A Horse With No Name

This actually looks better than half of the stuff built today, IMHO.

Like Car and Driver once said, most GM cars run poorly longer than most cars run at all. I can beat his cost of ownership. We had a guy they paid to clean up our construction sites who bought one for $1200 with 90k miles. He now has about 260K on the same car...other than tires and brakes he has done nothing. This stuff just runs forever. Chris

What do you consider "up to date" in small car design? I don't consider the Astra to be out of date, I consider it underpowered with the automatic and poorly marketed. Chris

Better Ideas yet: 1. Fire whoever currently promotes this car and HIRE whoever has the ad contract for MINI. This should happen before the close of business Monday. 2. Spec racing series, similar to the TDI Cup that VW has or the MX-5 cup for the Miata. Minor race prep on a few cars, recruit some young hot shoes and go to work. Make sure you get coverage on speed channel. Really, this would result in free advertising that would pay for the cost of the cars and the series. How? every website and carmag seems to mention/discuss the TDI Cup/MX-5 cup once in awhile, and it would give the Astra some street cred amoung the tuner types. They could even partner with someone by throwing in cheap sponsership for the series. MX-5 Cup is partnered with Playboy. Partner with MTV or whatever for the Astra. 3. Good creative advert. on prime time TV. Get a military firing squad for the person inside GM who makes this just pretty video's of an Astra running through a Colorado Canyon. The stuff needs to be CREATIVE and on target. 4. Saturn had good marketing for awhile while it was still Saturn. Start the whole Saturn owners club thing up again, and copy Scion's underground marketing campaign. Free music you can download and other events are very cheap for Toyota to promote Scion, and they bring huge results. Biggest issue here-the Astra is MUCH better than anything Scion dreams of building...so once cars got in people's hands, they would most likely enjoy them. Likewise, sponser local rock concerts or other small stuff. I don't know what exactly, but Scion is popular with gen Y because they show that they care about their "scene". 5. Bring other models over. GM marketed the Opel's this way in the early 70's and it worked wonders. We had friends growing up that had Opels and loved them, and I know people in the SCCA that are huge fans of the 70's Opels almost 40 years later. Unique is going to sell to gen Y...which is why the SMART will sell and the Astra will sit on the lot. There is just an element of originality and funkyness that would be easy to add to the Astra marketing and isn't there. 6. Donate a dozen Astra's to Bondurant or another driving school. Honda does this here in Ohio with the Mid Ohio drivers school at Mid Ohio. Some Dusche-bag from some car mag goes and has fun lapping at speed in an Astra and he's not going to be likely to trash it when he writes about it. Ford and Chevy have gotten lots of exposure this way, why not Saturn? 7. Donate Astras to driving schools, or provide uber-cheap leases, so new drivers get comfortable with the product before they even get a lic. to drive. This would be cheap and simple. Dodge did this back in the late 1960's and had some great ad's about how much they cared for people's kids and their safety and so forth. A pic in Time magazine or in the local paper of a GM employee handing over the keys to a good accredited driving school would be priceless for the image of GM. Doubt me? Our local GM dealer gave a free lease on an Olds Cierra to my drivers ed dept. You would be amazed at the number of parents who at least checked out cars at the local Olds/Cadillac dealer as a result. Just my random thoughts... Chris

It's a wonderful car...but we need somehow to sell Americans on driving it. Chris

I wonder what ole Sixty-Eight would think of this....ugly as sin, but it is taking a FWD car and making it RWD. It is ugly, but for a home built car IMHO it shows some good craftsmanship and construction skill. Chris

It's better than the civic and just plain different than the 3, but it is a huge step in the right direction. Chris

Like I said before, I've got a good friend with a first gen SVT Focus. This is EXACTLY what GM should be building right now (without the blue oval badge, of course) Chris

People could get loans if they had jobs. The economy is much deeper in the craphouse than people think that it is. Chris

"Just good enough' has been a recipe for disaster." I couldn't agree more. Chris

They'll still bitch about American Iron. Chris

Congrats! Chris

The thing that makes me sad is that we bitch about the economy but very few ever want to learn about why we go through economic cycles or how the economy works. Complaining without educating ourselves, and blame shifting this whole thing to other will only make our nation poor in the long run. Chris

Thank you for putting the Solstice GXP Coupe on the list...The Camaro needs to be there also somewhere, although I agree with Harley Earl, it is really a 2009-2010 product. The Solstice GXP coupe is pretty enough to make me forget about the opposite gender... Chris

What we still dance around, years later, is that GM still needs a class leading small car. The Cobalt is good, but should be better. I am interested to see what GM does with it. Hopefully they keep production in Lordstown, Ohio. It would be horrible for our already trashed economy if this plant were to close. The Astra has about a 400 day supply right now, and it hasn't done anything in the marketplace. I love it, but I love manual shift cars. 90% of what they will sell will be autotrajic, and the autotrajic just sucks life out of the 1.8liter motor. This car with the Cobalt 2.4 would just be the cat's ass. This car with the 260 h.p. Coblat SS/Skyredline/HHR SS/Pontiac Solstice GXP powertrain would be out of this world, but I'm running down a rabbit trail... We still need a funky, different small car. There is a several month waiting list for the Smart car, the first gen Scion xB has phenominal resale, and the Beat concept car was really cool. I have no doubt GM can build both a really good conventional small car (even better than the already good Cobalt and Astra) as well as a really funky, cool Gen Y car that will also sell well to the over 50 crowd. And this is what keeps me coming back to Cheers and Gears and giving me hope in GM. GM just needs to change some of their product thinking and some of their marketing...and then they can start taking the urban areas back. Chris

http://racingready.com/2008/11/20/one-off-...lt-autocrosser/ See what you think... Chris

As the father of a twelve year old girl....yes middle school females can be mean. Sixty-six

Cheap wheels. Around here the Versa and the Cobalt are both in the local paper brand new under 10K. Add to the list the MINI small SUV concept. I love the MINI, but as an SUV it is just plain wrong. Chris

Agreed. Chris

Interesting... Chris

It's worth the 2k IMHO. I just love watching the hood come open and seeing a tri-power in a car. They look cool in a period style rod also. I've seen a couple of nice early V8 Ford coupes with a big Ponitac motor w a tri power, and also the other period stuff to make it a 60's rod. I like them also.

Cheers to Harley Earl and Sixty Eight for keeping the memory of our older stuff alive... Cheers to Camino for his posts on the Mothertruck and the wagon...it's nice to see project cars. Cheers to CMG for his pro-Chrysler viewpoint and his project car. Cheers to Carbiz for keeping on posting here, keeping us abreast of the showroom scene. Cheers to Dodgefan for his excellent posts. Reading his stuff keeps me coming back. Cheers to Oldsmoboi for his posts about politics, energy and the economy. Good luck to you as you seek to move yourself and your boyfriend to Germany. Cheers to Future of GM for his rational, confrontational, honest posts. I love them also. Cheers to gm4life for being such a big GM nut and such a big patriot. I sense reading his politics posts that he really really deeply loves our nation, and I am VERY proud to have him as a poster here even if we don't always agree. Cheers to GM for trying to stick it out in tough times... Cheers to Ford for really showing us that a domestic can start to pull it together. Cheers to you also, ocnblu, for posting here regularly...that goes for dave87rs also. Cheers to knightfan, for having and keeping a garage full of old cars I'd love to own. He hasn't been posting here as much, but I enjoy it when he posts. Cheers to everyone else that posts here also...even if traffic is down, it is one of the coolest forums on the net IMHO. Sixty-Six

What makes it worse is that yuou were probably still sober at the time. Chris

Not a big Nissan fan, the GT-R isn't terrible, but the rest of the list....ughh. Add to that the Dodge Caliber and subtract the cargo vans perhaps. Cargo vans only have so many styling options (although the 70's GM vans I liked). However, the Calber is just plain one of the worst Chrysler styling designs ever IMHO. Chris

...on the downside, one of the cars in the yard was a GTA Firebird. On the plus side, Dave Gill Pontiac (where I bought my previous S-10) has a pristine low mile 89 pace car on the sales floor. God I love that bodystyle car. My friend Shawn had one (84TA) as a high school graduation present...we had so much fun and got into so much trouble in that car... Maybe I ought to remember our antics in that 'bird when I get frustrated with my own teenage son. Chris