rkmdogs

Are you threatening to shoot me? Pal you are barking up a very wrong tree with that statement! Two strikes for me???? When are you going to say something that makes sense?

If you want to play spellcheck, its inaccurate..... and insensitive. And the negative comments expressed here are also inaccurate and dumb! mute:..... doesn't say anything, is silent!!!!! I guess no one here has ever taken logic 101 or listened to a real debate.

Krinle, go back and eat some more Pablum!!! It will help you disposition. If minivans are going away...... like El Caminos and woodies, then why is the Mustang doing so well, and GM is bringing back a retro Camaro, and D-C the Challenger? Outlived their usefulness??? Or is somebody realizing that change is not always better! You sound like a kid with ADD, who needs a new toy, 'cause the old one has been there more than 30 seconds. I have news for you, full-size vans were not designed to be make-out pads for teen-agers, although that happened, and mini-vans were not designed to be just baby-haulers for soccer moms, although that seems to be where your myoptic focus is looking! There is a need that has been filled. GM has chosen, if the info we have been given is correct, to abandon that need, or to try and suggest another direction to fulfill that need. We are just saying that, HEY GM!....... you are looking down the wrong path!!

Croc, thank you for being honest about your bias against minivans. Your comments then have to be taken with many grains of salt, since your negative position is now known. Buick used to have an advertising slogan, " Ask the man who owns one." That applies here, 200%. All this grousing over what will or will not work to change an exhisting platform into something else is mute. If you haven't lived and used one on more than a casual basis, you have no ground for comment about them. PERIOD! Anything else makes about as much sense as a Catholic priest commenting about the results of having sex!!!! The comment about using the van for something else, other than as a baby-hauler, such as a trade work vehicle is 120% right on the mark!! How many plumbers or electricans do you see driving SUVs?---- as a work vehicle. GM has the smarts to make all the other manufacturers go back to the drawing boards, if they will just let their car people do their job!!! They are starting to look like the Titanic with the excuses and denials being esposed by the bean-counters on this site!!!! Oh yeah, and one other thought-------- how you gonna pay for that Odyssey or Sienna, when you get laid off 'cause the US manufacture of vehicles has declined so far that the depression of '29 is gonna look like a walk in the park. Go give NAFTA a big hug............. but not for ME!!!!!!

WHAT! Did I hear you right? A vehicle manufacturer who deliberately blows off sales of 200,000 vehicles, with the potential to sell more, if they "improve" the product to meet competitive, state-of-the-art features? How many niche vehicles has GM made and sold and been happy about it? --- Like the SSR? You guys are into that funny stuff, or the wrong business if you don't think that ANY manufacturer would rejoice at sales of 200,000 units of only one line of his product selection. There are specialty companies, like ASC who would die to make that quantity of a "special" vehicle! You guys are counting too many beans again, and forgetting that the mission statement of GM is to be in the transportation vehicle market, not an ego toy manufacturer!

Fit,schmidt, pit...... who cares? This thread was about GM's plans for a future minivan. Can we get back to that subject, or has everybody with an honest opinion voiced it?

Evok, I am a transplant Yankee from Illinois!(gasp) and........... regarding ignorance, I have 8 patents. What have you got besides a big mouth?

PurdueGuy, This is a great starting list! The one thing I might question tho, is the perception of a "long" hood. In my many years with vans the one thing that I dreaded, was dealing with a huge inside engine cover when something needed to be done to service the engine. If the engine can be totally serviced from under the hood, for routine maintainence, that would be great. IMO, the Venture hood was not too long. The Astros were better for visability, but service was a nightmare! A few additions I would like to add to the list; A truly flat load floor at the rear hatch opening, no step-down design. A split rear hatch, either like station wagons of old with a 1/2 glass opening window and a drop-down tail gate, or...... still the best idea of all for versitility, the Dutch-door concept of the Astros. One last feature while at the rear, if it is doors they should open 180 degrees, like an Express van. Trailer towing capacity up to 5000 lbs. AWD available. A small, but suitable diesel engine. Adequate lights, both inside and out, Xenon preferable. Full instrumentation, Other than a basic AM/FM radio, other entertainment or electronics should be optional. 4-wheel disc brakes with 4-wheel ABS. Sliding doors on both sides, standard(behind the drivers and front passenger). and lastly, a competitive price, not some pie-in-the-sky niche vehicle tag!

Kris, just take the keys away from the bean-counters, and let people who know cars and trucks run the show! I go along with just about everything you said except........ screw the removable seats business! That was not a problem until a year ago when my back gave out and my wife had to have surgery. We physically could no longer lift the seats to put them in and out of our Astro. And, that concept also begs the issue, that you have to pre-plan when you are going to haul something that may take up more room! With stowable seats, an unplanned transport of that antique heirloom find at the local flea market is no longer a problem. But...... there are two other issues you touched at. One, you absolutely must be able to access a truly flat floor. And, if that is done by folding up seats, they must still allow a single plane of flatness to accept the cargo. Before I purchased my current van, I researched all the prospective vehicles. The only two who had a flat floor, level with the rear cargo opening was The D-C twins, with stow-n'-go seats and the HHR, whose seats did not disappear, but did not impede having a flat floor except for the length of it. Guess which one I chose? Not even close!

Evok, when I want something intelligent out of you, I'll ask you to fart! I have owned full-size and mini vans since 1963 out of choice, because they suited my needs and transportation requirements. I was not some vain hippy looking to impress people that I don't even know, with a vehicle that couldn't do the job it was supposed to, properly---- and the color was not some popular shade of puke! Grow up!!!!!........Twerp!

I presume that this is from a bean-counters point of view, not an owner-operator of said type of vehicle. Be my guest---- kiss off a percentage of one million sales a year. Money doesn't mean anything to GM, unless it is coming from the Chinese I guess. And all those disappointed AMERICAN buyers who have to go elsewhere for a vehicle that meets their needs ---- who needs em', right?

I'll second & third this idea! Oh yeah, an appropriate-sized diesel engine offered for everything!

You folks all remind me of the old cliche', opinions are like assholes, everybodys got one! I have only read comments from one minivan owner in four pages of this thread, but I have read more knocks and derogotory comments from people who don't know the product from their assholes! If you don't own or haven't owned a minivan, you have no perspective of their versatility, and that does not mean just for soccer moms as you negatives will try to imply. Minivans came about as a replacement when station wagons became a bad thing! There is too much stigma and labeling being attached to a type or style of a vehicle, without any knowledge of a person's lifestyle or transportation needs. That is all media crap!! GM had a good minivan, when it came out----- called the ASTRO. But they chose to milk it, rather than keeping it up-to-date. Its replacement, the Venture was a compromise gesture to try and match the Japanese, and by compromising they degraded the product. Its successor, the Uplander is so far off target from contemporary minivan identifiers traits, that it is a shame to call it anything!! Nobody has even mentioned in this thread the previous hat-in-the-ring idea of a shorty Explorer----- which in my opinion is not a good one either, but I have been seeing quite a few of them on dealer lots. With all the tongue-wagging going around here, instead of postulating about converting cross-overs, why not identify the positive features that would be necessary for a successful new minivan? I'll start by saying that it must have fold-in-the floor second and 3rd row seats. ------ NEXT!

All you gotta do is answer the question, "Did you vote?" If you did, then you can only blame yourself for the people you elected did not represent your interests. If you didn't vote, then shut-up!! You have no right to bitch because you did not fullfill your responsibilities! NAFTA didn't just happen in Flint....... it was processed in Washington D.C.,... and by you know who..... the politicians that you voted in to office!!

You are forgetting an important fact. GM sold these people a piece of equipment that they knew would no longer operate at some finite time. That is theft by deception! If they told the people that this service would no longer work with the equipment they were buying, how many people would have then forked over the $199.?? If the people had been informed, and allowed to make an informed choice, then GM's hands would be clean....... but not now!!!

It would be nice to be able to order this appearance package on a 2WD version, instead of only on a 4WD model. AND...... when will GM get smart and offer a roof rack DELETE option on regular models instead of taking it off only on the SS model? Many people don't realize the fuel cost that the drag from that little-used appendage costs!

You people all smokin' them funny cigarettes again? You all need a reality check! Right now D-C is having a tough time selling Charger squads @ $21K and hemis @ $23K for squads, and you want to RAISE THE PRICE??? Get real! Fleet buyers want bang for the buck, and at a low price. They cannot justify whistles & bells to please the "gentler crowd", who want all the games and toys as standard, and don't seem to worry about cost or payback! Up to 35 LARGE for a CHEVY????? Get real!!!!

Because he considered them "expendable", and better fitted to fit in with the "worker class" over in Russia. It was in one of the biographies that I read @ Greenfield.

BUT....... if you don't LEARN from the past and correct mistakes, you WILL surely repeat them! AND that will occur in the future!!!!

Apparently none of you participants are old enough to remember. Let me share some light with you. In the 60's there was a large political turmoil. There were major differences in philosophy. One of the conservatives was Barry Goldwater, who spoke some harse realities that made some folks squirm. In that campaign, a book came out. It was called "The Democrats Dilemma" by Dr. Phillip Crane. He later became a Congressman. In that book he shared some history. It was the history of the English Fabian movement, which was a radical highly leftist philosophy. He revealed that as part of their agenda, to infiltrate and take over, they came to America and started infiltrating our colleges, targeting the teaching curriculum. These would be the future teachers who would espouse socialism, big government and the idea that "big brother can do it better." They created the "Students for a Democratic Society", known as SDS; but their heads were so far up their asses that they did not recognize that the communist party was pulling their strings, until there was a big organizational battle many years later. I went to school with some of these people. They were the the ones at the bottom of the ladder rung, who went into education because it was the easiest curriculum in college. There were no right or wrong answers onthe tests, just give us your opinions. These mental "giants" became the teachers who are teaching your kids today! What goes around, comes around. The chickens have come home to roost!!!

Razor you and I have disagreed plenty in the past, but on this issue, you are right on...100% !!!! If you want to discuss atrocities, ring into the bit about Henry Ford. How when the communists took over Russia, and killed the Czar during the revolution back in the teens, he abandoned the workers that he had sent over there to build a factory and make cars, because most of them were Jewish, and he was an ardent anti-semetic. On that factor, when WW II came along, he vocally agreed with Hitler about eradicating people of that faith! These facts have been published in some of the biographies about him, but others have hushed it up!

Most of you have probably not heard this news, but why not give the militant illegal aliens out there what they are campaigning for........ Let California secede from the union and become an independent country! Then we don't have to deal with them except as a foreign country, and they would have to earn favored nation status. Let'em go back to their mules and oxcarts! I haven't seen a decent movie from California in years, and we could pull the naval bases out of there too! Let'em get their own dept. of defense. Oh yeah, they already have that with the gangs!

AND......... Big Jim Thompson, the ex-governor of Illinois bought a Checker Marathon as his personal car and used one as his official State limo, because he could not fit into the limos that were available at that time. Re: Taxi usage---- a lot of cab companies that no longer have access to cheap Crown Vics that are ex-police cars, have swithced to mini-vans for the room! I have seen a lot of Astros used for this purpose. I have also seen some of the Jap mini-vans being used as cabs in N.Y. Haven't heard a word on their service life, maybe they are throw-aways when they run out of Saki?

This comment is spoken like a true college student who has never worked or paid for anything in industry in his life! Do you know what toolmakers get for salaries? Or even what dies and other tooling cost? These are MAJOR, major expenditures, that cannot be justified, just to be different. Business majors----- tell'um what it takes to make a business case for a tool change! With the offshore competition getting a helping hand from their governments to come into our market, while our government clubs our industry over the head for trying to use common sense, makes for a very negative attitude.