A Horse With No Name

...because of the fifty states in the Union, Ohio has to be one of the dumber ones. My friend Dave's company got him a new Chevrolet express van....on the temporary tag, under make of vehicle, Bobby Layman Chevrolet has it listed as a "Ford" I have photograph's I'll post up later perhaps...but talk about STUPID....

I can appreciate that...I am afraid of leasing also....

Agreed, although most rentals come with a 24 hour minimum so he'd still be screwed. GM built 50 million vehicles before 1955...black Viper and blue have owned that many between them in the last five... The only difference is that Blu's ran and didn't self implode...

Agree...while I like the Fusion and the CC better as midsize cars, I liked the 2008-2012 Era Malibu...not sure I like the current car....

Be interested to hear your feedback, Z!

"Ventura Highway...in the sunshine...".....neat old song by the group America. I'll take the Ventura, please.

A 56 would be sweet, I've owned a 55 and 57 Chevy... And the 56 Desoto would be one of the best looking cars of the fifties, IMHO. Modern modular OHC Mustang 5.4 motors are 330 CID as well...and Desoto beat GM to market with a 350 4V V8, the motor Chevrolet is so well known for.....

pitiful indeed. Although some guys here, like Sixty Eight who doesn't post here much anymore, are M-B fanboi's....I am not.

Hatches and wagons are extremely useful.

Sorry we lost all of that info. Public library carries very few books anymore, now that everything is "on the web" and finding anything automotive on the web other than "I was trying to drift my Civic and hit a tree, and now the owner of the tree is pissed"....is often difficult to do!

Agreed, we are beating the engine thing to death....and thanks Olds for acknowledging that BMW has high dollar motor issues.

Your catching on....

GM makes trucks with pushrods for markets that requests that type of vehicle. If gas was indeed $8 per gallon, then GM already has smaller efficient engines to cover that. What GM lacks are (1) Diesel and (2) Full Hybrid in its portfolio. Don't blindly make arguments dude - but then again it is your specialty. And starting to solve diesel with upcoming Cruze....

Neat link, 4 valve heads for OHV for 351 motor.... http://www.themustangnews.com/content/2011/05/4-valve-heads-for-your-windsor-small-block-mustang/ Off topic, I know...

...which is a case for OHC..it is hard to package a 4 cly OHV motor with 4 vales per cyl, GM will need both it's excellent LS series motors and OHC 4's and 6's to move forward.

...and let's talk about BMW quality issues, which are VERY real and VERY troubling. I have a customer that has always been a GM gal, she is a chef at one of the nicest restaurants in Columbus. Her Boyfriend of 4 years is a good guy, but has always driven BMW. boyfriend's X5 has been in the shop 4 times for serious repair in the last 4 months. $2900 in repair bills in JULY ALONE! She finally convinced him to test drive a new GM product, and Wednesday night he bought a new GMC Acadia and loves it. He is sorry he didn't do it sooner. LOTS of BMW fanbois in my local group of friends, automotive and otherwise....LOTS of quality control problems. One local 7 series owner had 9K in repairs in one summer....7 series only had 68K on the clock....and even the non performance mags are getting hate letters to the editor about how unhappy people are with the latest crop of BMW's.

GM does by and large follow the Toyota playbook, though...offering a wide variety of boring FWD appliances..Ford is on the same plan, unfortunately. Yes they do, the Cruze is mostly boring and geared toward the Civic/Corolla, the Impala is being repositioned to take on the Avalon, which Ford already did with the Taurus. Toyota/Scion has the iQ, and here comes the Chevy Spark to compete. Rav4 and Highlander go unibody crossover, GM SUV's aren't far behind. Lexus has the RX, Cadillac has the SRX. To a large extent, the Toyota playbook works though, that is why others follow. And IIRC the FWD SRX outsells the RWD SRX...an awful lot of what we value here is not valued by the 15 million new car buyers we will have in our country this year. GM does by and large follow the Toyota playbook, though...offering a wide variety of boring FWD appliances..Ford is on the same plan, unfortunately. Yes they do, the Cruze is mostly boring and geared toward the Civic/Corolla, the Impala is being repositioned to take on the Avalon, which Ford already did with the Taurus. Toyota/Scion has the iQ, and here comes the Chevy Spark to compete. Rav4 and Highlander go unibody crossover, GM SUV's aren't far behind. Lexus has the RX, Cadillac has the SRX. To a large extent, the Toyota playbook works though, that is why others follow. Yes...quality mediocrity sells to the uninformed masses. So we as enthusiasts buy enthusiast cars. I don't want to force a Subaru BRZ on a mindless consumer any more than I want a Corolla forced on me...different strokes for different folks. ...and yes, Z06 is correct, they are already rigging sales.

I'll have to disagree...latest BMW offerings I think are below par for the company. And while RWD has advantages for performance and trucks, for general service automobiles, there is nothing wrong with FWD. .07% of people care...you and I and the members of this board just happen to be in the .07%....

...and don't be afraid of buying a less than perfect S10 4wd. Older vehicles also can be beaten upon in ways that new vehicles can't. My Miata isn't worth a lot of money. I race at Kil-Kare Speedway in Xenia, Ohio with the Dayton Corvette club (corvette troy). Kil Kare has concrete walls, and if I lose it I am wrecking a 5-6 K car I can part out for $2500 or fix myself.... Were I racing a 40K new Camaro SS, I would be risking a 40K car. Same thing with the 4WD S-10. A little bit of a beater will not mind being used as a trail rig, sitting outside in winter (VW is in garage), hauling gravel for your home, or going a month unwashed when you find a new boyfriend and all of your time is taken up by "other leisure activities." Good luck, my friend....and I will be sad to see the green Jeep leave the C and G fleet....

Exactly! Get the S10 4wd modified and set up "just eh way you want it" and you've got yourself a dead nuts reliable truck...although for some reason I don't think you like nuts that are dead. (sorry, couldn't resist) This is pretty much what I do, buy older vehicles with a minumum of depreciation and run them forever. We paid $12,000 for the MINI with 37K on the clock, it will still be worth 8K with 137K on the clock... Your S10 at 5K will still be worth 5k 5 years later, and will be virtually "free" to own. Even mechanically challenged people can repair air cooled vW's, and paint and body work is the most expensive part of a project. As I recall, you work in a body shop. Ergo, with the rising prices of Bugs, Kombi vans and the like, your little project would break even, be a minor loss, or make a small profit. Dump some stiffy springs and sticky summer tires on the Sonic and go play at the local autocross. The sonic is very narrow, which will give in slalom speed, and it is light enough to pick up major steam in the tight portions of the course. Go show some Honda fanboi's what GM can really do. Don't think I haven't ahd the same sonic thoughts myself. Plus the Sonic would have the practicality of being able to haul home a big screen TV, parts for your bicycle, Ikea furniture, or camping gear. Your on the right track....

Maybach isn't a core product, and was a failure. They are focusing on the core products by dumping that and putting the efforts into the S-class. They aren't trying to be Toyota either, that is what GM is doing, making Cadillac a Lexus clone, and Chevy a Toyota clone. As a kid, did you find your own way out of the bathtub or did your parents have to give you a waterproof map? I'd hardly call GM cars Toyota clones....

...and that, not government funding or battery range is the problem with the Fisker-Karma. It is unique, positive, creative change and people are threatened by it. This explains why we have gone from being a nation that drove inspiring, ballsey cars like the 65 Impala SS or the first gen Toranado, to a nation that debates with anxiety buying a 4 cyl Camary...beige or silver...omg....too much stress...better go with silver for resale...ugh.... So perhaps the best thing is to move Fisker Karma production to Canada, Australia, Canada, France, Switzerland, Germany or the like. Somewhere people are not bound by idiotic fear of the future and idiotic fear of their own shadow.

Perhaps we should tear up the rails on our cross country railroad network? I don't want to get political, but in my mind it's how you define "freedom" that is an issue here. My sons friend is very free, he is not obligated to a job (unemployed) and has no car no car payments, and no car insurance. However, I am obligated to go to work tomorrow morning, make my car payment on my car, and pay my auto insurance. And yet ai have the freedom to drive anywhere in our country, go out to eat at any restaurant I want to, and pay to live in a nice 4 bedroom house. But there is a price in my freedom....getting up at 5:30 ayem tomorrow morning. As a country, we can choose to be free of any technology development, any subsidies, any environmental laws, et al....but look at how polluted a lot of the world is, or how behind educationally a lot of the world is, etc. To say that subsides take away a form of our freedom is correct, but they bring other freedoms and other benefits. Personally, I rather like the thought of living in a developed, high tech country rather than a backwards, uneducated, polluted one, so...I'll gladly dump a bunch more cash into Fisker Karma. Besides, look at the founding fathers, who wanted us to be interdependent. I think Jefferson and Madison, who wanted us to be an agrarian nation of independent farms and not dependent on Europe for anything would probably turn in their graves if they knew how dependent we were on foreign oil. Madison also wrote of the need to be environmentally responsible 200 years before the environmental movement of the current times. It just slays me how some groups think they understand the founding fathers when they pick and choose passages from their writing, jsut like they pick and choose passages from the bible. How many modern libertarian Christians who are strong Bible believers eat seafood? Isn't eating shellfish an abomination in the bible? and how many of them eat Pork hot dogs...isn't eating pork an abomination in the sacred scriptures? The biggest issue here is that people are afraid of change, and yet change is always coming. It's one reason I have more respect for Buddhism than Christianity in some ways...Buddhism seems to embrace uncertainty and change as being part of the dynamic nature of life and the planet we live on, where modern Christianity and modern Americans seem to fear change at every turn. I find it pathetic that in my lifetime we have gone from being a nation that put a man on the moon to a nation of conformists that is afraid of its own shadow.

I think it's a car that will make sense for a lot of people, especially as our country becomes more urban. Here in Columbus, lots of development is happening downtown and in the close in "historical" suburbs. The fiat is a stylish car that would suit a lot of people that live there.

Another good option would be something odd as a project car, methinks. Get yourself an old Air cooled vW Bug and fix it up...keep the Jeep. You need creative input in a vehicle, and your not going to get it trading. There are other worthwhile, inexpensive vintage cars also.