smk4565

Same old, same old. This is 10 or 12 months in a row of declines around 45% and GM's PR people trying to put a positive spin on it. I wonder if they are ever going to make money again, and how does the government get some of that $60 billion back.

Not surprising, they don't have any good products.

How about the Buick Snooze for their small car, the Buick Mundane for a small crossover, and the Buick Insipid for their midsize car. Although Buick Prosaic and Buick Prehistoric I like as well, so they may need some more models. The CX trim will be replaced with the Vanilla trim, white walls, plastic wheel covers, and cloth bench seat for all!

Go to a Chevy dealer. Outlook is a mechanical twin to the Traverse, Aura is a mechanical twin to the Malibu, Vue is similar to the Equinox's platform, and has the same engines as the Malibu, Sky has the same engines as the Cobalt. Only the Astra had a unique engine, but it is still an ecotec on a Delta platform. Or go to auto parts stores, the parts there are often much cheaper than what the dealer will sell it for.

I was surprised Penske wanted Saturn in the first place. I see this as good news, it is less competition for Chevy.

Good point on the Chevy website, it is really bad. All white background and silver cars, how boring, and it is slow, and specs and feature lists are hard to find sometimes. I also noticed a lot of GM sites don't publish the weight of their cars, or make you download a PDF for simple specs. The Equinox in a way is replacing the Trailblazer as well as the old Equinox, so going into the $30s isn't so bad. Traverse replaces the minivan and 7-seat Trailblazer and compensates for the shift away from BOF SUVs like the Tahoe.

The current CR-V has 180 hp, and weighs 400 pounds less than the Equinox. The Rav-4 is also 400 pounds lighter than the Equinox. All GM vehicles need to get on a diet.

Makes sense to build it since they have the engine already. But I suspect demand for $45,000+ Camaro will be really low. It gives them a Shelby GT500 competitor, but these are really low volume cars.

It could be the styling, because the Camaro looks bigger than the GTO to me, but they are about the same size. 190 inches long is pushing it for a 2 door though, that's nearly as big as a CTS, I still think they could have gone a little smaller. The V6 Mustang is around 3400 pounds and will have 315 hp next year, so that 200 lb gap for equal power will become 400 pounds which is a lot. Although the Camaro has independent rear suspension which gives it a big advantage over the live axle Mustang.

I think the interior is a let down, the Camaro looks great on the outside, has power and speed, but they blew it on the interior. It is too monotone, and looks cheap, and I am not a fan of the retro look. The 2010 Mustang, Genesis Coupe, and 370Z interiors are better. When you see the Camaro in person it looks big, and wide, and we know it is heavy. If they made it a little smaller (Mustang size) it would looks sportier I think and put it closer to the Genesis and 370Z also. But at least it isn't a full size like the Challenger which is way too big, and way too retro.

There could be one out there, but it would be extremely rare, where as cars that look like this are rather common.

At least the Aurora doesn't have a bench seat or column shifter, and the center console is angled toward the driver to make it a little more of a driver's car. I've yet to see an Aurora with one of those canvas or vinyl fake convertible tops or white wall tires also. The Aurora's suspension is stiffer than a DTS or the Seville SLS was, and it handles better than those two. I want a smaller car next time, and rear wheel drive; size and front weight bias are shortcomings of the Aurora.

The Fiesta is awesome. Every magazine review says is is the best subcompact, and Top Gear proved its excellence. I could see the Fiesta outselling the Focus easily here, and crushing every other subcompact in sales. The Fiesta is going to be a big winner for Ford, I bet they offer the luxury goodies on the American version. It would be great if they did an SVT version with 160-170 hp, it is only about a 2500 lb car.

Buick should actually try to be like Toyota (the nicer Toyotas) set the Regal against the Camry, LaCrosse against the Avalon, and do a small hybrid like a Prius. Buick needs to get 55-75 year olds that want a soft cushy car and only want to spend $25-35k. Chevy can go against Hyundai, Ford, Honda, Nissan with mainstream and a few sporty models. Or better yet, Buick could stop wasting GM's time and money and those resources can be used on Chevrolet and Cadillac.

Yep. GM uses cheap steel, since it is well, cheap, and cost cutting rules at GM. But that means they have to use more of it for crash tests, rigidity, etc, so the car's frame/body is heavy to begin with. Then they use lots of sound deadening to cover up the lack of refinement in some engines (I can tell they did this with the CTS), and that adds weight. The horsepower of this car isn't the problem, the weight is. GM cars have been getting heavier and heavier, and bumping the engine up 20 hp isn't the solution, cutting 300 pounds is, then acceleration, handling, braking, fuel economy all get better. The 250-275 hp range that front drivers are at now is about the limit without having loads of torque steer. Some fwd cars will go a little over that, but 300 hp was the max and the the 300 hp front drivers are dead now.

My mistake on the 3.5, I knew the 3.0 was SOHC, I was thinking that the 3.5 Acuras had DOHC because all Honda/Acuras are 4 valve per cylinder.

The 3800 sounds terrible north of 4,000 rpm. Although anything with enough insulation and sound deadening can make the engine sound muted. To me the CTS is like that, the 3.6 isn't as refined as BMW's six, so Cadillac uses loads sound deadening, then you feel isolated from the engine response. The 3800 was uncompetitive in 2000, they surely can't use it now. Agreed on the Honda V6, especially the 3.5 DOHC, light years smoother than the 3800.

I want to see them succeed, but a fwd crossover that seems awfully similar to an Equinox, and the DTS/STS, aren't good enough. The CTS is too heavy to perform with the 3-series and G37, and lacks the luxury to compete with the mid-size sedans. Cadillac needs the right product though, thus they need all new product, not a refresh of existing cars (STS and DTS) or vehicles built out of the GM parts bin (Escalade, XTS). ATS should be easy to get right; better interior than the CTS, steering/braking/handling that beat the Camaro SS, and 0-60 in 5 seconds or less, while getting 27 mpg highway.

Ecoboost 4 is supposed to make 270 hp, that is quite good, it will have the power of The Duratec 3.5. But refinement as well as fuel economy are big factors, if the V6 is smoother and more quite and gets 1 mpg less, people will still take it over the 4-banger. I agree the engine should be from scratch, but the cylinder size could be the same. I remember when Ford had the 3.0 V6, Jaguar had the 4.0 V8 and Aston Martin had a 6.0 V12, they were all related to each other. GM has 2.0, 3.0 and 2.4 and 3.6 engines so they should be able to come up with 4.0 and 4.8 liter V8s based on engines they already make, which should keep development time and cost somewhat down.

Cadillac basically has to redo everything, but I know it will take a long time. The problems started when they canceled the UltraV8 and let the Northstar age and become uncompetitive, then the 2008 STS mid-cycle refresh was quite lame, and the XLR never had the performance or interior it needed for its price point. Cadillac was moving in the right direction in 2003-2004, but they didn't follow it though. Now they have to suffer a few years of bad sales until they can fix their lineup, and hope that in a few years they will still have enough brand image to sell their new stuff. Even if the ATS is better than the 335i, the 3-series will likely outsell it 2-1 on badge alone, that is the biggest hurdle Cadillac has to overcome.

The Ecoboost 4cylinder isn't out yet, so we don't know if Ecotec is better. Agreed though that Ford marketing is laying waste to GM's Howie Long Chevy ads with gray cars in a white/beige showroom. GM should DI every DOHC engine they make, and a turbo 4 (like Audi/VW's 2.0T) would be nice for the small to mid-size vehicles. And if they put 2 of those engines together, they have a 4.0-4.8 liter twin turbo V8 for the Vette and Cadillacs.

Z06 gets 15/24 mpg. Base Corvette with manual gets 26 mpg, all good mpg numbers for the performance it offers, thanks to low weight, aerodynamics, and gearing. 19/27 mpg from the Porsche 911 Carrera, but it drops to 16/23 mpg for a 911 Turbo. Lotus Exige gets 20/26 mpg, add one more mpg for the Elise. The Exige on a racetrack is pretty tough to beat.

Most luxury makers are down, but not down 47% like Cadillac is. Cadillac has lost half of it's sales volume in one year, that is a pretty staggering figure. Even more discouraging, is GM thinks the CTS and SRX are the types of vehicles to get Cadillac back to competing with the imports. Those vehicles aren't good enough. Cadillac has a long way to go, and GM management doesn't know how to get them there. Around 2000 or 2001 GM sold over 5 million cars, in 2008 it was 2.9 million and they are down another 35% this year. GM is going to struggle to sell 2 million cars this year. 60% of their business gone in less than a decade, and they still haven't found a way to stop the bleeding.

As much as I'd love to see Toyota get screwed, they'll probably just pay Paice off and move on. Paice is probably making a fuss about it just to get a quick payday. Plus, the government loves hybrids, they wouldn't allow someone to block Toyota from selling 250,000 hybrids a year.

Agreed on the first part, but where GM made it's mistake was around 2004. When the 3.6 V6 debuted (and the 2., GM figured the "high feature" V6s would be maybe 20% of their V6 volume, and the 3500 and 3900 V6s (and few remaining 3800s) would be 80%. Thus the 04-07 Malibu had rough sounding 200 hp V6 compared to Honda's refined SOHC V6 making 240 hp. Now 5 years later, the 3.0 and 3.6 V6s are making their way into all GM V6 vehicles. They should have gone all DOHC V6s 5 years ago, rather than try to get buy with dated, unrefined engines coupled to an equally dated 4-speed transmission.