CARBIZ

Ok, I am getting tired beating this one to death. We spent the entire f'ing day with the '09 Aveo, Yaris and other vehicles about two weeks ago. The 1.6 engine is massively re-worked. The brakes are new. The alternator is new. OnStar will be standard on the LT, I am told. XM will be, too. This is the car GM did not have time (or money) to influence in '03 because the current generation was too far along. The sheet metal has only been tweaked, you are correct. The 5 door gets the same major overhaul on the interior that the sedan got in '07 (not sure why the sedan was done first; we always sold more 5 doors.) This argument is getting tired, plus I have had 3 hours sleep because I crawled home at 4:15 a.m. and the f'ing neighbors dog woke me at 6 and again at 7:20 and 7:30. I nearly kicked their f'ing door down at 7:35. If it happens tomorrow, I am calling the cops. Trust me, you do not want to make me put down my purse! Especially when I am still buzzing from the night before.

I never had Legos when I was growing up. (To some of you out there, that may explain a lot.) Instead, I had 'Super City,' a box of plastic squares, about 3" X 3" that had teeth down two sides and gutters down two others. The square frames of plastic would snap together and form a super structure of any building. It did skyscrapers particularly well. Then there were various panels of different types of material that snapped inside the square frames, from blue acrylic to simulate windows, to a sheet of fake bricks, to aluminum siding - whatever. I had the Town & Country Set, which was 3rd from the biggest (most expensive) set. I wanted the biggest set because it came with battery powered lights, water fountains (and I think elevators, too, if I remember correctly.) I haven't seen these building sets on sale for about 30 years or more. I guess it was just one of those fad toys of the late '60s. Anyway, I still have about 75 or so Hotwheels and 'Dinky' cars (which would also explain a lot to some of you out there.) I have a very cool '72 Citroen SM that is very lifelike, along with a '64 Riviera, and a few others: these I had the brains to wrap in tissue paper about 35 years ago and preserve. I even have Lady Penelope's pink car from Thunderbirds. Sigh. AND THAT EXPLAINS A LOT ABOUT ME, TOO. Mind you, it does shoot rockets out of the front grille, so it isn't too 'foofy.'

Wait two months and drive the '09 Aveo 5, then drive the Yaris. NO CONTEST. GM has pulled out all the stops with the new powertrain: a timing belt with a 100,000 mile life span? That that, Honda. Better gas mileage, more horsepower. Suspension and brake tweaks. The interior and and exterior are updated. Don't forget, the '08 Aveo is basically a '04 that was already on the books whe GM bought Daewoo. The '09 has OnStar, the 'bowtie' radio, XM, all the North American goodies - finally. This is a GM car now, not a Daewoo.

........and you know for a fact that these people would NOT have bought those vehicles if the front overhang was 3" longer or any of them had a pushrod engine? Question: ask 10 people on the street what the f$%K a pushrod engine is, and I GUARANTEE you that maybe ONE would have a clue - and even that person would explain it wrong. I asked 4 salespeople today (the 'newest' person has been in the business 25 years) and not only did none of them know the difference between a pushrod engine and DOHC, all 4 basically laughed at me for asking. The sheeple above buy the Camry, Accord, etc. because CR tells them to. Don't believe me? My mother has owned nothing but Grand Caravans for the past 15 years - loved them all, but is now suddenly hell bent on buying a CR-V because - you guessed it, she read it was a good vehicle. Twenty five years ago, the Camry and Accord were tiny tin cans, so it is no wonder nobody bought them. However, now they are actually decent, well designed vehicles, so I can't fault people for buying them, even though (IMO) they are foolish for sending their $30k to Japan, but the cars themselves are decent enough. The goalposts keep moving. I sat in the LTZ in our show room today and took another long, hard look at it, and I seriously don't know what you guys are harping about. The Cobalt, yes. The Colorado, yes. But I see nothing embarassing or shameful about the current Impala. This is just . GM is going to replace the Impala. Maybe not fast enough for some of you, but with a quarter million sales on a platform that is paid for, while they have a 'world class' car sitting right beside it - well, if I was on the Board I wouldn't be in a rush to spend $300 million replacing it. Not when there are weaker links in the chain (DTS, Cobalt, Colorado, to name 3).

Just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they aren't out there. GM pretty much killed the column shift this year by charging more for it. Before '08, the car could be ordered either way. Development money? What development money? The Lumina had it. The last generation Impala had it. You do realize they are all essentially the same vehicle, don't you? Maybe they had a few thousand left in a box somewhere. My point is, just because some old fogie out there likes them (I happen to be old enough to remember when ALL cars were column shift), doesn't mean it offends your personal sense of space by having them available. Probably in the next, new from the ground up Impala they will be dropped. But for now, they do serve a purpose. Don't forget to harp on the spring loaded 'ratchet' style tilt wheel. You don't want to know how many people I have to explain how the new ones work (Malibu, Aveo, etc.) and many, many people ask aloud why the hell GM would switch... I, for one, hate the 'new' style adjustable (read: non-adjustable because they are to f'ing hard to adjust) steering columns. Remember, just because you like or dislike something doesn't mean they should be banned off the face of the Earth. Now, adding a manual shift to the Malibu, or a DVD Nav system to the Malibu - THAT DOES COST DEVELOPMENT MONEY. Why would GM offer that in a budget-priced vehicle when they have the perfectly workable OnStar turn-by-turn available. And before you go ballistic on that, zip it: Toyota, Nissan, Chrysler and Honda are all frantically working on their own versions that will be out in the next year or so. Somebody out there has finally waken up to the fact that GM got something right for a change.

Sounds like we had better start terraforming Mars soon. This planet is about done.

Actually, I've seen quite a few of the "Some people try to act cool [as some doofus in a sporty car that pulls alongside an Astra dumps his drink on himself] while other people are cool" ads on TV around here. It came up in a conversation at a dinner thing I went to tonight. Truthfully, it has only been the Malibu ads that have saturated the market around here in years.

ah, nothing like having a birthday on a weekend!

Good, then. We are agreed: you won't buy a column shift Impala. Funny, though - I survived 6 years owning my column shift '91 Caprice and I still have my sanity.

There are two things to like about the column shift option: 1) Great for making out at Lover's Lane (do people even do that anymore?) 2) For older people, it is a safety feature. I actually had a customer have a heart attack and die at the wheel of his LeSabre. Had his wife not been able to reach her foot across the small hump on the floor and get her foot on the brake, she would not have survived either. On narrower vehicles, have the 3rd person in the middle option makes no sense, but in cars as big as the Impala, for some people (like my sister with 4 boys), it is nice to have the CHOICE of six passengers. If we really think about it, the console in the middle is just another styling fad. I wonder if cars in 20 years will still have them.

If your Cavalier was pre-2003 than it was the hoary old 2.2 pushrod that was only good for about 119 hp. You're driving with about 20 more hp now, my friend. Could just be the differences in gearing, programming. Interestingly, I always found the old Malibu with the 2.2 got better gas mileage than the Cobalt. Go figure! Similarly, the Alero with the 3.4 was a pig (but fun to drive) and the last generation Impala with the 3.4 was a frugal tank. Gotta be in the PCM and tranny set up.

Just think of what this money could have done for a Cobalt replacement, or a RWD Impala, or Volt, or....................

:AH-HA_wink: Now that is another issue entirely. I tend to agree with your there, sir: far too often Big Business is more responsive to impressive resumes than actual knowledge. Most of corporate America could use a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, the argument would be for preventing corporations for going public at all! Once a company's ownership is diluted in stock offerings, the Henry Ford's of the world can distance themselves through layers of bureaucracy. Since you and I both know that is never going to happen in this world, we have to make do with a flawed business model. However, my point is, that with the divergent talent on GM's board, even though only one comes close to being auto related, they are bringing to the table, so to speak, the 'outside' knowledge that life-timer's like Wagoner need. I don't know any of these people. They could all be toothless hacks, for all I know. But at least one or two of them must know something about business and I am damned sure there have been many interesting meetings or phone calls that we are nevery privy to. Even though, as you rightly point out, any of these people can jetison themselves from the Board any time they want, eventually their resume would become pretty poisonous if they kept destroying the companies they worked for. Most of these A-types are egomaniacial and would not want to partake in the collapse of such an American icon like GM, so the fact that a few of them have stuck around for a while means there must be a game plan that they are pretty confident will work. It is safe to say that we would have replaced the Captain of the Titanic with what we know now, but throwing him overboard as the ship neared ice berg alley would not have been prudent, to say the least!

Like, I am sure if Washington gave Ford and GM a couple billion dollars to develop alternate propulsion systems GM would say no thanks. Washington's attitude has always been 'sink or swim,' but Tokyo is well known to prop up and even subsidize industries, particularly as they are gaining toeholds on foreign soil.

Oh, please, why else would China and Japan buy up more than a trillion dollars in US Treasury bills, if not to keep their currency artificially lower? You don't see the Canadian government rushing out to flood the market with $C to drop its value, do you?

But here is where the opinions differ: some believe we should become Amish while others believe we are entitled to drive Ford Expeditions, while I believe that we in the West can do whatever the f%$K we please until a certain half dozen countries learn to zipper up their pants!!!! The government of India has the f$%King audacity to go whining to the UN because they believe there is a international conspiracy (that Canada is at the center of ) to prop up the value of potash. India. Population 1.2 billion and growing at nearly 100 million a year. How dare they lecture anybody else on hogging or abusing resources!! A country not much larger than Ontario and Quebec (combined population 19 million), with 55 times the population!

I went away for a few days and had a chance to ponder a lot of things, including my 3+ year stint on C&G. Like, why do I keep bothering to post when some people's life mission is to bash everything GM does - even the good stuff. I drive GM cars every day. I also get to hear the criticisms/compliments first hand from Joe Public. I haunt the business pages of many publications (and sites) just to keep abreast of stuff out there (and to get differing points of view) and I travel a lot: not just in the cocoon of comfy Canada. I never claim to be the smartest person in the room, but I'd wager I'd be in the top few percentile of any random grouping. So, I thought about Enzl's constant harping about Wagoner & Co. I never met the man, but I gotta figure he is somewhat smarter than me. After all, he has worked for a dozen different GM posts around the globe and fought his way up from the bottom of the septic tank, so to speak. Perhaps his view is myopic, I thought: after all, he has only worked for GM, even if it was in South America and other places. Then I looked up the GM Board of Directors (his bosses.) I stopped dead. Enzl, this is directed at you, since you are always carping that Wagoner should be fired. This is not personal, but since you keep bringing this up, I ask you: DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SMARTER THAN 3 WOMEN AND 9 MEN WHO ARE EITHER RETIRED DIRECTORS OR ACTIVE DIRECTORS OF - Astra Zeneca PLC - Flagler Development - Sara Lee Corp - University Systems of Georgia - Eastman Kodak - Pfizer Foundation - Northrop Grumman Corp - Dupont - Earnst & Young - Ceridian Corp - Compaq Computer - University of North Carolina ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? WOW. I gotta think that some of these people have a clue what they are doing. Accounting, universities, defense, real estate, chemicals - and many of these appointments are newer, some are older. That looks like a lot of talent to me. But then, maybe I am just easily impressed.

OC., do us all a favor: rent a damed Yaris. You can't spend 5 minutes in a show room and declare it a winner. I had no idea how bad the Yaris was until I spent the day with one. Considering how much time and money Toyota has, this thing is a joke. The '09 Aveo is going to blow this thing out of the water: the fit and finish, the new power train, the interior plastics. I usually have respect for your comments, even when we disagree, but you are dead wrong on the Yaris. The HVAC controls actually feel like a kids toy. Take a look at the seats: they literally look like the same moulded as one seats that the '91 Caravans sported. I am not comparing the Cobalt here. The Cobalt is more than 3 years old. Let's compare the Yaris to the new Aveo. For Gawd's sake: the Yaris doesn't even have a 5 Star crash rating! On a 'all new vehicle' that is outrageous. But then neither does the Tundra. Toyota is slipping.

The world is getting too crowded. We are going to have to learn to make nice with each other, or we are going to blow up our sandbox. One of the reasons I laugh at Sci-fi movies (like Independence Day) that show sentient beings from other realms as blood thirsty, aggressive monsters hell-bent on destruction is because I realize all civilizations are going to have to get passed this phase we are in at this point in history, or that civilization will simply wipe itself out and the clock will start ticking all over again. Maybe there is no intelligent life in the Universe, if the strife we are witnessing over the past 75 years is any indication of the jockeying for position and power that we are seeing now. What a nasty trick Evolution has played: start our race in one sandbox, then disperse peoples across expansive spaces, sprinkle in distance and time, then throw them back together again thousands of years later now that they are all 'different' and then (for the ultimate cosmic laugh) give them dangerous toys. I am beginning to think we are too stupid to occupy this planet. Perhaps a good asteroid is what is needed here. Let Nature roll the dice again and see if something better comes up in another few million years.

............the cold, hard facts as you perceive them.

"Well built" can mean many different things. The original Beetle was considered rock solid, for example - not that it wasn't without its flaws. The Metro was noisy, underpowered and, well, tinny, but their drivetrains were pretty solid and many have been known to be kept in the family for 12-15 years and still running fine.

First of all, GM has not lost its market dominance. Boy, when you guys start crapping on GM, you go all the way! GM outsells Toyota and HOnda in every market segment, except maybe the hybrids - and wait until the GMT-900 hybrids hit the market! Woah! GM still outsells Honda and Toyota, combined. There certainly are kinks in the armor, but like we've yakked about before, GM is fighting a war on a dozen different fronts. Every manufacturer is after GM, not just Toyota. So, the Camry and Accord outsell the Impala? BFD! What about the combined Malibu/Impala/Allure sales? As I have said before, there is no shame in GM dropping to 20% market share - that was inevitable, IMO. The real miracle is how did they manage to stay above 35% for so long? I'd love to have a new Impala tomorrow, but y'know - I'd rather have the Volt, thanks. As I said before (and you guys conveniently ignored) the $C has nearly doubled in the past 4 years. The business model for Oshawa (where the Impala is built,BTW) has done a 180. I can only imagine what kind of a wrench that has put in GM's plans. I know it has the CAW $h!ting bricks.

Ah, it's called DEVELOPMENT DOLLARS, PRIORITIES. The Cavalier replacement was crushed by Lutz in '02 (he hated it that much) and by the looks of the Cobalt, it was no doubt cobbled together from the Ion. Lutz had a lot bigger fires to put out, including coming up with the CTS and the GMT-900s. But you have hit the nail on the head: it's sweating the details. The Cobalt still has a lof of things right: standard split rear seat (not so on the Corolla or Civic), standard automatic headlights, tons of sound deadening under the hood, more standard power, a seamless tranny, gas struts under the hood and trunk, speed sensitive wipers, standard power trunk (the Corolla only now just got that), OnStar, I could go on and on, but sure, some of the details were cheaped out. Give me a new center armrest, get rid of the horrible cloth on the seats, do something about the trim across the center of the dash, an inch or two of shoulder room in the back seat would have been nice. As I said earlier, those who have lived with the Cobalt can see where its star shines, but I will concede that first impressions are lacking. That is why a test drive is sooo important on the Cobalt. Better yet, a prospect should rent one and spend the weekend with it. I know this is a GM fansite, but while we are crapping all over the Cobalt and Impala, it is the Yaris that is truly a joke. That is the replacement for the Echo? That is an example of what Toyota can do with its billions in profits? Yikes! The '09 Aveo is a better car!

Okay, now I know you are smoking. I want the name of your dealer. Your ganga is better than any I can get my hands on. PUHLEASE. I just spent the day with the new Yaris and I drive Cobalts almost every day. No way, no how is the Yaris anywhere close to the Cobalt. It's dash scream Tonka (especially the big cheesy triad of H-VAC controls in the center stack) and the material on the seats was lifted out of a '91 Caravan. I have conceded the Cobalt has lost ground to the Corolla, but no way to the Yaris. Take a look again!

You know, some of you guys just don't get it. What I like about selling Chevrolet is that I have TWO large cars to show a prospect. You guys are so f'ing big on choices, AS LONG AS THEY ARE MATCH YOUR TASTES. So friggin' what if a 60 year old likes the Impala ....guess, what - he has money and his credit is better than the Corolla/Cobalt buyer. The Malibu and Impala are quite different in ride, handling and styling - THAT'S GREAT, in my estimation. Guess what, if a Toyo buyer hates the look or ride of the Camry, Toyota just lost him/her. I get TWO chances. Choice is great, isn't it? Frankly, I prefer the ride/handling of the Impala. My only real beef is the dash guages look a little cheap. And where do you armchair know it alls get the impression the Impy is discounted any more than any other vehicle? Customers gravitate to either the Impala or the Malibu. I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but at a GM meeting last week they produced a new study that showed something consumer recognition for the name, brand and respect for the name was significantly higher on the Impala than the average family sedan. I can post the exact stats tomorrow when I get to my office and pull my copy of the slide show that they produced. Is there room for improvement? Always. But you self-appointed experts piling on because the Impala is not your taste is just stupid. Leave the G8 to Pontiac. GM does not have the money to refresh every model every year. I'd love to see you guys run a company and stick to any sort of operational/capital budget. While I'm on the subject, I'm going to let you have it on another topic, too: who the f'ck cares if the Camry is 'soul less?' What is the definition of 'soul' anyway? I wouldn't be caught dead in a Camry because it is ugly (IMO) and it is a Toyota. It has no more or less soul than an Accord, Impala or Altima. I am not the one who needs to get 'perspective.' It is my LIFE to learn what strengths and weaknesses the competition has. I don't get to play on C&G for 30 minutes a day just because my inflatable doll just sprang a leak, or my Xbox needs to be rebooted. Re-read the Businessweek article 'Tyranny of the Enthusiasts' that was posted here about 2 years ago. Now that is good reading.