CARBIZ

[Chuckles] Well, fortunately, most people don't set out to destroy a car, they just want to see the 'sight lines,' how quiet it is, whether they can see the mirrors properly, how responsive it is, etc. Usually, I had to coax people to be a little more aggressive with the vehicle they were testing. The Auto Malls are great places for direct comparisons. [sighs] As I've said tirelessly for years on C&G, most of you don't represent most of the customers out there. Most of them don't have a clue about cars - or why else would the Camry be a top seller? These are the sheeple who follow the herd and buy what their neighbors do - that's why GM was so successful in the '60s/'70s and why Toyota is now. People don't like to think for themselves. That is also why the West is in such a quagmire in the 21st Century. Catalog stores have come and gone. Even with toasters and microwaves, people want to touch/feel the product and, yes, even listen to some boring salesperson droan on because - gasp, he/she might actually know something you don't. Box stores are really just clusters of mini-department stores - it's just another name. Retail won't go away. Even internet groceries or DVD rentals have never taken off, despite the pundits (with vested interests) predicting so for decades now. To coin a cliche: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hell, you can buy stocks over the internet, but do you think Bill Gates does that? I've also said this before: any salesperson worth their weight in salt can also detect a know-it-all tire kicker from a mile away, and will either suddenly be on the phone or have a little fun back. You get as good as you give; that's human nature. But having said that, I have also been preaching for years that the entire dealer system needs to be thrown out. Of course, that will never happen because it suits the OEMs to let the dealer take the blame for the pricing games that are played and other BS. The OEMs should take back the dealers, salestaff should be non-commissioned, highly trained product advisors, and the sticker should be the sticker. End of story. That would go a long way to easing the perceived pain of car shopping. The way GM does things worked well when it had 50% market share because even if you hated the dealer, you wouldn't have bought a Ford or Chrysler anyway. Obviously, those days are gone.

My parents had a '67 Caprice COUPE. They were a rare bird. It also had bucket seats! I would love to buy one, but they are rarer than hen's teeth. Here is a pic of it at our house, taken back in '74. You have to look hard, I was taking a picture of the house, not the car. (I was a kid - what did I know?) It had a cool dash, power windows and drove like crap. It looked better than the yellow '67 Newport we also had at the time.

Any time.

Well, that's ONE solution to the jobless crisis. While we're at it, let's just get rid of bank tellers, department stores and, hey - anything that can be bought. Let the items be sold by able bodied telemarketers from Mumbai. The dealers need to be culled, to be sure, but where do you plan to test drive the vehicles - and do you think you know that much more than the average salesman?

The Alero was the last gasp, IMO. It was a great car, handled right, looked great, even had a nice interior, but GM cheaped out on the fit/finish, cheap plastics, absolutely $h! welds/seams and the car was plagued with pesky problems like brakes and such. Still, we sold/leased scads and scads of them. If the car had been refreshed properly and come out a couple years ealier (to ditch the Acheiva), it might have kept Olds at the top of the import humper's shopping list. Of course, hindsight is always 20-20.

Let me tell you a little story. In late 1988 I bought a house. In fact, if you look up the real estate guide for Ontario, you will see a picture of that house as the LAST HOUSE BOUGHT BEFORE THE REAL ESTATE CRASH OF '89/90. I paid $145,000 for this house. Two years later, I hated the house, hated the money I was pouring into it, YADDA, YADDA, YADDA. So, I decided to sell it. Now, I knew I was going to LOSE money - but how much money did I WANT to lose? Ever ask yourself that question, when you know pain is coming? So, expert advice told me to list it for $139,900. Nothing. $136,000. Nothing. Nearly 18 months went by and no nibbles. Finally, I fired the real estate agent and got another. Her first words were,"Do you want to sell this house?" Verdict: listed it for $119,900 and it sold in 3 weeks. There is no way I would have believed, 18 months earlier, that I was going to have to lose $26k (plus interest and the money I poured into it.) No way I would have accepted that. The moral of the story is, with a committee of 1 (plus my parents who had ponied up the mortgage in the first place), I could not decide where the market was going to bottom out. I was going to lose my shirt, but would I be able to keep my arms and legs at least? Now multiply this by what was once a $200b a year auto company that commanded every market it dipped it's tows into. With all the committees, VPs, Presidents, members on the Board, unions and over a quarter million employees (world-wide) - HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU DECIDE WHERE THE BALL WILL FINALLY COME TO REST? It had to come to this, sadly. This is the way that democracies work, and how American corporations that have to deal with an impatient, selfish WallStreet have to work. Wagoner & the boys have been cutting out fat for 8 years. They were also harmonizing the products, increasing the quality and making the cars more desireable. But there is no way to deal with the mess that unfolded in the past 18 months, nor could anyone have gone to the UAW or parts suppliers or dealers 3 years ago and said, "We're going to have 15% market share and this is what we need you to give up," and reasonably expect to keep their jobs. It is easy to plan for sales increases, even for modest dips, but the American car market was waaay too insular for far too long. Most of the people on C&G have never ventured beyond America's borders to see what others are driving, so how could the Detroit marketing mavens of 15 years ago seen this coming? 15% market share is nothing to be ashamed of, but how do you cut from 45% share to 15%? Has any other company in history had to do that? And it's not like GM has crashed - it has only done so in North America. Everywhere else, it is doing fantasically well, relative to the world market today. No, I believe it is going to take a hard kick in the balls for ALL North Americans to truly appreciate what they once had. That is why I am here and not there. I saw this coming years ago.

Well, now that I have licked this uploading problem and managed to scan all 2,000 or so photos that are the sum of my life before I left Canada, I can post pics of the cars I have owned. There is one vehicle missing and that is a '87 K-Car that I bought in 2000 for $300 from a customer (it only had 50,000 miles on it and it was absolutely pristine), spent $500 getting it 'safetied,' but it was rear-ended 3 months later by a chick in an Audi (the Audi had to be towed; I drove the K-car for another week before the adjuster came to 'write it off:' he gave me $2k for it!) Okay, she wasn't the prettiest, but she cost me $50 and a pair of speakers that my buddy wanted. This (then) 12 year old Dodge Polara had 99k miles on it and I drove it faithfully for a year, before selling it for $500. Sadly, it was involved in a hit&run accident about 4 months later. I know this because the cops banged on my step-father's door at 1 a.m. - that's how up to date the police computers were back in 1980. My first 'new' car, although it was an '82, bought in May '83. I hated the color, hated the fact it was a 4 spd stick (not the 5 spd I wanted), but it was a 'deal' I got through my aunt who worked at a Dodge dealer. Hmm, looking back, I wonder if she knew what a deal was? I sold this one to my BF at the time when I leased my next car. Said BF rolled the little trucklet about 6 months later. Cars just don't seem to survive after me. The first new car that I bought because I wanted it, not because I could 'afford it.' It was leased - thank God. This is the vehicle that killed Chrysler for me. I can't even begin to list the troubles I had: 2 head gaskets, rack & pinion steering went, 2 water pumps....and so on. But, it was the '80s. At least the floor didn't rot out like my ex's '81 Tercel. I racked up about 75,000 miles on this car, though. I had a lot of memories. This was my favorite beasty: anyone who says they don't like wagons, never saw this car. I factory ordered this in Jan '91: the wagon versions of thise new model weren't even out yet. No test drive. A friend of mine had the sedan anyway and I loved it. The 5.0 litre was a tough soldier. It pulled my boat to Florida and all over Ontario. I had 8" bazookas put in the floor space behind the 3rd row, run by a 200W amp, I had the windows blacked out, put American Racing wheels on it and toyed with the idea of dropping a 5.7 Corvette engine into it that the local dealer offered. (I was worried about towing, though) A great car. I put 2 starters (?), a condenser on the a/c, new shocks and there was a recall from Goodyear for an automatic transmission hose - but that was it for 150,000 miles of very tough driving. She went to Vancouver and back, Florida twice (once with a 3,000 boat/trailer behind me) and countless trips with the boat (and my later, bigger one) all over Ontario. Alas, in Nov. '97, this happened to her: Black ice on an expressway at night is a bad thing. Red book offered me $7,400 or the insurance company would fix it. Are you kidding? As much as I loved the beast, it was 6 years old, had 240k km on it and was maybe worth $2,500 on a trade - less with this kind of an accident on her record! Take the money and run. This was the replacement. I wanted a pickup, but the BF at the time argued that the dog would not go in the box of the truck, so $10,000 more later, we got a Blazer. It didn't tow as nice as the Caprice, but launch ramps were easier with the 4WD and the higher ground clearance. Various company demos followed the Blazer's 3 year lease, but then I tired of manager's screaming at me for the dog hair in my cars, so I bought this: Now, there will be groans from the peanut gallery about it's 'not a real car,' etc., but the HHR had ugly as hell seats in '07 unless I upgraded to leather, the boat is long gone (no time for it in the car business - days off what's that?), the Vibe was $50 a month more, had no sun roof and was just as gutless - so, what the hell! In 15,000 miles of driving, this little Daewoo has NOT HAD A SINGLE PROBLEM. There was a silly recall on a seatbelt clip or something. Who cares. I would have bought an Impala, but dog hair is still a problem and a hatch was a priority. With the kind of driving we were doing, it made no sense to buy a Silverado or anything bigger: we fly where ever we travel to now. So much more civilized. Now, she sits in the garage in my place in Toronto, awaiting a return that may or may not ever happen. If we stay here, I am eyeing either the Montana (cute trucklet) or the Crossfox, which (sadly) is a VW. The BF likes Fiat, but I will never own one of those.

Yes, I read the article. Do you actually give a damn if your kids have jobs, other than working at Wal-Mart or McDonald's? Or if there is any money left in North America to pay for your retirement?

You do realize that they've lopped off about $4,000 off the MSRP since your '95 Cobalt, plus added 16" alloy rims, ABS and a host of other improvements. Not to question your motives, but this is why I won't go back into the car business. 99% of the people out there wouldn't recognize a good deal if it bit them on the wiener. I am surprised at you, YellowDart. I would have thought you understood better how this works. Just because a company is on the verge or bankruptcy, how do you reasonably expect your payment to go DOWN on a newer car? And the fact that it did is a fantastic deal, IMO. The 8.89% is also a good rate, unless you have a house to put up for lien, do you? The 0% just comes out of the manufacturer's margins anyway. Take the 8.89 and pay it off in a year or two. The screws just keep twisting tighter.

It's a douchebag article, cherry picking facts that suit the author's slant. CR is a rag and has been irrelevant for decades. My mother is the only person I know who reads that POS rag, and she bought a CR-V last year! There is stupid cost cutting and then there is 'downsizing.' GM has to 'downsize' from the glory days of 40% market share - THAT IS THEIR BIGGEST CHALLENGE. Well, that and having so-called writers like this CNN bone-head chopped up and thrown in the same bag with Jimmy Hoffa. GM has been profitable IN EVERY SINGLE MARKET ON THE PLANET, except N. America because it has gone from 45% to sub-20% market share. Does this bone-head think that is simple? Poof - you just wave a magic wand and all the dealers, contracts, labor deals that were designed for the glory days of the '80s just go away? At least from where I am now I can sit back and watch North America implode. I don't want to gloat, but every single person who buys a Toyota or Honda deserves everything that is coming. My mother boo-hoos to my sisters that she has lost a quarter mil in her investments. Drive your CR-V much?

When the house is on fire, you don't stop to clean up the dishes! You just get out! If it's a choice between saving the kids or the antique Saran Collection - well, I know I'd save the Saran Collection.

It's odd that the Chinese over there seem to see what the Chinese in North America don't: Americans build good cars. On the program Saving General Motors it was odd to see Chinese customers in a GM store crowing about the quality and technical superiority of American cars, yet forlorn is the GM or Ford dealer in Markham, Ontario, home to a goodly chunk of Ontario's Asians. Back in December, I met up with a young Chinese kid, who eagerly contacted me via a gay chat room when he discovered I worked at a GM store. He was a Georgian College student (they have a pretty decent automotive technologies course) and he hoped to work for GM when he graduated. Totally lost on this punk was the irony that he drove a 4Runner and his parents had a Lexus.

You BEHAVE. Don't make me put my purse down and come over there! LOL And that isn't me with my arm around my BF either. It's too f'ing hot to work out down here and all the hotels have 'included' cafe de manha (breakfast) and, well, I haven't so much as house cleaned in a couple months. Too many of our friends down here are amazing cooks, plus I don't like seafood, so I go for a lot of steak. I am terrified to go into a drug store around here - they all have weigh scales at the door!!! Food is so cheap down here. Everything is basically half price. The booze is 1/3 of what it is in Toronto. A Smirnoff Ice goes for $7 in a bar in Toronto; $2.50 at the 'liquor store.' (That's a laugh: the gas station across from our hotel in Iguacu sold booze!) Here, Smirnoff Ice is $2C or less - even at the bars! Fortunately, clothing is also very cheap here, because I've had to buy a whole lotta new clothes. I'm a size 48 in Brazil - that sounds so much worse than it really is!!!!! If one thing drives me back to Canada, it will be to start dieting and go the gym

I agree: it's important to be able to tell someone off in their own language. The first thing I had to learn to say in Portuguese was: "Eu tem vinte nove anos." [i am 29 years old] supa meu pao - very important sentar meu rosto - comes in handy curve-se - great on a first date spelling is unimportant for any of those.

Oh, there are a lot of things down here I would like to 'practice,' trust me. Just wait until I load the photos from our trip to Foz do Iguacu: it was a toss up between taking photos of the Falls or the, er, ahem - natives. LOL Back to Portuguese: it's mostly a shyness thing. It's easier to hide behind the BF's coat-tails, so to speak. Besides, all too often the locals will try and walk all over you if they know you're a 'gringo,' so when negotiating with taxis, etc., I usually hide. It's cheaper. I've found the same thing to be true with a lot of our acquaintances down here. Many of them speak passable English but are very shy about using it, for fear of being laughed at. I guess they don't understand how much us Torontonians are used to mangled English, considering half that city wasn't born in Canada. I'm quite used to stitching together broken sentences and translating. When I have to, I can get along. For example, all afternoon just now, two contractors have been disassembling the windows in the laundryroom of this apartment I'm in and generally making a mess. I was able to understand them, and vice versa, when they had to leave to get supplies. I even managed to warn them when about 2 hours ago, ugly clouds started rolling in from the north and I begged them to 'trabalha mais rapido,' Good thing the laundry room has a drain in the ceramic floor: they are gone for the day and now there is are two massive panes of glass missing until tomorrow. The BF is out getting a tatoo today, so I am babysitting the house. I can't get used to these damned locks that require a key to lock from the inside as well as outside. Lawyers would have a field day with some of the violations I see around here. Wires dangling from the overhead shower water heater? No ground fault circuits directly over the kitchen sink - and this is a luxury building, albeit 35 years old! Frankly, I love this country. The heat is a bit much to take, but then again so is zero farenheit, which is about what it was the day we left several weeks ago. Sao Paulo is much more temperate than the north. Frankly, I was dying in Jaoa Passoa: it was the most I could do to make it the 2 blocks from our hotel to the beach and hide under an umbrella ( I feel like my mother!) for the day. But there is nothing like slipping into 27 degree sea water - beats the hell out of the lousy 20 degree water Lake Ontario manages to get to. Oops: sorry, 85 and 69 degrees, for the rest of you. Oldsmoboi: that sticker is missing from my transformer. I suspect it should work on 220V (after all, my cameras and shaver do), but I really don't want to fry my computer trying to find out. Especially since I haven't backed up any of these pictures yet! The DVD acting up was bad timing. I can use the BF's 30GB iPod as a backup for the music/photos, but I am suspicious about the compression rates it uses. I have a 7 mp camera and I'd hate to lose the clarity if I have to recover them from his iPod. Anyway, we're pretty much staying put in Sao Paulo for now and here it's 110V.

I've always had a lot of respect for this man. He had big shoes to fill on the Tonight Show but he has done a good job of keeping that torch burning. He has always put his money and time where his mouth is, including opposing the ban on gay marriage in California. It's good to see a few of the rich folk getting busy to save North America before it's too late.

Cute.

Your concerns are appreciated, but I have to laugh. It reminds me of a business trip to Chicago about 9 years ago with a straight colleague. He met up with some girls in the hotel lobby and went to a BBQ our last night in Chicago. I took the opportunity to head down to Halstead and have a little 'fun.' Sufficeth to say, I did not go back to the hotel that night. Being as our first seminar wasn't until 8:30, I arrived in our hotel suite at 8:15 the next morning, to find the police going through my luggage, and my associate beside himself with fear. Thank Gawd there was nothing in that luggage to get me into trouble - LOL) The cops politely chastised me for wandering around Chicago after dark. I was quite taken aback. In my 32 years of carousing various cities and bi-ways, my Spidey sense tingles when danger is present. It has only tingled once or twice in my various trips to Brazil, and not in the big cities. Fortaleza and Salvador have more undesirables and sketchy looking people than I've witnessed in either Rio or Sao Paulo. Yeah, I know that 'gringos' are favorite targets, but at 6'2" (and now 210 lbs, dammit!), my bark is pretty good. Plus, the BF can get pretty pissy when he puts his purse down. LOL It helps a lot that I look 'native' when I'm dark and know when to let the BF do the talking. Although I was a little miffed yesterday morning when a passerby handed me a flyer for a local gay strip club. WTF, I thought - how would you guess I might be interested? The BF laughed and laughed.

This thread is a prime example of why I got out of the car business. Consumers today are way too demanding and expect perfection at every turn. A perfect example is the $h!ty quality rankings of MB over the past few years: nothing to do with their quality but everything to do with the me-first attitude of the yuppies that lease them. If a vehicle has 24,000 parts and the vehicle is built to 99.99% perfection, then you are till going to have 2.4 defects. I guess one would hope it would be a faulty cigarette lighter or torn carpet in the trunk, but it with all the parts in a tranny or engine block, it is more likely to be there. I am also guilty of over-reacting, but I do eventually put it in perspective. I screamed and yelled at HP before I left for Brazil because when I went to do a full system back up, my DVD burner won't work off the 1Care Systemall of the sudden. Sure, there are a dozen things I could try (like uninstall the DVD driver and re-install) but after paying $1,800 for this computer only 21 months ago, this is the 2nd problem I've had with it (the first was a new motherboard at 14 months, BTW.) Will I buy another HP? Sure I would. They were great on the phone and I know how complex computers have become, let alone a car. But some people feel it makes their penis grow larger if they bad mouth a company from the rafters because their product DARED have a problem after they bought it. If you want to see conspiracies with every squeak or rattle, you will. I sympathise, but THAT IS WHAT WARRANTIES ARE FOR.

I have a HP dv9000, but power isn't a problem now that I am in Sao Paulo, although they do have those wierd euro-style 2 round plugs. I bought an adaptor for that already. Ceara (state) and Parnambuco, plus a couple other places we visited are still on 220V. In Jaoa Passoa, the hotel was nice enough to supply me with a transformer that was the size of a Greyhound bus, but it worked. What pisses me off is that my transformer doesn't have any info on it - nada. According to my HP help screen, it was supplied with a NA standard transformer, so when I was in northern Brazil I dared not plug it in to see what happens. (WTF, my shaver and both digital cameras will adapt to almost any voltate - what's with HP?) [Gets on soapbox] If we are going to endure a truly 'global' economy, then these nations had better get together and start resolving all these petty conflicts of incompatibility. I am told my cellphone will work here if I pop out the SIM card. Okay. None of the cars down here have daytime running bags or airbags!! EEK! The way these people drive, 80 airbags should be mandatory, but then when you pay R19,000 for a car with a/c and not much else, I guess you can't blame them. As an aside here, I bought a 16 GB memory stick in Toronto, just before I left for $26C. The BF's niece wanted a memory stick when we were in Jaoa Passoa so we went to an electronics place to get her one: R110 for 8 GB! Ouch. That works out to be about $60C, but still - for half the memory capacity. Electronics are outrageous here. This was dune buggy day in Fortaleza. I am not going to let on which one of these guys is me. (Hint: I've gained 20 lbs since I came here!) We met up with another 'couple' from Rio de Janiero and spent the day at some awesome beaches and a wind farm that would shame anything Canada has on the books. This is Praia Grande, about an hour's drive from Sao Paulo. We were there over their Carnaval Long weekend. Eeks. Literally, tens of thousands of people on this huge beach. These last two pictures are from my balcony. We live in a very cool area of Sao Paulo - the corners of Consolacao and Avenida Paulista. Very posh, dontcha know. Seriously, access to anywhere from here either by car, foot or Metro is amazing. I finally shrank down the size of these photos and it appears they have worked. There are loads more on my memory card. The ones of Foz do Iguacu are stunning.

Oh, trust me - I can be very versatile. :AH-HA_wink: I understand that historically speaking, GM has been very successful in Brazil, but the explosion of Toyotas and Hondas down here since my first visit 4 years ago is striking. Brazil is another one of those up and coming markets that will be very important to the future health of GM. Brazil will be 200 million in a very few years and is already the 4th or 5th largest car market in the world, I think, so Toyota has finally woken up to this fact in their quest for World Domination. GM and Ford have been down here for 50+ years, and it astounds me how jaded the public is everywhere. GM just spent $600M US dollars building a new truck factory down here. I wonder how much Toyota spent? For those of you who are North-America-centric, realize that Brazil is not in a deep recession. In fact, while HSBC bleeds red ink in Europe and N. America, it's Brazilian arm actually continues to make money. GM needs this market and cannot afford to lose share to Toyota or Honda. They still sell the S-10 down here, available with the hoary old 3.4 or a 4 cylnder turbo, so I am not altogether sure they 'get it' (or perhaps they don't have the $$$ to 'get it') just yet. Although GM is not faced with the 'downsizing' problems they are facing in North America, judging by the number of Mitsu, Fiat (not even sold in N. America), Peugeot, Renault and Citroen products I see here (especially in the South), GM runs a very high risk of becoming irrelevant here, too. On another thread I read that there are those who believe the 'herd' of car companies should be culled, and I cannot say I disagree with that. I don't see how any market is served by 20 small hatchbacks to choose from, like I see around here. They mostly look the same anyway, although the new Ford Ka is a great remake of the old one. It looks like the auto business is going to turn on its heels once again, as hybrid, pure electric and fuel cell technologies jocky for position. Considering it could cost over a billion dollars and then some to chase any of these technologies, I am starting to wonder why we need 20+ OEMs globally. As was mentioned on the other thread, how many passenger airliners are there in the world? Four of five, at best?

Desculpe, mais o meu Portuguese continua sendo uma merde, desculpa o linguajar. LOL

Okay, color me stupid, but I've tried twice to 'download' one of my pics and after, like, 5 minutes of watching the blue circle go 'round and 'round, I aborted. Believe me, there is nothing I'd like more than to send "NYAH, NYAH, NYAH' pics, but someone needs to send me info on how to post them. I suspect one of the reasons is that most of these pics are about 1.6 MB or larger. Oh, and I've only seen one 300 down here (I wonder how much that cost!), a few Jeeps - but, sadly, no Intrepids. I also saw a Caddy SRX in Foz do Iguacu with Paraguayan plates: I'd bet that cost a few pennies, too.

I got some nice shots last week in Foz do Iguacu of the three markers that denote the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Brazil's side is kinda dilapidated and run down, but they are building some huge tower at the site that will be the 'tallest tower in Latin America' Apparently, the local mayor has let the monument area slide and the Governor of the State is pissed - this according to our taxi driver. LOL I'm still organizing the 600 + photos I've taken and about an hour of digital movies, but there are a few pics I'd like to post, sort of a NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, sort of thing. We've settled in Sao Paulo for now. That's where the free apartment (and loads of friends are). Plus, living very near to the corner of Avenida Paulista and Coloncao (sp?) is easy to take. We are on the 13th floor - yes, the 13th floor, and have fantastic views all around of the city. We can stay here for the rest of the year before money will become an issue. The BF just signed the deed to one of his houses to his brother today for a lousy R15,000. [This is me biting my tongue!] It's more of a gift, really, but we could have lived here for years on what that house is really worth. Anyway, I am just refusing to think about what I want to do right now. My visa says I can stay 3 months, then have to get permission from the federal police (not a problem) to stay another 3. After that - well, there are estimated to be 10,000 illegal Brazilians in Toronto, so maybe I should return the favor? LOL. Thanks for the kind words.

Hey, guys (and gals). I thought I would drop a line and say hi (for those who care) just to say that I have not dropped off the face of the earth - just the face of the northern hemisphere. I don't need to tell any of you regulars how bad things are for GM in North America. The dealer where I worked for almost 10 years closed its doors a year ago and I was forced to jump ship. Being a loyal Chevy fan, I joined another old, established Chev dealer in Toronto - and boy is that a dying breed. Things were going great through the summer, and then when GMAC cancelled leases (43% of my portfolio in 2007), coupled by all the bankrupcy news in the Fall of last year - well, the wheels fell off the cart. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I was just getting tired of fighting a 200-fronted battle. When a customer test drove the Malibu, then drove the Accord and Camry, called me back a week or so later to say he wanted the Malibu because it was better, but he didn't feel comfortable buying it due to 'future parts availability,' I knew a day of reckoning was coming for me. So, after some soul searching over Christmas, then taking a long, hard look at my savings (did I mention I took all my cash out of nice, safe GICs in March of last year and put them in mutual funds - can you say STUPID?), I decided that car sales is not for me any more. I am sick of arguing with people, I am tired of overcoming customer's fears/misconceptions and outright stupidity. I was stressed-out, tapped out and heading for a nervous breakdown, frankly. I cared too much and even after 11 years could not help but take a failed sale personally. I was terrified of reading the business section of the paper, wanted to 'key' every Toyota I saw, and masochistically counted imports on every street where I walked my dog. Egad. The BF and I already had a holiday booked for Brazil in mid-February, so we changed our tickets and flew the coop. I have been down here for a couple months and the release has been incredible. (Although I do have to find a gym, if we are to stay down here permanently!) If there is one thing you guys can do before you die, visit Foz do Iguacu. We were there last week, and I've never had such a blast. The boat trip takes you directly into one of the falls and it is such a thrilling feeling to have that 28 degree celsius water (about 80 for you Americans) streaming and spraying all over you and the boat! Be warned: the guide is clever in casually wearing a t-shirt and shorts, but while he stops in a whirlpool to allow you to take your last pics before putting your camera away in a special bag, he quickly slips into moon-gear while you aren't looking! You get wet, that's for sure - and it's somewhat terrifying looking up at 40 meters or so of water cascading down at you, but exciting at the same time. Anyway, I digress. My first visit to Brazil 4 years ago (this is my 3rd trip, for those of you counting) put Chevrolet firmly at the top with Fiat and VW in terms of what I saw in my travels to Sao Paulo, Salvador, Recife, Jaoa Passoa, Rio and Cambriu. Not so any more. Corollas and Civics are absolutely polluting the streets of Brazil now, just like the cancer they are in Canada. GM'S DAYS ARE TRULY NUMBERED. I see so many old 'Omegas' and other Chevys down here, clearly showing the Brazilian love (not to mention durability) of Chevrolet, but as with all self-centered middle-class yuppies - why buy a car that is built right in your backyard by a company that has decades of history with your country, when you can buy the flavor of the month? I don't know if there is a Portuguese version of CR down here, but the front page of one of their local car mags today puts the 'new' Vectra on the cover (looking suspiciously like the Malibu, I might add) and has a 3 way shoot out with the 'new' Corolla and 'new' Civic. Even the by-line notes the Vectra is R11,000 less than the Civic. Get ready for this: a Civic sells for R63,000 down here. Okay, that's about $37,000 Canadian, but WTF? For a Civic? PUT DOWN THE BONG! Unfortunately, many of the newer Corsas and Celtas I see down here are taxis, proving once again that GM does not know how to stop being the Fleet Queen. I do see quite a few of the new Captivas down here, and if the new Equinox is half as nice, it will be a knock out. But I don't have to give a $h! about any of that any more. My in-laws bought a new Celta, so that is good enough for me. LOL It's hot as hell down here (they're having record rains this summer) and internet access is sketchy. Most of northern Brazil runs on 220V; naturally, my laptop only has a 110V transformer. With the prices of electronics, I'll be damned if I'd buy a 220 transformer for the prices they want! Airports advertside Wi-Fi, but they usually don't work. So, I either have internet and a dead battery, or power and no internet. [Note to self: gotta ask 'sis, the electrician, why on earth half the States in Brazil would still be using 220V. Is it better? Am I being North-American-centric in assuming 'we' have it right?) We've visited Fortaleza (Myeh - I don't recommend it), Jaoa Passoa (the in-laws are there so that is obligatory, but the beaches are amazing so I don't mind), Foz do Iguacu and been hanging around Sao Paulo quite a bit. We cancelled plans to visit Buenos Aries. I am kind of glad when we don't have internet access so the BF can't see how much money we've lost in our Canadian investments. So, that's the story so far. I got a phone call from an old manager of mine (he got in touch with me via a colleague who was working the Auto Show in Toronto - something else I don't regret not having to do!) and he offered me a job to work for him at a P-B-GMC dealer in the east end of Toronto. I thanked him for the offer, but I"m not sure when we are going back (if ever) and if we do, I think I will explore other options. Selling cars was punching way below my weight. Getting kicked off UrbanToronto in November whetted my appetite for politics, so that is one avenue I will look into. As an aside, one of my missions in Brazil has been to take a lot of photos of avenues, bi-ways and highways in and around Sao Paulo so that I can throw it in the face of those hacks on Urban Toronto about what a supposedly 'Third World' city can manage to do to get their hapless citizens around, without deliberately frustrating motorists at every opportunity like the idiots who are running Silly Hall in Toronto. I do not miss Toronto and its hopeless addiction to 4 lane roads, choked with parked cars and bicycle lanes on every other street. Maybe I'd consider moving to Vancouver again. [shrugs] We've done an apartment swap with a female student-friend (who is taking Evolutionary Biology at U of T - sheesh, talk about a heavy subject!) and she loves our kitten and dog, so the kids are looked after while we take this long term sabbatical. The Optra is being paid off at zero percent - thank you very much GMAC, so it can just rot in the garage for awhile. Although, I do miss driving an automatic - GASP!! Automatics are hard to come by around here. So, that's the Reader's Digest version of the past couple months and why I haven't been around much. I miss quite a few of you, but the incessant back-and-forth irrelevant arguments (like lack of hardtops, etc) just wore me down, too. I still shed a tear when I see bad news on CNN (somehow, Obama makes more sense when subtitled in Portuguese), but since my livelihood is no longer attached to it, I don't have to give a rats' ass. Beijos, folks!