CARBIZ

I'm all for free markets, but something is amiss with the oil business. If someone farts in Sudan, gas prices at the pumps shoot up the next day. If the the King of Saudi Arabia declared he loves Israelis tomorrow, it would still take a month for prices to come down. If you don't like what Blockbuster charges, you can go to the mom & pop store and pay less or get loyalty bucks or something. Isn't it odd that all the gas stations in town charge EXACTLY the same amount, within a half penny of each other?

Not around here: K-Mart was bought out by Wal-Mart a long time ago.

We're still getting hosed, however. Oil peaked at $143 a barrel a month ago. We were paying $1.36 a litre. Now, oil is around $114, which is a 25% drop by my accounts, yet we are paying $1.29 a litre - only a 5% drop.

Well, when you're tenured and can't be fired, why should you try? Put performance bonuses on them and end of the year customer satisfaction surveys (you are, after all, the customer!) and see what a world of difference that would make.

I saw the article today, read about 1 paragraph and then just skipped it. It's become so boring. I have had it up to my nipples with analysts and their boring rants about what Detroit should or should not have done. We are either going to become 3rd world countries in the next 20 years or we are not. Only time will tell. We have the power (but maybe not the will, or the brains) to change our destiny.

Happy birthday, fellow Canuck. PS: Do you want to take your weather back? It's rained every friggin' day here since May!!!!!!!!

But in the end you still expect 'loaner vehicles', free coffee and a nice lounge to sit in while your car is being fixed, right? I'll bet your the same kind of person who bitches and whines that the sales staff don't know what they're talking about or anything about their product. Guess what, bub - that costs money, too. Would you work 60 hour weeks, every Saturday, and many holidays for $30k a year? Didn't think so. You want professional service and professionals to work with, you gotta pay for it. Most dealers do lose money in their new car show rooms. The reason why so many sales people don't know what they're talking about is because they've only been there 3 weeks. They are 'free' to the dealer and expendable. The senior guys won't deal with the a-holes, or they're by appointment only (although those days are somewhat diminished.) The consumer seems to want it both ways. The same guy who bitches at Wal-Mart that his $20 blender busted instead of buying the $60 one at Sears. Back on topic: although they haven't introduced employee pricing here (and I doubt they will because nobody has any 2008 products left anyway), it won't matter to me either way. It's the PERCEPTION of the deal that counts, and Employee Pricing gives the IMPRESSION that the customer is getting the best deal EVER. Besides, most people wouldn't know a good deal if it bit them on the giggly parts.

What are you putting in your mouth? Try chewing aspirin. It worked for me when my wisdom teeth were coming in (before I had them yanked out.)

Employee Pricing is a marketing campaign wrapped around a catchy slogan: nothing more, nothing less. Chrysler has been advertising 'family' and employee pricing around here for months. Judging by some of the nasty counter-ads Chrysler dealers are taking out in the papers against each other ("our dealership believes sales should be for everybody!" ran one ad in the Sun recently), I would say the entire program is flopping for them. July/August '05 were two the best months I ever had in this business, both from a volume and total gross point of view. My former dealer had the best month they had had in years - and made a ton of money. Traffic spiked up considerably in the beginning, as people flocked to dealers, thinking they were going to save $5k on a Cobalt. When they realized there aren't those kinds of margins (the difference between MSRP and 'invoice price' is shockingly less than most people think), out the door many of them went. 50% off sales at Sears and Walgreens confuse people. To me, it is the great irony of our modern times that the mark-up on food, clothing and furniture - 3 important staples that we need to survive, is more than 100%; yet, on luxury items, like electronics and autos, the margins are less than 10%. I know that sales in the U.S. are sluggish. Canada has fared a little better, but most dealers are carrying half the inventory they normally would for this time of year so there will be no fire sales this summer. Then again, for us, since the $C has been virtually at par for more than a year, our prices are down substantially from where they have traditionally been. When I think that a Cavalier, automatic, air and cassette LEASED for $330 a month with $900 due on delivery back in '01 and now a Cobalt Team Canada edition (leather steering wheel, power sunroof, 155 hp ecotec, automatic, power group, auto headlights, OnStar, side airbags and ABS) SELLS for $330 a month with ZERO down - well, I say bring on the Canadian dollar!!

You ought to me to northern Ontario: I used to plug my Caprice in every night from December to March when I lived in Collingwood - about 90 minutes north of Toronto. Those zero farenheit nights can be a bitch!

Well, you won't get a Corsa for $250 a month, nothing down and NOT a lease. Nor a Fit, Versa or even a Rio!

As I understand it, the Volt's mission will be to be treated as solely an electric vehicle. More than 50% of the people in Toronto live in highrises or apartments. Most of those people will never be able to plug in their vehicle. The infrastructure (not to mention the 'billing') to plug in your vehicle at work, for example, is going to be years off. For those people, the Volt will be of little use. However, for the rest of the people, who live in single family dwellings (or even condos, because I would imagine that when demand warrants, a lot of condos could be retrofited for individual, metered electrical hook up in the underground garage), electrical range will be everything and recharge times not so important. For those people, the ability to drive to and from work, do a couple errands and then recharge the batteries over night (when hydro rates are cheaper) will be a big buying feature. We covered this in a different thread, but initial reports were that GM wanted a 600 mile range for the Volt when running on gasoline/electric. That is a lofty but unnecessary goal. Nearly all gasoline vehicles go half that on a full tank, so if the Volt can run 350 miles on the combination of gas/electric, that would be more than enough.

No one is going to see 30 mpg if they drive the car like they stole it. The smaller motors only have the advantage if you drive like an old lady. If someone pulls up in an ancient Intrepid (for example) and tells me they want to test drive an Aveo and their #1 motivator is fuel mileage, I will (gently) persuade them to try the Cobalt, instead. No way in hell will they like the Aveo if they plan to drive it like the 6 cylinder Intrepid. I've often felt that I would rather drive a 2 or 3 year old nicer American car than a 'X' small car, but the truth is a full warranty and the comfort of a fixed budget (payment) is a great comfort when so many of your other bills fluctuate wildly. Any used car is a crap shoot. The benefits of a new car with an extended warranty is peace of mind. It's one thing to buy a 10 year old $h!box for $2,000 cash, and piss away $300 here and $400 there on parts and repairs; but if you do that with a $15k newer used vehicle (that you are paying $300 a month on) and then get stuck with $300 a month here or $400 a month there - well, the results can be a budgetary disaster. Young couples get themselves into that bind quite often. Better to buy (or lease) a 'lesser' vehicle for a few years while getting the rest of one's financial house in order, so to speak. According to Edmunds.com, the lowly Aveo has the lowest 'cost of ownership' of all the vehicles. I can believe that. Once the '09 becomes available for test drives, I would urge some of the armchair critics out there to take one for a spin. The difference is palpable.

As I've posted before, the UPlander/SV6 outsells everything except the Caravan up here. Then again, they are getting cheaper than dirt. You can get a LS Uplander for less $ than a HHR or Cobalt.

Hey, I wouldn't mind it if they brought the Astro back. We sold a lot of them. They are great delivery vehicles for downtown stores/businesses. I just had a customer trade their '92 Astro (with 130k miles on it) for a new Uplander. Many people I sold Astros to are holding onto them because there is nothing to replace them with. The cargo vans were big sellers to the cable companies and phone companies. We've ordered 40 Uplander cargo vans for fleet. They aren't as good for the trades as the Astro but for the city they are better than the much larger Express van.

The 300 is the only one of those RWD Chryslers that looks really good. The Charger and the Magnum look too clunky (although I do happen to like the look of the Magnum.) Also, when driving the Magnum, if does feel a little claustrophobic inside, due to the long tunnel behind you. The fleet numbers are somewhat surprising, I guess. I've gone on record before as saying fleeting is not such a bad thing, but when it approaches 30% or more, that can't be a good. 20-30% is probably a healthy number to keep the factories humming, the used car lots full and the dealers happy. Any more than that and it is going to impact resale values in a very real way.

No pissing match here. I have learned to ignore blow-hards on sites like this. Especially when C&G has debated this point to death over the past 3 - 5 years. By every credible estimation trade between Asia (in particular Japan and Korea) and North America is virtually one way. The trade deficit between North America and those countries is clear on that. Interesting to note that every auto market in the WORLD (including Russia and China) is open to 'foreign' cars, except Korea and Japan.

We're talking about Hyundai here and about Canada specifically. This is not Free Trade. Trade from Korea is almost one way. Their trade deficit with Canada is obscene. As another 80,000 Canadian manufacturing jobs have evaporated, my point is that those buying Korean cars are not helping THIS economy one iota. Yes, at least Toyota and Honda slap together a few vehicles in Canada to avoid any future problems with NAFTA, but its nice to keep the debate on the assembly line workers, rather than on the preferred 'value-added' jobs like the metalurgists, chemists, engineers, draftspersons, etc. - all of whom are in Japan or Korea. Please stick to subjects that you (almost) know something about, like the failed-state of manufacturing in the UK.

Give yourself a shake. At least Toyota and Honda pay lipservice to production facilities in Canada. Hyundai has nothing more than a few warehouses and some dealers in this country. GM, Ford and Chrysler have been contributing to the Canadian economy for almost 100 years. Or did you not know that GM is the largest 'Canadian' company on the Toronto Stock Exchange? Or the Beacon Project where GM has invested well over a billion dollars in Oshawa and environs. Or all the tie-ins GM has with Georgian College. Or the design center in Oshawa that designed and builds the Impala and Equinox. Besides, Detroit is just across the river from Windsor. Maybe some of the execs or engineers in Michigan own summer homes in Ontario and contribute to the economy that way. Or look at all the Canadians who work in Michigan (including the governor, for Gawd's sake) for the Big 2.5. Money and investment that circulate between the Big 2.5 and North America are a net benefit to all of us. What Japan Inc and Korea does is just window dressing to allow people like you to sleep at night with the notion that your Asian POS is not killing your neighbor's jobs. What exactly does Korea do for Canada's economy? ZERO.

We were told there is a new minivan coming in the 2nd quarter or 3rd quarter of '09 for Chevrolet. Not sure if GMC or Pontiac is getting one, too.

.....I'm calling Children's Services right now!

Well, it must be working: the National Post did a piece on the GM trucks getting better gas mileage - that's a ton of advertising for FREE. That's the kind of marketing that works. It may sound stupid to us, but the media (and the public) lap this kind of crap up.

I dunno, a lot of the Cobalts I have sold have been to 'oldsters.' At $5.00 a gallon, it is a good 'downsize' vehicle for people getting out of their LeSabres and 88s. I'd say the numbers are about 50-50: half the Cobalts I've sold are to those under 25 and the other half to those over 25.

Well, people who lived in 1947 didn't know any better. I'd agree (looking back) that most of those cars looked pretty stark, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. That is why my interest in 'classic' cars ends around 1955/56 - before that MOST were ugly, IMO. However, those of us who lived through the '80s will attest that nearly all cars from that era were FUGLY and we thought so at the time, too. Very, very few of the cars from that era are going to be covetted in the future. When I search on Ebay for prizes to dream about, I end my search from 1972 later, because after that bumpers became so grossly exaggerated that it ruined even some promising designs. There were some interesting looking cars in the the mid and late '70s (the downsized Impalas, the full-sized New Yorkers of '75-'78, for example), but the '80s were an era best forgotten. I think in a lot of ways, vehicle design is going through a bit of a renaissance now. The CTS is gorgeous. The CX-7 is sharp. Most of what Mazda makes is rather pleasing. Nissan has some nice looking stuff. We have a '07 Maserati in our garage right now and it ain't ugly, that's for sure! I'd say most of the hot looking vehicles right now are coming out of Europe, sadly.