CARBIZ

Three days of the same old crap. General Motors of Canada is a registered Canadian company, headquartered in Oshawa, Ontario. Ford Motor Company of Canada is a registered Canadian company, headquartered in Oakville, Ontario. Are either of these companies truly Canadian? Yeah, right. What I like about certain 'professionals' is that irony is totally lost on them. Most accountants and lawyers that I have met spew 95% pure crap. I see nothing here to change my opinon on that. Nearly 3 pages of thread dedicated to whether Vauxhall is 'British' or American. Sad, very sad.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who the F would buy a home with ZERO down? Who would lend them the money in the first place? Canada experienced the same BS in the last real estate crash in the late '80s because speculators were driving up the cost of housing by buying up dozens of new units with nothing down, then flipping them when they were constructed. The government tightened the rules here so that projects cannot go ahead until 50% of the units are sold and there is a minimum money to be put down. I wonder how much Iraq is leaning on the U.S. ecomony. This is starting to look more and more like the late '60s when the out of control U.S. federal spending (and borrowing) led to the hyper inflation of the '70s.

Both the General Motors Building and Chrysler building have sold recently to foreign interests....now that is prophetic (and, yes, I know that neither company has had anything to do with those buildings in years, but I think the symbolism is interesting.)

You're not in the minority, sir. Most 'Joe Averages' either don't know what questions to ask, or don't give a damn, "pass the remote, please." I've been emailing and writing every damned councilor in the city of Toronto lately because our band of shiftless, socialist half-wits on Council are merrily rubber stamping the Mayor's proposal to tear down the only highway in or out of the downtown core, just because it blocks his view from the wall of condos that are being built. Most people I talk to are 100% against the idea, but most shrug it off and say there is nothing that can be done. It is that very lack of imagination or curiosity for the truth that is breaking the spine of both our countries. I guess 40 years of dumbing down public education has paid off: the rapists in charge can do whatever they want and the muelling Masses just swallow it all. Trust me, there are many days when I survey the mess and truly wish Iran or China would nuke us so we can just start over............ ah, well, another rainy Saturday.

Why is it that every thread I see you in, you are trying to show off the size of your intellect? We all have opinions, some are based on the city or state we have lived in, others are based on the dozens of countries we have visited or lived in, but they are just that OPINIONS. Whether someone is 18 or 48 really doesn't matter. You're not proving anything by butting heads with half the members on this Board. YOU JUST HAVE TO TRY AND CUT EVERYONE DOWN TO SIZE. Why is that? Thread after thread, I see you picking fights with people. Honestly, what other websites have you been thrown out of that you are haunting this one now? Just so you won't lose any sleep over where my opinions come from, I have been to South America twice and travelled everywhere in North America, from the Bahamas to Florida to California to Vancouver to Hudson's Bay and New Brunswick, more than once, too. Any idiot can see that $5 a gallon changes the game - a point that I have made many times in the past on other threads (usually ones lamenting the demise of fire-breathing RWD V-8s) My point is that there will have to be a Made in North America solution to this so-called energy crisis because it takes longer to cross Ontario than it does most of Europe - so there is one very big difference in our cultures. I rented a '81 Datsun 210 once upon a time that couldn't even pass a dumptruck on a hill in northern Ontario. A great big UNACCEPTABLE there. I am not one of those people who believes that SIZE has anything to do with power; however, people will not drive go-karts in either Canada or the U.S. and only a go-kart could possibly afford any level of safety on or off a freeway with 80 hp. A 1.4 litre turbo that put out 120 or 130 hp would be great, especially if put in a vehicle that weighed under a ton. What snarky remarks can you come up with on that?

Have you ever tried to reason with the Ayatollah? Read 'America Alone.' Mark Steyn has spent a lot of time in Europe and the Arab world. Althought there are many Arab 'moderates,' they have little or no say in what goes on. You have to understand that literally MILLIONS of Arab 'moderates' have emigrated out of those countries over the past 20 years or so and are now living here. Conciliation and mediation are viewed as signs of weakness. If it wasn't for the damn oil, it would be nice to dig a big mote around the entire Middle East and just let them all kill each other off.

Think: Tibet. If nothing else, the Chinese are infinitely patient. They have and are conquering Tibet by a combination of assassination, imprisonment and intermarriage. In another 20 years there will be no Tibet to 'free.' It isn't a matter of whether the West feels anyone else has rights or not, it is that we continually make the same error over and over again: we judge other cultures and society's by our own yardstick. Africa is a prime example. We go in and try to 'cvilize' them and look what a disaster the results have been. The West has underestimated Asia for 100 years. Japan got smart faster, that's all. China has learned and is getting very adept at beating us with our own stick.

$140 a barrel oil is changing the dynamics on a lot of things, most notably transportation costs. It won't matter a hill of beans if it costs $2,500 to transport a $10,000 car half way around the world. I've read several articles in the past few weeks about the costs of shipping containers from Asia to North America. It looks like GM has switched production of the Aveo from Korea to Mexico just in time!

I've never liked seafood.........................

Pretty soon we're gonna have to fly naked and have an enema before boarding.... Hey, wait a minute.......

It may sound funny, but if you really look at the resources, manpower and talent in North America (I'd include Central America and the West Indies, too), with a population of nearly half a billion, huge oil reserves, nearly 1/3 of the world's uranium, a goodly chunk of the nickel, copper, and potash (Ah, there's a big one - India is already trying to get its clammy hands on chunks of Saskatchewan), plus millions of untapped acres of forest and arable land - we truly could seal our borders tomorrow and let the rest of the world sort out their own troubles. Truly, they need us more than we need them. Let's see how France and Germany vote on the UN without the US to back them up. Let's see China and India support their nearly 3 billions without our potash, nickel, copper, etc. It's an interesting idea to ponder.........

Time to creat a Pax-Americana: build a big wall around North America and screw the rest of them! We have everything we need right here - cheap labor Mexico, lots of oil and all the mineral wealth we need. Not to mention 25% of the world's fresh water! I'm only half kidding.

.."there is no Hell, although I hear parts of L.A. are pretty close," from Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep. Hilarious movie.

There's so much in the Universe that cannot be explained, like Washington and Ottawa. Perhaps one day we will be able to explain all things, but not in our life times.

Right back at you, bub. :AH-HA_wink:

Ah, no: MITI in Japan railroaded all the American TV & electronics manufacturers out of business in the '70s. RCA, Electrohome and all the rest were either bought our or shut down. Zenith was the last hold-over, but finally went down, too. MITI is gone now and Japan Inc has gotten a lot better at doing what it does. Besides, they've ridden themselves of that "Made in Japan" as meaning cheap crap (like it did 40 years ago) and replaced it with 'anything made in Japan is automatically superior than domestic crap. PSST: why did Hitachi and Toshiba get sugar-beat import quotas of $1 a ton higher than market throughout the '60s? In fact, why were they involved in importing sugar beats in the first place? By the time anybody noticed what was going on, it was too late. Nobody cared that all of our electronics are imported now. Hmm, I wonder where the Defense Department gets their flat screens from for the F-15 now?

If you call the thousands and thousands of Tacomas they are secretly buying back 'a few Monday morning vehicles.'

I wonder if radioactive gasoline gets better mpg than regular?

I wonder if this is how it felt when Toyopet went looking for franchees?

This flip-flopping of names is idiotic, IMO. You'd be surprised at how many people (although I will admit many of them are 'older') who come into the show room and wonder aloud what replaced the Cavalier. Celebrity - Lumina - Impala Malibu - Corsica - Malibu Vega - Chevette - J2000 - Cavalier - Cobalt - Cruze: all in the span of the Corolla. Is GM retarded, or is there an entire department of middle-management marketing hacks who are trying to justify their bloated salaries?

Don't uncork the champagne just yet. Toyota has a lot of cash reserves and, more importantly, a lot of favor with the media. It will take more than a couple bad months to undo that, I am afraid. Exploding camshafts, sponge taffy frames, snapping tailgates, coking engines, erratic transmissions, dubious frame welds - and that's just the past 2 years, have done very little to tarnish Toyota's reputation. The well of kool aid is very, very deep.

If they fail, it won't matter what the press thinks...........

I've rented, driven and abused many a Camry over the years, and it isn't a matter of whether it is a good or bad car, it just doesn't deserve its reputation, is all. One of the main reasons I left my previous dealership (after they took down their GM shingle and started hocking used cars, mostly Toyotas) was that I was sick of listening to people bitch about $20k for a used '07 Camry when I knew I could sell them a V6 G6 for $3k less and it was a better car. So I left. I remember when I rented a 2003 Camry when I was in Vancouver back then. I asked my BF what he thought of the car. (Total disclaimer: he knows less than nothing about cars and could care less.) He shrugged and gave me an uncertain look - like it was some sort of trick question. Keeping in mind that my demo at the time was a '03 Malibu, I asked him if he liked the Camry more or less than 'our' car. Again, he shrugged and hesitantly allowed that he didn't care - both were the same. Then I raised the ante and demanded to know if he would pay $5,000 more for the Camry. His eyes widened and he thought I was joking. Nay, nay, nay, I declared: a V6 equipped Malibu was retailing for $19k at that time; whereas the Camry 4 cylinder was around $24k. Nice.

Ewwwww....did they turn to Chrysler for their dash bits?