CARBIZ

Hell, I'd love to work in your area, gm4life, if the guys there can mark up a vehicle $4,383 and still make money off ya! I had a guy like that recently. He had spoken to another salesperson a month or so before and came back with no appointment, nothing. No patience or respect for the time the other salesperson had spent with him, he wanted to look at the Optra right now. So, reluctantly, I spoke with him. We looked at a few cars and he started making stupid offers on the lot. This puzzled me. Where do you get these figures from, I asked. A $18,000 car (new) and you are coming up with $2,000 discounts. When I refused to play his game, he retorted that this is how he always buys cars. I retorted right back, "Well, it can't be doing too well for you, can it? A month has gone by and you still haven't bought anything!"

It seems obvious that so-called incentives hurt resale and image; however, they are a mixed blessing in reality. Some customers are what I call Olympic Negotiators. That is, they will shop for the deal, not the vehicle. They don't care if they even like the vehicle, as long as they think the dealer is bleeding out its eyes. For these people, a $300 discount receives a mere snort or chuckle. It is for these people that the many "hidden" and not hidden programs are useful. I have had people whine to me that they loved the Versa but wouldn't buy it because the dealer wouldn't budge on the price and the lease rate was 6.9. Give them $1,000 off a Cobalt and that is just an opening bid! Without these incentives, we might lose a few of those people, which on the face of it isn't such a bad thing, but GM needs to scrounge for every customer these days.

.79....PSYCHE.....a litre!!! Ha, ha,......That's about $3.17 a U.S. gallon...and that's cheap for us! Was about .89 a litre a few weeks ago.

....well, if I told you about my private little spot, it wouldn't be private, would it? Just kidding! I know some great old abandoned mining roads in Northern Ontario, in the Kirkland Lake area. Great canoeing, fishing (although fishing is the SECOND most boring sport on the planet, IMO). There is also a chain of islands in Georgian Bay, just a little north-west of Parry Sound that are secluded, mosquito free, absolutely stunningly beautiful - incredible sunsets. The best part about both these places is they are FREE. No park wardens, no camping fees, no kids...very peaceful!

The worst part about the death or overthrow of a dictator is the upheaval and unrest that follows the political vacuum. It is unfortunate and nearly inevitable. All of South America, Central America and most of the islands have had this same horrible history. Good riddance to Castro, but fasten your seatbelts, girls and boys - we're in for a bumpy ride.

Personally, I opposed the decontenting concept, but the ugly truth is that nobody cared. I remember when we got the news about the 2003 models all having ABS stripped out of them and at the time I inwardly cringed. We had the odd person coming out of a 2000 Malibu or Cavalier lease who would bring it up, but for the most part, nobody cared. The standard Stabilitrak in the Intrigue was another issue. People actually argued that it was a bad thing to have it. I applaud GM for trying to take the high road from '93 to '03, but the truth is most customers didn't give a $h!. And if you are the only manufacturer doing it - even with a 30 share of the market, you can't swim upstream forever.

You are making the assumption that Japan operates under true capitalism and that Toyota, Honda, etc. compete against each other. I doubt that is the case. MITI has a lot of clout in Japan. Banks and corporations bow to its will. Iaccoca talks about this in his first book and there are other resources as well. MITI has been coordinating with the government and the Big Five to hammer the American market for decades now. Why is it that Japan is the only closed market in the godamned WORLD? Hell, we sell cars to Russia, China and Saudi F#$ing Arabia, but not to Japan. ASK YOURSELVES WHY NOT????????????????????

You seem to have a very healthy attitude. GM needs more of that. I hope your enthusiasm is infectious and will influence the old timers that you are working with. Good luck! And welcome.

Well, then this product "renaissance" has been the biggest coincidence in GM corporate history. I don't care if Lutz only got coffee for the real guys who did the work - just having his name around has done something! Of course we know he didn't actually design the vehicles himself! The real challenge with what has happened in the last two or three years is to see the effect starting to hit the bottom line, or at least the market share drop! As we have discussed here, despite GM arguably putting out some of the best product in its history, the goal posts have moved once again. The real test will be how well the Malibu is received in the market, whether the RWD Impala is a hit and (perhaps most important of all) the upcoming Cobalt replacement. Those will be Lutz's true legacy.

If I buy a $20 toaster that is made in China, I doubt our way of life will come crashing down. However, if I buy a $25k car that is assembled here, 3/4 of the parts are shipped from Japan, and most of the high value-added jobs (engineers, metalurgists, chemists, etc) are in Japan, and all of the profits and all of the patents and technology are in Japan - well, that is a far different matter in my mind. Since Ford is in death throes and GM is barely out of the Chronic Care Ward, what would happen to our industrial/technological base if both GM and Ford went down or were bought out by foreign interests? We aren't talking about a few $120 shoes being made in Taiwan. Think about who then owns the technology. How would Japan's Universities and R&D centers benefit from the total collapse of Detroit-based manufacturers? The great thing about our democracies is that we have freedom of choice. I can choose to buy a T-shirt made in Canada or made in Brazil, just like I can choose what make of vehicle I drive, but with that choice also comes a little responsiblity. If I don't give a damn about my neighbor having a job, that is my perogative, too. We are getting soft and fat in the West. I am beginning to get more cynical with age and believe we are getting what we deserve, if we are too stupid to see there are dire consequences of loving all things imported.

Democracies, unfortunately, by their nature are not long term entities. Corporations are worse. Washington only cares about the next 4 years; Wall Street the next quarter. Japan Inc. (with the help of MITI) has been milking both these facts for decades. America has traditionally been the biggest at everything for the past 100 years and pretty much used to getting her way. The irony here is that under the rush to Free Trade, America may be sewing the seeds of her own destruction. First of all, under the notion of dragging Third World countries up to our own level of affluence, America has allowed her current account balance to spiral dangerously out of whack. Was not the inflation of the '70s a partial result of the over spending on Vietnam? Are there not any parallels with today? If consumers here keep buying Chinese/Indian/Japanese products at the rate we are, those countries will end up owning the American dollar. They already have something like a trillion dollars in US Treasury bills anyway. Do you guys have any idea what kind of clout that gives these countries? Washington proceeds with the misguided notion that America is the only market worth exploiting. What happens when China and India's middle class can float the boom on their own? When these countries can stand on their own two feet America will be competition, not a market. What would happen to the U.S. dollar if those countries cashed in their chips? Hmm, maybe that is why Japan Inc. is in such a rush to open plants here. With a U.S. dollar worth half that of a Euro, Japanese exports would be prohibitively expensive and even Japan couldn't devalue the yen enough to stay under the dollar with China and India dumping their treasury bills. A nightmare scenario, indeed.

Eastern Europe has enjoyed a very low incidence of HIV infection because it once was a closed society, but lately the prostitution industry and porno industry has exploded in Romania and other countries. Someone paid $100 US dollars can live for a few weeks over there. HIV is not something that you suddenly wake up with one day. Even with our modern techniques, it still requires 3 months of incubation before the tests will come back positive. Unless someone has a lot of sudden, wierd symptoms (recurrent "flu fever," night sweats, loss of energy, for examples), most people wouldn't bother to be tested for the virus - especially the poor who don't want to have to pay for the test. The U.S. and Canada only got a handle on things at the outset because a lot of free, anonymous testing facilities were set up, often despite the strong opposition of some right-wing groups, and people were tested early on.

You know, politicians are always haunted by things that they said/did years ago by some media outlet dragging out some printed quote or gaff on TV news from 15 years ago. Why is the media not held accountable for its clear biases? You can casually flip through any MT or C&D from 25 years ago and you will see them whining how the Big Three are closing the quality gap and how great the latest Datsun or Toyota is. How can the Big Three have been closing the quality gap for three decades? The media outlets are just regurgitating the same old $h! forever. To read what they printed decades ago, then compare it to what they are spewing today is a real eye opener. They cannot get through one article or story - even the so-called positive ones, without sounding condescending or making flippant remarks. The media do not REPORT the story, they CREATE it.

The actual virus was not found until 1984, I believe; however, the British have gone back through military records (now that they know what to look for!) and traced the virus through tissue samples to the late 1950s. It is believed that sailors stationed in Morroco (? its' late and I don't have time to look it up) brought it to England after visiting brothels there. Having said that, there is also another train of thought that the SIV (Siminian version of HIV) had crossed the human-primate barrier before, but that it never spread because the general health of the human population had been better during earlier incursions. For sure the entire thing is nutrional-based. There is a strong argument that if one was to completely purge oneself of toxins (or not eat anything that was not readily available 10,000 years ago, as one pharmacologist said to me), many of these modern "diseases" would go away on their own. I am of the opinion that cancer and AIDS are cousins. THey are both break downs of the immunity system. A cure for AIDS may point to a cure for cancer and vice versa. In any event, so-called lifestyle choices are made every day. Whether one had a promiscuous past, or whether one chooses to eat buritos for breakfast, or smoke a pack a day, or not floss properly or drive too fast or drive a smog-spewing, gas guzzling SUV - we are all guilty of making bad calls in our lives. For us old-timers who lived in the pre-AIDS time, the maelstrom of the disease in the late '80s took everyone by surprise. To the younger generation coming up who may be tired of the safe sex "propoganda," or who think it won't happen to them, or who believe a few pills will make it go away, think again. What's the phrase: he who hath no sin can cast the first stone? [With apologies to the Good Book!]

Well, really, what could he say? At such a public forum, he has to temper his remarks. Cautious praise never hurts oneself. Public trashing of one's competition not only looks tacky, it can spark an ugly, public war. GM has built a bit of momentum, both in the truck market and the car market, so I think Lutz can afford to be gracious at this time. Toyota can be stopped dead in its tracks and I think Lutz knows that.

If, as the general theory goes, the HIV virus spread out of Africa to Europe in the 1950's, thence to North America in the '70s, it is interesting to note that the Western world got educated and protected themselves early on in the game; otherwise, the picture here would be far, far worse by now. Africa is still in a state of denial. In some villages, aid workers (no pun intended), who are often women, are beaten and accosted for trying to promote condom use. What is happening in Africa is so out of control that there is no hiding what is happening. The Middle East is another matter. Given the state of political affairs in Pakistan and other Islamic states, very few people would admit to having HIV or AIDS, due to the "shame" and fear of what it could mean. Consequently, many death certificates read different causes of death. I have worked with two Pakistani persons and they have told me that sodomy is fairly rampant in Pakistan because, after all, the women are supposed to be virgins at marriage. Brazil is another country that is quite the dichotomy, really. Roman Catholic on the outside, but all Carnival on the inside. They have a reasonably enlightened respect of the virus and managed to nip it in the bud, so to speak early on, too. There is another school of thought that is tracing the effects of - get ready for this, acid rain on HIV conversion rates. Yes, acid rain. The theory is based largely on a study of Senegalese prositutes who were all negative, yet had sex with thousands of clients. The theory goes that acid rain leaches selenium out of the soil and a selenium-deficient diet increases the likelihood of contracting the virus when exposed to it. Understand that the virus is very hard to contract - even infected fluid sprayed onto an open cut is unlikely to result in transmission of the virus. I lost many friends to the disease in the late '80s. That was a truly horrific time. People who contracted it in the mid-80s or earlier were mostly dead within 2-5 years. There were no hopeful treatments until the early '90s. NOw, one of my friends has been asymptomatic for 20 years and is still healthy without taking an medications. In the West, AIDS (not to be confused with the mere possession of the HIV virus) is thought to be a chronic disorder, on the scale of diabetes - provided, of course, you can afford the drug treatments. There are many people who have been on the "cocktail" for 5 years or more and who are perfectly healthy. Therein lies the danger: there is a whole generation of boys and girls who don't believe HIV will get them. Well, let me tell you guys (and gals) here that if I had a dime for every married man who was showing me pictures of his kids one moment, then playing footsies with me in the whirlpool at the Y 5 minutes later, I could retire. I was (am?) a looker in my day, and have always worked out, so I have been in my fair share of gyms, and I lived in a small, norther town for 11 years. AIDS is everyone's problem. My mother's best friend's husband, after 27 years of marriage, told his wife that he was gay and had been having anonymous sex. You never know who you are sleeping with, literally. And for those of you who are so damned unsympathetic to the plight of people with HIV: be careful, very careful. You may be happily married now, but you could very easily wind up divorced and banging some fox that you met in a bar and wind up with a surprise 3 months later.

Okay, so, like I was in the Eaton Center (why do they still call it that when Eaton's went bankrupt 5 or 6 years ago?) at the Apple store, buying my 3rd iPod in as many months (a 30gb as a birthday present for my partner a couple months ago, a 2gb for myself and another 2gb as a present for his brother when we go to Brazil in 2 weeks), and the clerk is asking if I"ve heard about the new phone. Okay, I may be old enough to be her father, but I didn't just fall off the turnip truck either (not that she probably knew what that means!) I said, yes, I"ve heard of it, but I will stick to my 2 year old flip phone that has no camera, no MP3 capablity, no custom ring tones (it has no download capability at all - HORRORS!) and no text messaging. She stared at me like I was from Mars. I have a portable XM, a cellphone, an iPod, a computer, 2 digital cameras (one MPEG-4 movie camera and a regular digital that just died, actually), a new Hitachi 42" plasma TV, Yamaha 6.1 surround system...........I am exhausted just typing this. The last thing I need is a cellphone that records music, plays movies, takes pictures...okay, maybe I could use a cell phone that does all of that, but not after I just spent so much f$@king money on all the rest of the electronics! We are on a treadmill, boys and girls. I have gone through 5 VCRs (starting with my first in 1984), 3 stereo systems (from '77 to my new current one), I just threw out a Dual turntable that I paid $400 for in 1982 when I only made $4 an hour, I have had laserdisc, DVD (and am currently taking pills to resist BueRay) and can brag to my kids (if I had any) that I narrowly avoided Beta and 8-track. (I am proud to admit that I talked my mother OUT of 8-tracks because I knew they broke easily and did NOT rewind.) It is an EVIL CONSPIRACY, this technology treadmill. Now let me log off so I can get to the store and buy ANOTHER 2 gig SD card for my movie camera so I don't run out when I am holidays. (And I can hear my father, who used to bitch about our wind-up movie camera running out of film - the reels were, like 5 minutes long!) Ha! Take that, Dad.

It's funny how CR, who is supposed to be on the side of consumers, hasn't picked up on this fact: if Toyota is the most profitable vehicle manufacturer, yet their volume is quite a bit below GM, then couldn't that imply they were gouging their customers? Being hugely profitable is great for shareholders; not so much for buyers of your product. Double edged sword, no?

The internet provides both good information and bad information, whether we like it or not. Sadly, many Jewish people I know do drive M-B. Just as Chinese flock to Japanese cars. People have very short memories on historical facts. Nissan was also formed as a branch of the Japanese military to build military vehicles in Manchuria using slave Chinese labor. I don't suppose you see that on their website either.

Not to hijack this thread, but I do agree that the police are probably paid what they are worth. I should point out that in my business a uniformed cop or TTC (transit) worker is the kiss of death because when they walk in the show room they are fornicating the canine while on the pay roll. Spectacular front page news aside, you should know that 3/4 of the fire workers calls are total BS and at the end of the year they get to file these huge reports at all the calls they made when in reality most of them were false alarms or drug dealers pulling alarms in high rises to warn that a narc is near by. When a fire alarm is pulled some where, 5 or 6 $500,000 fire trucks show up, each with 6 $55,000 workers in side and all they do is stand around for 30 minutes until a supervisor determines it is a false alarm. They all go back to the station, file a report and at the end of the year they demand a big raise, better equipment and more workers, based on those "calls." The teachers are clearly the worst. They get 12 weeks holidays a year, get paid $60k, and bitch when they have to mark tests at home. Don't get me wrong, you couldn't pay me to baby sit 14 year old, precocious, know-it-all brats, but that is the profession that they chose and they get paid damn well for it. As to municipal workers, locally they get paid $22 an hour, plus all their benefits (how many sick days a year do YOU get paid for? Me? none!) to pick up garbage or sit around in a truck, hidden in a city park and smoke cigarettes. My partner gets paid $13 an hour at a private company to do the same thing - and he has no pension and can be fired for any reason. I worked in a unionized environment once (the Ontario Provincial government) and I lasted 3 months. It was the most soul-sucking, energy draining experience of my life. The union will be quick to blame management as the reason their jobs are meaningless, but it isn't that at all. One of the guys in my department had two mail runs a day (totalling 30 minutes each) and spent the rest of the day rolling cigarettes for himself. When I confronted my boss about why this useless twat was still around, she sniffed that he had 3 years to go to retirement and to just leave him alone. WTF??? I was 19 and knew that he was sucking my taxes through those cigarettes. We all know the horror stories from the Dirty Thirties and the 19th century of what labor conditions were like in coal mines and early factories, but I think we are far removed from that now. The UAW/CAW needs to get with it, or their jobs will all be exported. Better yet, each union worker needs to work in the real world for 6 months just to see how damned lucky they are.

For the Silverado, a well-deserved award in an all-important segment for GM. Enjoy the party, GM - the Tundra is coming. As for the Aura, I think those nay-sayers on the Lutz front may have to shut their mouths finally. Starting with the Grand Prix 4 years ago and the upcoming Malibu, his mark has finally returned pride to the company. Maybe, just maybe, 2007 will be the year that GM stops the market share free fall in North America and gets their mojo back.

....and again we parade out the same boring "facts" to prove a point that wasn't even argued. NObody buys the 5 spd. in North America, so it doesn't matter a damn if the Corolla 5 spd does 0-60 in 3 seconds. American cars are geared for automatics; Japanese aren't. We know that. That is why Toyotas and Hondas sound like Moulinex machines on acid when they whizz by. Again (sigh) when someone drives (DRIVES-DRIVES-DRIVES) the Cobalt and Corolla AUTOMATICS back to back, the impressions are striking to say the least. Toyota has closed the gap in 2007, but the Cobalt still feels more solid and quieter at highway speeds, etc. IN AN AUTOMATIC.

It wouldn't surprise anyone here to know that I wouldn't use a Toyota to pull my mother out of quicksand. She would rather die than bare the shame; however, having said that, being as this is Toyota's 3rd attempt at a decent-sized truck, it still falls a little short. Since these loaded trucks will be priced sky high in Canada ($60k or more!), they will sell more of the base units which I will wait with bated breath to see. More to the point will be what the jackals in the media have to say about this saga as it unfolds. As they love to bash Ford and GM at every turn in the car department, and as it has been generally (reluctantly?) acknowledged that GM and Ford (in that order?) are the ones to beat, will the media give Toyota every break, or judge the truck fairly? Personal attacks aside, it doesn't matter what we on this board think, it will be decided in the show rooms of North America. Trucks buyers are (generally) a little more savvy than car buyers, know their stuff a little more and aren't swayed by the BS (especially published statistics, which are generally total crap!) in CR, MT, etc.

2007 is going to be THE pivotal year for the UAW and Detroit. What happens this year will make or break both of them. I know what it is like to have one's income cut in half. It happened to me 10years ago. I lost everything. GM won't be asking for any where near that kind of concession, but Delphi is. The trouble is, unionized workers that I have met have such a feeling of entitlement - it is scary, like watching the Twilight Zone. I have many teacher friends and my sister is in a union. In some cases, it is nearly like a cult. I don't think we have seen labor talks like this in a couple generations. The last time GM was struck (in 1998) the company was in much better shape. In most companies that I know, when times are tough the management gets sacked, something the UAW has lobbied hard to prevent for their members. At one company I know, the General Manager (who was making $150k a year) was replaced by someone making a third less. I'll be GM's stock is in for a rough ride again.

I don't see the relevance to arguing about 2004's recall data. First of all, that is three model years ago. GM has said many times that it is serious about getting its quality on par with the Japanese and the above chart indicates that seems to be the case. Secondly, GM had a lot of product launches in 2004 - far more than Toyota, in fact. All of the GM-DAT product, for one. The new Malibu. The Equinox had some early problems, too. ((Interesting to note: not GM's tranny.) That is a lot of potential for recalls and problems. Evok, I think you are being a little picky and just rehashing my points. GM does sell more than double the number of vehicles in the U.S. than does Toyota- to be clear, so one would naturally expect more recalls. Not to mention that GM has more than double the number of models - more balls to juggle, so to speak, which is a far bigger problem. I have always maintained that Toyota was quite capable of juggling 3 or 5 models and keeping them all in line, but now that they have hit double digits it isn't so much fun any more. I think most of us on this board agree that recalls, in of themselves, taken without context are virtually meaningless. As to the media's sudden attention to Toyota's foibles, I don't see them. Locally, they still get buried in the Business section while GM's embarassments are front page. 2007 will be interesting. Just as Toyota's over seas scandals and North American "teething problems" (to quote CR about the Avalon) are starting to show cracks in the armor, GM seems to have gotten religion with product. If Ford can finally get its act together, we may see a friendly rivalry based on true merit, not which media outlet has an axe to grind. GM's Achilles heel, that of vehicles that appear cheaply built, seem to be largely over, so that people can take off their blinders and judge the vehicles for what they are.