to wait for the interior for final judgement. The Escalade is what I really want to see.

Ok, I too agree that the upper portion of the interior looks fantastic. BUT, GM did it once again. Why is the center console not integrated with the dash? GM integrates it with their concept vehicles, the Solstice, and other automakers do it, but GM never integrates their center consoles well, They leave large gaps or break it into two pieces. Why the hell do they do this idiotic thing? The STS has the same damn problem. It is even more pronounced here in the Tahoe. 3 separate ill-fitting pieces.

The media is as dumb as it gets: "But by betting big on a redesigned fleet of 12 full-size SUVs, including the Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade, GM is trying to buck a consumer shift toward smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and crossover vehicles." GM isn't trying to necessarily buck this shift. The products were four years in the pipeline at least. These products were coming out anyway and GM is unfortunately releasing them at a time when gas prices are going up. That's just a coincidence of the time, not necessarily bad planning. But GM just can't scrap 4 years of already finished products just because of the circumstances right now. What good would that do? Nobody knew that we were going to get by two hurricanes at nearly the same time four years ago and gas prices were going to skyrocket. These SUVs had to be redesigned anyway. The media bashes GM for having the older GMT800s on the market so GM was working right along the correct timeline that they should have been. So f*** the media. They can burn in hell for all I care. They think they are the smartest folk out there just because they can use current circumstances now like they actually predicted the future. Hindsight is great but I doubt the media was saying four years ago don't let the GMT900 program go ahead as planned because in the year 2005 gas will go up at your release date. No, they were telling GM to redesign the GMT800s. They only thing GM did botch is GM Powertrain not being up to speed once again. Although I understand they want to try the new 6-speeds in small batches and use the proven 4-speeds, hybrid technology and 6-speeds across the board can't come quickly enough. We got the Lambdas coming really soon! I can't wait.