CARBIZ

Well, I hope you guys start pumping them out fast, because I have a customer who has been waiting since September for his extended cab! The guy is getting antsy and I am running out of excuses to hold him off!

My Canon is nearly 3 years old, was dropped last year in Rio and still works flawlessly. It is my 2nd Canon. I bought an Olympus 35mm about 15 years ago that gave me nothing but grief until I threw it off the balcony window from a hotel in Atlanta. Most technology is disposable these days. Ever try to get a printer fixed? Why bother when you can buy a new one for $99?

Do you think these gold plated pensions, health benefits, etc. were granted because Roger Smith and others were idiots? No, they were given because GM was struck (or the union threatened to strike), and back in the days when GM and Ford were locked in a market share dance, one strike cost billions. Or does everybody down there forget how the strike in '98 wiped out dealer lots in a couple weeks? I would love to see the CAW/UAW strike Toyota and Honda, and demand benefit/wage packages commensurate with their profit levels. That is what the unions did to GM/Ford 20-30 years ago that has contributed to the mess they are in today. Did Toyota spend $23 million on Viagra last year? I doubt it.

Well, these kind of nut jobs do get media coverage. The media loves a screw ball. However, somewhere in the middle lies the answer. Venezuela is run by a nut job, too. He is in the middle of elections. You guys get almost 10% of your oil from that American-baiting, wannabe communist. If I were American, I would want to buy an Aveo so we could tell Chavez to F!@k himself!

What he said. I think (hope?) that a lot of the news coming out of GM lately (cancelling the minivans, etc.) is just smoke and mirrors to beat the union with; otherwise, both Ford and GM will be bankrupt in a couple of years. The gold plated pension/benefits packages of the '70s and '80s are over. When the unions had absolute power over the Big Three, and when the Big Three owned the market they could afford the contracts. THOSE DAYS ARE OVER. If the UAW wants to organize the Toyota/Honda plants and level the playing field, fine.

All cars melt up here in Ontario, don't ya know?

Ok, let's look at my father' s '73 Parisienne: it had a solid bench seat across the front and it was at least a few inches wider than any vehicles on the road today. Sitting in the middle was not that bad. Nobody wore seat belts back then (funny, how we are still around today?), so the difficulty of use of the middle lap belt didn't matter. Seatbelt laws and the shrinking size of cars are what killed the 6 passenger car. I remember 9 of us sitting in my father's '69 Chrysler 300, even with front buckets and a console. The cars were so much bigger then and people were not so anal about safety laws. Also, modern contoured seats aren't comfortable for a person in the middle - even in the back seat in many cars.

Mitsubishi Motors North America - does that mean these paltry sales include Canada's 777 sales in November? You guys will be devastated to know that Smart's sales were down 79% in November to 78 units in CANADA. Sales are off 21% for the year. My point: too many car companies think North America is a lucrative market and want a piece of the pie. Some of these companies shouldn't be in business.

Already we are seeing a difference with the level and quality of people answering the phone. I suspect that they have already begun outsourcing a lot of their people to cut costs.

Everyone is so fixated on denigrating "soccer moms," that we are ignoring another big segment of minivan purchaser: contractors and delivery people. Getting a 4X8 sheet of plywood with the tailgate closed was a big factor in the design of the original minivans. I know people in the painting/plumbing business, etc. who need a garagable vehicle that gets decent gas mileage that can be easily driven in the city AND needs to haul the brats on weekends. Will the new "cross-overs" do that? No, they won't.

And isn't it interesting that the worst transmissions we have are in the Aveo and Equinox? That is a major reason the Aveo gets disappointing gas mileage. The Equinox in year one had various tranny problems, which have since been ironed out, but I had a good laugh at that one.

I don't care which version of ancient "holy" texts are sworn to, they are all equally silly, IMO. The ancients had deities for every leaf in a tree. The Greeks/Romans narrowed it down to a couple dozen divine beings, temper tantrums and all. The Jews decided one God was all we needed to cover our asses. Some day, hopefully soon, we can dispense with this silliness altogether and stop needing a divine being's power to convince us we are worthy. As to the Fox News comments: I agree that watching those tirades gets a bit tedious, but speaking as someone who has lived in and around the Toronto area for most of my 45 years on this planet, I have watched this city change drastically - and not for the better. I am all for immigration, but what I see happening this past 10 years or so is not immigration it is INVASION. My school pictures were great: of a class of 30, there were about 20 or so "Europeans," including Greeks and Italians, 4 or 5 Asians, a couple of Hindus. Black people were fairly rare then. Now, both schools I walk my dog past every day (one highschool and one grade school) are virtually ALL Asian. The Catholic school is ENTIRELY Philipino. My parents' highschool where they went in the late 1950s, is entirely black and Muslim. I am not exaggerating. You can stand at the fence and not see a European face for long minutes. I think where Fox news is coming from, is where will all this end? We in the West are commiting cultural suicide, and speaking from Darwins' point of view, that is against Nature in a very big way. Am I being racist for even mentioning this? By the media wing-nuts on the Cultural Left's standards, yes I am. I do believe that the U.S. and Canada were made great by the contributions of many nations, who mixed together and built our two great countries; however, with $5 phone cards, global internet connections, $1,000 plane trips to any where in the world, and the rise of the "immigration industries" in our two countries, our current crop of immigrants have no incentives to acclimatize to our nations. In fact, currently in Canada they are encouraged NOT to become Canadian. We will even pay for their cultural centers and organizations to lobby Ottawa on their behalf. With their higher birth rates and increased immigration, any statician will tell you that we are being completely over run. This is not like the waves of poor Jews and Ukranians who flooded New York and other cities 100 years ago. This is entirely different. Am I being paranoid? Am I a racist? I would vehemently deny both those charges. My ex-boyfriend was of African/white parentage. My favorite aunt is black. I dated a guy from Hong Kong 5 years ago. I am pro-Canadian, not anti-immigrant. If they come here and force us to change our values, then what will be around for future generations to enjoy?

....oh, that's right: my bad. The U.S. has a trade surplus with Japan. Oh, and Canada has a trade surplus with Japan, too! You're right: isolated bilateral trade shortfalls ARE irrelevant!

....that's great news! I don't suppose the $30 billion or so leaving the country matters to any of us, right? Wouldn't have taken a few jobs with it, would it?

I am an atheist and I DON'T CARE. What I do care about is the way the Western world tears itself apart with stupid debates like this while the Muslim world and China laughs at us. We are going to become victims of our own political correctness. In our desperate attempts to please EVERYONE we are going to end up pleasing NO ONE and destroy our way of life in the process. You do not read about or hear these kind of debates in Beijing or Tehran.

Ain't global warming great? It was 14 degrees here yesterday (58 F) and then it dropped to 4 (currently - 40). Rain, rain, rain. Guess those stereotypes of Canada and igloos is a little over blown, eh?

Phew...that's a relief. The last thing GM needs is another costly buy out, like Chrysler went through.

Richmond Hill is still a nice place. It's getting a little suburban lately, but there are a lot of very nice, very big homes there. Only a 20 minute drive downtown in good traffic. Big little town = Collingwood - Ontario's ski capital LOL! Just don't blink on the way down!

I am somewhat surprised to hear this type of argument coming from Hudson. Clearly, many of the people on this board HATE minivans. Be that as it may, they are a vital market - even more so to your cousins to the north. We all understand there is not limitless buckets of cash here, but it makes no sense to have 3 variations of the same vehicle (Acadia), yet skip the 1.1 million minivan market completely. Do you guys know that the Caravan has been the #1 selling vehicle up here in the tundra for YEARS? Stating the GM should get out of the market because it is too competitive, is the same kind of logic that allowed the Civic and Mazda to overtake the Cavalier in sales. At some point, GM will be outgunned by everyone on all flanks. GM has been betting on full-sized trucks for too long while Japan Inc. has encroached on all the other markets. GM needs to pick its fights, for sure, but at $5 a gallon, a 30 mpg van will be far more attractrive for a family of 5 then a 20 mpg Tahoe. GM needs to be prepared and NOW.

Born: Toronto Lived in small towns north of Toronto. Vancouver for 4 years. More small towns north of Toronto. Toronto A big small town, an hour north of Toronto. Toronto.

"Nashville" is how you say "roots of slave labor camps in Manchuria" in Japanese.

Who fronts these guys - the Taliban? While jerks like this are busy dragging down and trashing American companies, the foreign competition are eating our lunch. And I suppose that the oil will just stay in the ground if no one uses it.

Well, as far as CR, MT, etc. are concerned it is better to have a 6 spd tranny that doesn't work half the time than a 4 spd automatic that is reliable as hell.

Well, there are quite a few decent looking, or at least "average" looking lesbians out there. I have met many. Trouble is, like most gay men, they can easily slip under the radar, so to speak. As some lesbians reject the social norms and patriarchal ideals of female beauty, they wouldn't be attractive by many people, especially straight men - and that is exactly the point. They don't want to be hit on, they are sick of it, and use their "outer ugly" to ward off advances. Let's face it: make up, streaked hair, high heels, panty hose, tight skirts - all of those things aren't the easiest to put on, wear or maintain. Our patriarchy dictates that women need to do this to look beautiful. That is completely artificial and superficial. HOwever, anti-perspirant and daily showers should be the LAW. Also, trimming of the pit hairs; otherwise, that is just plain WRONG.

Many of the lesbians I have met over the years have had AWFUL life experiences at the hand (literally, in some cases!) of men. I actually met a young woman (she was the same age as I was then - 20 ), who called herself a "separatist" and believed that men and women should be separated. Lesbians will often relate differently to gay men because they don't see us as a threat; clearly, we don't want to sexually harass them in any way. And, honestly guys, the way I see many of you treating women (Gawd forbid if they are gorgeous) in bars and social settings is truly embarassing. I went to the Detroit Auto Show a couple years back with a lot of GM types and it was sickening the way these guys hit on all the hapless models there - they weren't even looking at the cars. Although I believe you are entitled to your opinion, it is likely that some of your dislike of these women is being picked up by them. I can't say I've met many lesbians I like, but then they seem pretty harmless, if not badly dressed.