A Horse With No Name

It will be a sad day in mudville when the sexiest car you can buy is a bright Hugger Orange...Smart Car. Chris

Perhaps we could use the French idea of a car that runs on hot, compressed air. The Florida senator has plenty of that. But as you said in another post balthazar, none of this is good for the auto industry. I have a real feeling that the days of cars like the CTS, Solstice, Camaro, Mustang, Cahllenger, 300 et al. are very numbered indeed. Chris

There are abuses in Union companies and their are abuses in non union companies. There are bad Democrats and bad Republicans. No one is perfect. However, we do need some way to stand up for workers rights in this country. That doesn't mean that a Union is mandatory. But it also doesn't mean they ahve to go away either. Chris

Longtooth, I hope your still employed and building cars in about 15 months, and I hope the economy is better. I want a Solstice badly! Chris

Donate it to science. They need a good shaking up.... Chris

The construction economy is just dead here in Columbus. I think I posted this before, so pardon me. Mike is one of our electrical inspectors we deal with on a regular basis. At the peak of the housing boom, he was inspecting about 30-35 new houses a week. When I talked to him the other day, he was going to inspect #6...for all of 2008. Better hold on to that El-Camino, it may be the last GM vehicle we have in the C and G fleet and you probably call haul 4 or 5 posters in the bed as well as 3 in the cab. Quite the Recession/depression era joyride. Chris

My 18 year old daughter finished the last of her high school classes in Mid August, and still hasn't been able to find even a minumum wage job. This is, by far, the very worst I've seen the economy in my lifetime. Chris

Not to be political, but this is what scares me about our current situation. Every State and Local budget is so tight that they need to cut everywhere they can, including education. A lack of an educated population is just going to dig us in further with all of our national problems. If worse comes to worse, there are good teaching jobs around here, although I doubt you'd want to leave Long Island. Chris

Yes, even with all the doom and gloom...there are some sources of real, genuine joy in the world. Chris

Exactly. It is hard to be a nation governed by "the people" when you need to be a multi-millionare just to be elected. And as for the lack of community thing, you are dead right. No one seems to care about anyone else anymore, it is all me, me , me. What this means for the automakes is that they are probably SOL. Even if we do get the 25 billion, we are trying to come from so far behind at this point that it is in many ways a very long shot that they will survive. Sadly, I didn't think things would be this bad even 12 months ago. I shudder to think at what life might be like if we slip again this much further in the next 12 months. Chris

In two years here at C and G, this is one of the smartest, most reality based posts EVER. Chris

The R and D thing is huge. Our local Miata club has been given some tours of the Honda "skunkworks" in Marysville, Ohio. We have friends that have friends that...well nevermind. I can tell you that Honda is spending about eleventy billion dollars on R and D right now. GM needs to spend a similar amount to keep up. This would put a lot of people to work an keep the idea of competing automotive design alive... Chris

It's been going on for awhile. Today I drove by the site of a former long term Cadillac dealer and Long term Buick dealer here in Columbus. In both cases the dealerships are gone and the building has been torn down. If the economy was in better shape I'd be headed north for the Solstice GXP. Chris

Why? I have a 45 year old friend with a 23 year old girlfriend and they are both very happy. Chris

4.6 Seconda to 60...I want another V8 RWD car...badly. I wish I had 36k to buy this thing. This ought to blow the Acura TSX with AWD and the "super Handling" package into the weeds...about 4 counties over... And ought to destroy a lot of the other competition in that price range as well. Chris

Riding themselves of the Union would also rid themselves of all of the people who know what they are doing and have been building these cars for 20 years. We should have dealt with the insane rise in health care costs 15 years ago. We can debate all we want about how right Hillary was or how evil she was, but truth of the matter is we had a problem and did nothing to solve it. Now health care costs are way out of control and getting worse...we need to solve the issue of health care costs and some (but not all) of the huge costs of Unions will go away. Plus, I have had a little bit of a change of heart about Unions. I used to hate them, but the older I get the more I see employer abuses and the more I think they may be a necessity. Chris

Carbiz...your problem is that you live in a world of reality. Quit it. Your not being politically correct, and it will make you unpopular in life. I'd suggest taking up lieing out your ass. You will be much happier and much more popular. A day of reckoning can't come fast enough for Wall Street, IMHO. Chris

The problem is that the wheels have been coming off of the whole god-damned thing since perhaps 1973, with the first energy crisis, got worse in the late 1970's (a lot of the problems under Carter were driven by energy prices) and we ignored the problem. We can debate Unions until we are all living in caves and killing our dinners with primitive muzzle loaders, but real wages started falling under Reagan in the early 1980's and have been falling since. We ignored all of these financial problems through the recession of '87, the Sand L Crisis etc. of the 80's. We went to War under Bush 1 to secure energy, but 15 years later we still hadn't learned a Goddamned thing. Clinton and Gore paid lip service to our energy and finance problems, but in the 1990's we were fat and happy and no one gave a rat's ass about digging our way out. People want to either blame Bush II or saint him, and at this point he's in office for about 6 more weeks so it really doesn't matter. We've spent 8 more years ignoring things like outsourcing, finance reform, and our energy issues. Well, 30 years have gone by (give or take) and we still haven't wanted to walk though the front door and deal with 1. outsourcing 2.Energy 3. Banking and finance reform. 4. huge deficits, both government debt and the huge amount of money that has gone overseas to buy energy. The chicken's are now coming home to roost, and it's going to get very ugly and unhappy. The honest to God truth is that it is going to take us 30 more years to dig our ass out of the mess we've spent the last 30 years digging ourselves into. It may take 10 years for our auto industry to recover, if it ever does. It may take us 20 years to rebuild our energy infrastructure. It may take us 30 years to pay for the wild excesses, caused by both political parties, over the last 30 years. But I am an optomist. I am 43 now, and I may have another 29 or 30 years left to live. I want to die the owner of a new GM vehicle in 2039. I want to die knowing that my children and grandchildren have a future. I want to die knowing that the next generation has forgiven my generation and the generation before mine for handing them this nation in such terrible shape. (Chris goes out into the parking lot here at the library to throw a brick through the windshield of a Toyota Sienna, the continues his rant) It really is a shame. We were handed this nation in pretty good shape 30 years ago by the generation that won WWII, and we haven't been doing much with what we have been given. Everyone in my generation, in one way or another...or maybe almost everyone...should really hang their head in utter shame with what we've let happen to our country. Sorry boys, I'm furous with what's happening and I just need to rant. Chris

I'll donate the apple...and several cords of nice dry Oak firewood. Probably going to get banned for saying this, but I'm angry enough to roast the guys wife and kids also. This thing just has me furious. The headline on the Columbus Dispatch (which should be Columbus Cowpatch due to how objective the writing is) was "Carmakers Now Roadkill?" Everyone seems to be laughing at Detroit. This whole thing kinda reminds me of our sexual mores in the 1950's and 1960's, when a woman was considered "cold" if she didn't give it up and "a slut" if she did. GM spent 30 years giving us great SUV's, trucks, and RWD cars by the millions, that the American public bought and enjoyed by the millions. Now that car fashions have changed, GM is considered a whore because it gave the American public what it wanted. Absolutely Unbelieveable. Watch the children of the rich and white collared people suffer when they loose their medical/clerical/insurance/financial services/educational/nursing/or whatever jobs because no one has any money to pay for these services. It's already starting in the medical field...people are unable to pay their medical bills, so medical professionals are suffering. The whole leveraged/loaned/built on other people's mony thing is going to crash, and the wealthy elite will suffer, weather they live in Cape Cod or Dubai. Just my rant for Monday. Chris

I have a warm garage in Ohio with "El Camino" written all over it...HMMM... Get the Camino done. Not promising anything but...I am in lust. I know it's hard to think of keeping any vehicle but that El-Camino is just going to be kick butt. Chris

Sort of like the sliding window on the Tundra driven by the owner of the company I work for. He didn't tie down a generator in the bed and it flew through the sliding rear window during a panic stop, causing considerable damage to the truck. Toyota only charged him $1200 for the window... Chris

I small a lawsuit also. However, autocrossing said car (in the spring) might teach you some good car control skills in the meantime. Chris

I small a lawsuit also. However, autocrossing said car (in the spring) might teach you some good car control skills in the meantime. Chris

The last generation Celica wasn't that good of a car either. Drive one hard and then drive an Integra GSR hard or an Integra Type R hard, or a 99-2000 civic SI hard, or a 2002-2005 Cicic SI hard... You'll find out what a piss poor design the Celica really is. The Honda producsts WAY outclass (by several orders of magnatude) the DSM MITSU cars, and yet the DSM outclasses the Celica IMHO. Chris

There are rural parts of Michigan that are just beuatiful, though. If I had my druthers, I'd be a yuper and move to the Upper Peninsula just to get away from the bulk of population that seems to be over-running everywhere else. Chris