CARBIZ

The Cavalier had a dreadful interior and a noisy engine, at least until the '03 refresh, but even then they should have fortified the sound deadening in that car and done something about those seats! There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Impala. It is reliable, economical, spacious and a clean looking design. The people who buy them could give a f$%k about what you or I think of the car and it is selling decently. Frankly, for such a 'large' vehicle, I am surprised it is doing so well, considering. I don't live in a 'dream world,' my friend. Unlike some armchair critics, I put my money where my mouth is every day. There are a lot of deficient GM vehicles out there, but I don't view the Impala as one of them. Just because you wouldn't buy it, doesn't make it a bad car.

SHEESH! What would it take to excite you these days? The building is phallic, modern, clean looking and a much better example of the glass wall buildings built in the '80s than most examples I've seen. (In fact, Houston and Dallas are polluted with them!)

You know, there are some people out there who actually prefer the column shift. You guys are all for CHOICES, as long as those choices agree with what YOU would choose, right? As for the noise remark, I'd put the noise level of the 3.5 LT Impala up against the Accord 4 banger any day: better hp, not much worse gas mileage (real world figures, not the Honda-designed-for-the-textbook numbers) - and all for the same price. As to the quality remark: I've never had a single customer complain about their Impala. There have been fewer recalls than the Avalon. Look, its pretty obvious that few people on this Board would be caught dead in one. But it would seem that almost a quarter million people a year respectfully disagree. (And shove the 'fleet' comments up your arse: after 8 months, someone buys those cars, too.) I would love to see a RWD Impala to sit next to the Malibu, but GM has a lot of fires to put out just now. If they can milk the Impala for another couple years (and make a ton of money off it), more power to them. They have a new fish to fry with the $C and what to do with Oshawa. Whatever goes into the Oshawa plant next had better be a hit, because Canada's tax structure and general blocks on business are no picnic for 'foreign' companies to work in. We will probably get a 'refresh' in '10 to drag it out another couple years. We have no problems moving every Impala we have, even with the Malibu alonside it. Some people just don't like the 'harsher' rides of the more 'modern' platforms. AND I AM ONE OF THEM.

:rotflmao:

+1 The Impy holds its own against the competition. It is the Uplander and Cobalt that are falling behind.

Well, in a nutshell, there are approximately 100 million more Americans now than there were in the '60s; not to mention about 500 million more Chinese. It took Nature 100 million years to put in the ground what we are using up in 100 years. I desperately hope that technology will save the day, but in the meantime there is a lot each of us can do in our own lives to do 'our part.' Let's leave something for the future generations, eh?

Obviously, there is a lot of hyperbole and BS on both sides of this argument, but clearly any thinking person can see that we have to find constructive ways of curtailing our energy consumption. Whether the ultimate reality is a combination of taxes, ethanol, windpower, more nuclear, drilling in Alaska, hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles - we must do SOMETHING. Cheap energy, like cheap (free?) healthcare only encourages waste. One only needs to drive through rush hour in Chicago or L.A. once (then multiply that by 500 for the major cities in North America) to get a true sense of what we, as a species, are doing to this planet. I wish for the free-wheeling innocence of the '60s, but we know better now.

Oh, PUHLEASE! What's 200 million dollars anyway? It's not like US dollars go that far anymore anyway.

Eh, venting is a good thing. I have to be PC and all nicey-nicey at work all day.

To each his own.

...and how will they feel about their vehicle purchases when THEIR jobs are outsourced to India?

No, the Epica is gone and good riddance, I say. What braniac launched that vehicle the same time as the last generation Malibu? I sold a ton of Epicas when they first came out, but most salespeople were too lazy and just sold the Malibu because people recognized the name. If GM could have squeaked a few more ponies out of that in-line 6 and stepped up the reliablity a little, that car would have been a smash. When we saw it in October '03, we were all impressed as hell. But now it's gone. I've had several customers thrilled at how much they love their Epica, and I've had others want to get out of it a few months after picking it up. Wierd.

Well, the GM gods must be listening. I just spent the day at a training seminar, pouring over the Malibu, Impala, Yaris, Corolla, Cobalt and the new Aveo 5. 1. The Cobalt interior is, well, to put it gracefully: crap. 2. The Yaris is a POS. I didn't like anything about that car. It makes the OLD Aveo look good. You want to talk about hard plastics and crappy controls???!!! 3. The refresh of the new Aveo is outstanding, the refinements to the drive train superb. The Fit and Versa should be afraid. 4. I still find myself strongly liking the Impala. The interior doesn't try as hard as the Malibu's does, which is a good thing. 5. 5 not so small salespeople crammed into the Impala, then sat in the Malibu. There is definitely more room in the back of the Impala. 6. I get OC's gripes about the rear foot room in the Impala, but with proper adjusting the seats are quite comfy - and I'm 6'2". 7. The Cobalt has a lot of things to like about it, but why wouldn't GM spend another $1,000 on the seat fabrics and dash trim? GM is getting more and more things right, IMO. The Cobalt is a vehicle that people will like very much after they've lived with. Unfortunately, first impressions when you open the door are rather, er, disappointing. The opposite is true with the new Corolla. With the LE, the climate control, seats and other features are nice, although hard plastic does abound and our tester had a broken glove box and the driver's seat height adjustment gave way, causing the seat to rock back and forth like a rocking chair. Does this mean we can't sell the Cobalt? No. It just makes our jobs harder in having to point out the Cobalt's 'wins' and hope the prospect retains enough info by the time they visit the Toyota store! Why does GM spend their money on speed sensitive wipers, automatic headlights, 'quiet steel', gas shocks under the hood and in the trunk, yet cheap out on the interior? I mean, what committee approved that cloth and trim? Were they high at the time? And why haven't they all been fired? It's been 3 years to put the bong down! GM-DAT is definitely getting with the picture. The new Aveo will be a smash, I predict. I want to put a Yaris in our show room to show how much it sucks and blows at the same time next to the '09 Aveo. A 100,000 mile timing belt? Take that, Honda! The fact that both Toyota and Honda are busting their asses to come out with their versions of OnStar in the next 2 years tells me that GM has hit a gold mine with their 10 year jump. Blue tooth, UBS ports...well, the list is endless. Someone has awaken, finally.

It's a blood bath around here. About 6 GM stores and about as many Ford and Chrysler stores have closed in the area over the past few years. Many, many more are going down.

The fact that CEOs and others are making 10X what they were (even in inflation adjusted dollars) is another issue. Don't just single out executives though: look at what Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise and Madonna make in a given year - that is obscene, too. However, if Madonna wants to stomp her feet and refuse to release her next alblum until the record company gives in to her demands, well - who gives a damn anyway, other than a few fans? The record company certainly won't go out of business without her. Corporate America is awash in wanton greed. One can almost envision some sort of conspiracy at the top where Boards have an unwritten rule about 'golden parachutes' and other such nonsense. It is very interesting, indeed, to trace who sits on what Board and where they came from before that. All of this boils right back to the over riding lack of ACCOUNTABILITY at all levels of corporations. Government, too. From the small business that screws all of its suppliers, goes bankrupt and the suppliers find out that the personal assets of the President all are in his wife's name, to the huge backroom deals made with stock and options swapping where millions are made by brokerage houses just for filing a few papers - all of it stinks to high hell. However, that is for Washington to clean up. Ha, ha with that, BTW. In our rush to globalize and expand, nobody is really in charge of anything any more. Look at Mulally over at Ford, for example: what is he really in it for? The money? The glory? The challenge? Because he loves Fords? Because he loves the car business? As long as it doesn't make his resume look bad, would he really give a $h! if Ford sank? Nothing personal against the man, I just wonder how someone can jump from one ship to another without any feelings of loyalty or regret. Look at Jim Press - another opportunist. Is this what is the corporate world has come to? What about the Henry Ford's, Rockefellers and Walter Chryslers out there? Perhaps it is the destiny of every corporation to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence and then fail. I can see why the unions would be jealous, but then perhaps they should have gone back to school and become a CEO, too, rather than trying to blackmail their employer every 3 years into giving them what they are 'entitled' to.

Hate is too strong a word. I don't even dislike Toyota, for that matter. I just dislike Japanese vehicles in general. When I was studying Japanese trade practices in at U of T, I decided that with the power that MITI wielded (at the time), I was never going to give Japan my money, unless there was no choice. It's interesting because at the time I was in university, the American electronics industry was under seige (much the same arguments were going back and forth at the time then, except there were no bloggers sites) and, one by one, American TV manufacturers were either bought up, absorbed or bankrupted. I deliberately sought out and bought a Zenith TV in '85 (with the Space Command telephone, of course!) as a show of support. Alas, my one purchase was not enough and Zenith, too, was absorbed a few years later. Call it an instinctive defense mechanism, but when a friend of mine bought a new '87 Corolla, I shunned him after that. In all fairness, the car purchase was just the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. I just view sending $20-30k of my money overseas pretty much nationalist suicide.

When I was at the Detroit Auto Show a couple years ago, I thought the buildings looked very cool close up, especially with the monorail track in the foreground - very Jetsons, I thought. Now Cobo Hall - that's a travesty!

It would be interesting for someone to do a true demographic study of who buys what. I am sure certain trends would jump out. When I lived 90 minutes north of Toronto for 11 years, I always observed that when I was stuck in a chain of cars doing about 10 mph under the speed limit, it was invariably some old goat in a F-150 pickup at the head of the line, wearing a baseball cap - probably toothless, too. The old codger was oblivious to the traffic piling up behind him on the single lane highway. I wondered if the baseball cap somehow impeded blood flow to the brain. I have observed, however, that a disproportionate number of a-holes on the road, speeding, talking on their cell, not signaling, swerving in and out of lanes are in BMWs or Audis. I remember several years ago getting cut off on the highway by a jerk in a BMW coupe, who then sped into a driveway in front of me. It turned out it was my corporate lawyer who I was on my way to meet! He started off with an Olds when I first met him, but now had the corner office and the status car. I took my business elsewhere. There is probably a lot of truth to the alpha-type personalities that gravitate to these type of vehicles and then don't give a $h! about anyone around them.

Hell, by today's standards, OC, you could probably sue your parents for mental hardship - they did, after all, give you a CITATION! See what a difference 9 years of birth makes: my mother let me drive her '67 Newport, aka the Tremclad Special. No feeling of entitlement there! If I were you, I'd sue!

Does anyone here know the parentage of Saturn? Is it possible that some senior VPs today, in the RenCen, were responsible for bringing Saturn to market in the '80s and they are too proud or too blinded to admit it was a mistake? I have been wondering about that for a while. Oldsmobile had a lot of brand energy in the late '80s (Cutlass anyone?) and at that time it could have been targetted to go after the import market, but instead GM launched Saturn. It is easy now to see that as Saturn 'rose,' Oldsmobile was starved. It would be fun to trace the ancestry of Saturn from its inception until the demise of Oldsmobile to see which executives were shuffled around and whose responsiblity was what.

The fact of the matter is that North Americans are addicted to automatics, whereas Europeans are not. I have driven the Cobalt 2.2 on and off our antiquated freeway system and would take it over the 1.8 litre in the Corolla any day of the week. All of this obsession over 0-60 times is BS. Torque numbers are more important and the 'flatness' of the torque curve. The ecotec engines have a lot of torque where it counts, and coupled with a perfectly mated automatic, it is a winning combination. When one is barelling down a (way too short) expressway ramp, already doing 35 mph, it is the short burst to 60 mph that is far more important. I've tried it in the Corolla and it scares me. The Cobalt does it effortlessly. In fact, the 2.2 in the much heavier last generation Malibu did it effortlessly. I have not driven the Astra, so I cannot specifically comment on that. All of this yapping about busy highways and traffic is also BS: the 401 highway which bisects Toronto is the busiest freeway in North America. It passed the Santa Monica Freeway a couple years ago. I am not bragging; in fact, it is shameful, really. However, it is just a fact of life in a city where the tree huggers have forced the cancellation of a myriad of expressways over the past 30 years, and where a city of 5 million only has one central east-west corridor. We end up with 16 lanes of hell.

I cannot say I disagree with the thrust of the article, but again, perhaps the blame or the causes of the fallout is another matter. Is this the same generation that will spend $250 on an iPod, $120 on a pair of runners, $400 on a Xbox - and demand they deserve all of these? I am from the end of the boomer generation, and I am told that my parents built our great countries. However, from where I sit, it appears to me that they may have built it, but it is my taxes that have had to pay for it. For you guys south of the border, it is Vietnam that younger people have been saddled with paying for in the '80s and '90s. For those of us in the Great White North, it is our very own universal medicaire and all the shiny public projects that were built in the '60s and '70s, plus the generous civil servant pensions and benefits doled out in the same period that are being paid for with my tax dollars. And your government has no idea how it is going to pay for Iraq, do they? Maybe we have all set our expectations too high. Where is it written that Thall Shalt Enjoy Hedonistic Joy and Bliss Foreverafter? I hate playing the grandparent card, but my grandparents were quite happy with their 1,200 sq ft bungalow with no garage, no a/c, no built in vacuum, one car in the driveway and a 20" B&W TV. The difference between the expectations of my parents generation (born in the '40s) and my generation (born in the '60s) is striking. There are so many factors involved in why our societies are changing that I cannot begin to count them. Free Trade is not to blame for all of them, although certainly mistakes have been made there. I honestly believe that the biggest mistakes our countries (Canada and the U.S.) have made over the past 50 years are almost entirely cultural. First, we have made the mistake of believing that everyone else wants to be just like us. Second, we have made the mistake of thinking that because of our successes in 'rescuing' Europe from itself (through NATO and the U.N and 2 world wars), we could transplant that success around the globe. Our failures in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are staggering. These people do not want to emulate us. In most cases, they want to be left alone. In some cases, they despise us. We are now paying for that hubris. But most of all, we have to start believing in ourselves again. We must stop blaming the mistakes of our great-great grandparents and push ahead to the future. In the past, our two countries were made great by throwing open our doors to one and all, weloming them with open arms and inviting them to prosper along with us. Something insidious has crept into our culture over the past 20-30 years. A new-found cynicism? We stopped caring for our neighbors. Why is that? Is it because our neighbors are no longer 'like us?' I'm not sure, but we had better discover the answer soon, or in one or two more generations, we are going to be overwhelmed and, I dare say, absorbed.

China is building a new coal-fired electricity plant every week. What makes Congress think that anything they do will have diddly-squat impact on global warming or future energy prices? There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way this planet thinks. Governments of all types have become too big and unwieldy. Layers upon layers of bureacracy and regulations are eventually going to collapse under their own weight. Besides, it isn't the elected government that is running the show any more anyway - they are just window dressing. It is the lawyers, the lobbyists and the career Civil Servants that run the show. The average citizen has tuned out. Maybe the government should legalize marijuana - that way we could all get stoned and forget about Washington and Ottawa! Not only that, Bush could probably finance Iraq just on the taxes of pot alone! The so-called war on drugs is just another example of our Collective Insanity. They would probably ban alcohol if it were invented today! Or if they weren't making so much damned money taxing it. The entire police establishment in both our countries are built upon 'morality.' Just look at the budgets that your local police department gets for chasing hookers, drug dealers and opium dens, compared to the Homicide Squad. It is scandalous, really. I much prefer the bars and clubs where drugs are turned a blind eye to: the patrons are friendlier, 'easier' and fights don't break out. Go into your typical bar/club where drunks hang out, and there are always knifings, shootings or general mayhem. Ever see pictures of the Summer of Love: did those people go around beating each other up? And as to the issue of crimes being commited for drugs and by organized crime - well, HELLO! When something is banned, artificially inflated (hmm, like the price of oil?) in price, of course crime is going to be involved. My doctor told me, point blank, that alcohol is pure poison to our bodies: from the moment it enters our bloodstream, it destroys our stomach, liver, kidneys, brain and depresses our immunity system. None of that is in dispute. There are hundreds and hundreds of studies on the effects of alcohol, both short term and long term. He's a bit of a maverick, but he said (off the record, of course) that he would rather see his patients (occasionally) do coke or ecstasy over alcohol any day. If you sift through the utter propoganda and outrageous BS dispensed by the police establishment, government and self-interest groups, it is hard to find any real evidence as to the effects of drug use on the general population. Reefer Madness anyone? We laugh at the movie today, but I've seen other equally egregious 'studies' commissioned since.

A lot of that is our fault. The media is too busy digging up dirt on Detroit because it is in our backyard and because the WallStreet fat cats are constantly whining about it, but what happens in Toyota City stays in Toyota City. The news that three Toyota executives were fired because they were fudging recall reports was barely mentioned in North America, but if that had been GM or Ford doing that, it would have been front page news on the WSJ.

Excellent post!