CARBIZ

All of the states in the north east, plus Ontario and Quebec use an insane amount of salt. Some of the salter trucks they use are not very well maintained and I've seen clumps of white salt left in places where the truck has stopped. I am not aware of any rust problems on any vehicles since the late '80s. I have not heard of Toyota having a rust problem in the past 15 or so years. If this news is true, it is interesting, indeed. Having said that, if I was going to buy a vehicle in Ontario and planned to keep it more than 5 or 6 years, I would definitely have it rust-proofed, under coated or something. When you are driving along the expressway at 50 mph and you can hear the salt/sand blasting the undercarriage of your unprotected vehicle, it is not a pleasant feeling.

I have a lot of experience canoeing in Northern Ontario, particularly the Kirkland Lake area. Very peaceful. So when I went canoeing in the Alleghany State Forest about 25 years ago, was I in for a shock. Just traversing the lake was a suicide mission. There were power boats everywhere! I was just surprised that in a park like that power boats were allowed. In Ontario's Algonquin Park, power boats of any kind are expressly forbidden. So I hope you know some secluded places where you can hone your skills! Full disclosure: I've had a power boat for years. I grew tired of portaging, sleeping on the ground, etc. But I still have a canoe lashed to a tree on a desolate island in the middle of Georgian Bay.

What would you consider more important? America cannot afford (both literally and figuratively) another Vietnam. If, as I've heard some critics say, the Iraq war ends up costing more than a couple trillion dollars, that is frightening. Just think what Washington could have done with that money. Free Medicare? Fix the pension shortfalls? Cure cancer? The hyper inflation of the '70s and the economic moraise back then was not helped by Vietnam! I was (am?) all for the Iraq invasion, but it has turned into a bloody mess. How could they not have forseen Iran taking advantage of this? Of Al-quaeda? One of the biggest problems in the Middle East (not America's fault, BTW) is that the political national boundaries are arbitrary and do not follow ethnic/tribal lines. Japan and Germany were homogenous states, very civilized and, even despite the heavy Allied bombings, had a strong infrastructure. In many ways, the Middle East is stuck in the Middle Ages. How could Bush and his cronies have presumed to force democracy on people like that? There isn't a religious state in history that welcomed democracy with open arms. Just look at the struggles in Europe after Reformation! It took merry old England several hundred years from Magna Carta in 1215 until true democracy set in. How could Bush have expected to implement that in a few years?

That's a very clever way of hiding the problem, though. The media may not have caught on at all, and Toyota gets to keep the customer since even if they hated their truck, nobody at Ford or GM would give them that kind of money on a trade.

YAWN.

Boy, someone is a titch sensitive. Did I mention anyone by name? Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Guilty conscience? However, since you have brought it up. I've seen you pick fights with several people on this board - and you've only been here for 3 months. Since we clearly get your blood pressure off the map so much, why would you bother? I know that when you go off on your tirades about how Vauxhall is not really run by GM, has nothing to do with GM and is more British than the Queen, I let you have your opinion and ignore you - which is the best way to deal with know-it-alls. I have nothing against the European car business. I could care less. I know nothing about it, except what transplants I've seen in Brazil for myself. The French build some very interesting cars, but they aren't sold here, so I don't bother concerning myself about them. My points about GM's earlier successes (since I obviously have to spell everything out for you, as you love to cherry pick people's remarks that suit you and ignore the rest, as you have already been called out for numerous times already) is that Toyota is following in Ford's footsteps from 70 years ago in thinking it can pigeonhole people's tastes. I am suggesting that since the North American market (since I am, in fact Canadian) has become more 'mature' (read: fragmented), people are demanding more choice, not less. Toyota is becoming as arrogant as GM was about 15 years ago, which could lead to its downfall. For your information, this 'brandwhore' (name calling is always the last resort of the incompetent) has owned 4 Chryslers and 3 GM products. European marques are grossly over priced in Canada so I wouldn't consider them. And since my personal opinion is that Japan is a closed market, you will never see a Japanese vehicle grace my drive way. Never. If there was a way I could program my eyes to blot out Japanese cars as I walk down the road, I would, but alas that technology does not exist yet. Just remember one thing however: while you are cheering on Japan Inc and marvelling over their every deed, remember that it was the 'arsenal of democracy' that saved your people's asses 60 years ago. If Japan Inc has its way, there will be no 'arsenal of democracy' left to save anyone's ass. Great Britain has already gracefully signed off its steel, shipbuilding, auto and other industries to foreign control If the UK is content being a branch office to other powers, after its proud history, than that is fine by me. I, on the other hand, am quite alarmed by trends that I see of the past 25 years and am not quite so content to take the crap that our media and molly-coddled government seem content to dish out. Maybe I'll haunt ToyotaNation for the day.

A block heater has become optional on the Cobalt, Malibu and other models for a couple of years now. Most people don't use them. When I lived in Collingwood (about 2 hours north of Toronto), I used to plug my (then) '91 Caprice in with a 'Noma' delay timer (no point in having the power on all night.) The temperature rarely goes below - 10 C in Toronto where I live now, plus I park underground. Today, with the onboard computer and fuel injection, vehicles will start even in the nastiest weather. Not like my '82 Dodge Rampage that made me resort to prayers when it was - 32 near Parry Sound, back in '84! Idling for more than 13 seconds is just burning gas. More and more vehicles are equipped with remote starters from the factory now. I am not sure about the SS Cobalt, but on the rest of the models the factory block heater is a cheap order option. There is no point in equipping block heaters as standard equipment when probably 95% of the motoring public doesn't use them. (Most of the trades we see still have the plug neatly coiled up with the factory twist tie!)

I go away for a few hours and it's always the same one or two people picking fights with everyone else. Sheesh. I used to haunt ToyotaNation but gave it up because I didn't agree with anything they said. They are entitled to their opinions, but posting on there was like pissing into the wind. If I want a pointless argument that goes nowhere fast, I can always call up my ex-BF - now that really gets the juices flowing! It doesn't matter what exactly is 'class leading.' I am sick of hearing this $h! about 'class leading.' History is strewn with the wreckage of 'class leading' companies (and countries, for that matter.) General Motors breakaway success in the '40s was not by being all things to all people, but by being different things to different people. Henry Ford stubbornly stuck to the idea of one or two basic models and even fought modernizing his paint plants - to his company's peril, it turned out. General Motors initial success involved simple things like paint choices and fancy names for trim level. They also learned how to market their vehicles more effectively than anyone else. When I perused the order guides of our (former) Toyota stores, it always struck me as arrogant that both Toyota and Honda package everything up into 2, maybe 3 trim levels of each model and that's it. Take it or leave it. Now that doesn't sound like any way to maintain choice and individuality, does it? Is is more cost effective, however. This is the sort of hubris that is going to bring Japan Inc. down. Maybe the old fossils that are running Toyota back in Japan are succumbing to the disease that many of the old fossils running Ford and GM in Detroit have succumbed to: "well, I wouldn't want to drive that, so nobody else will either." AND IT IS NOT RACIST TO SAY SOMEONE DOES NOT LIKE JAPANESE CARS. That is just ridiculous. It's always the 800 lb elephant in the room - those certain subjects that are just not spoken about because it isn't fashionable. I don't drink tea either - does that make me anti-British? The mentally challenged always break out the racist card when all else fails.

Ah, the Big Gay Challenge: to be young, attractive and free in a big city. My ex used to drive me crazy. Guys would throw themselves at his feet. I wasn't the jealous type, but I was getting fed up with breaking off friendships with people who only wanted to land him in bed. Y'know the 'ol saying: If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make an ugly woman your wife," or something like that. You and he are going to have to find your own state of equilibrium. Somewhere between how much you want to be with him and how much trust and freedom the relationship can handle lies the future. It's easy for us armchair critics to tell you to do this or do that, but in the end it is your nature and his that will determine this outcome. Pepper him with 60-questions and you may drive him away; let sleeping dogs lie, and you could drive yourself crazy. I do have to say this, however: if a relationship encounters undue stresses and tribulations in the beginning, then something is amiss. Love is never easy, but it isn't supposed to be a battlefield. I mean, didn't he just move in? He needs his freedom already? It usually takes 6 months or more of walks every single night before the bloom is off the rose. (Okay, I am mixing my metaphors. I'm tired.) Let's argue about Toyota - it's easier.

But do we have any choice any more? Japan Inc saw to it that Electrohome, RCA, Philco and the others were either run out of business, bought out, or moved their production overseas. Zenith was the best tlelevision manufacturer for decades (I know, we owned 2), but even they could not sustain the onslaught of Japanese televisions that were dumped on our shores in the '70s by Sharp, Hitachi and others - with the full weight and backing of the Japanese government. When will we ever learn? It is happening now with Boeing. All the might and weight of Europe is being brought against it, in the form of Aerbus. Soon the Chinese will join in the fray. It isn't enough that Americans are envied and hated throughout the world, but the amount of self-hating that goes on is the real culprit. You guys have to learn to stand up and take back what is yours - and that means supporting American companies that are trying to swim the tide. Forget about the bull$h! and smokescreens that some people on this board try to throw up. The truth will prevail, but it is getting harder to find it these days.

Please look up the word PROPORTIONATE. The study was definitive: it took into account how many imports versus domestics were sold in a given year and how many of those were still plated on the road. They dredged up hundreds of thousands of registrations over a period of 2 decades. This was far more accurate than merely observing that Civics and Camrys rusted and fell apart in 8 years (true, by the way.) I certainly would expect to see more A-bodies on the road today because GM sold far more of them than Toyota did the Corolla or Camry, back in the '80s. ... and it wasn't my 'little study.' Desrosiers marketing is the JD Powers of Canada. The only truth is that with the twin oil shocks of the '70s, the bumper standards of the mid- 70s, the pollution controls that started in the early '70s - all of these conspired to form a perfect storm of events that sent Detroit spinning out of control. It took them a decade to recover. It can be easily argued that many of their answers to the problems (the econoboxes of the '80s that we love to laught at today) were wrong-headed thinking, but that is through the advantage of retrospective observation. It is easy to see how a 78 horspower Datsun 210 with a stick, no air and a radio would be more 'fun' to drive to a college student than an overweight, underpowered Buick Skyhawk of the same era; however, Detroit was trying to downsize their land barges without alienating their core customers - no easy task when for 30 years the mantra was 'bigger, faster, longer.' All of this only helps to explain the media's previous perceptions of Detroit versus the imports. It does not justify their continued carping on Detroit for the past.

The French hated the Eiffel Tower when it was proposed and fought to tear it down, once the World Exposition was over. Having said that - the tower looks like someone beat a flower lady with an ugly stick and then left the stick.

I pass a pristine '96 Century wagon walking my dog every night. I will admit that the number of A bodies still on the roads around here (home of nearly every salter truck in the Known Universe) has declined precipitously in the past few years, but I still see the odd one - usually driven by a woman who is only a few years younger than God.

Desrosiers marketing did a study in 2000 of pre-1987 and post -1987 domestic versus import vehicles sold in Canada, comparing those still licensed and on the road in 2000. In both cases, there were still more domestic vehicles on the road, proportionate to their original sales, than the imports. Lincoln, Cadillac and Buick did exceptionally well, not surprisingly. The reason for the separate categories of years was due to the fact that the Asian luxury brands came into being in 1987 and Desrosiers wanted to see if that would make any kind of an impact. At the time, Dennis Desrosiers and Jim Kenzie (freelance auto journalist extraodinaire) puzzled over why this went contrary to their 'expectations.' Jim Kenzie mused that perhaps the reason for Toyota's 'sterling' reputation was because their vehicles were seen by the dealer more often ('coupon' service being all the rage then for Japan). I still view this as being largely the case: if you'd told my father that he had to service his '69 Chrysler or '75 LTD at the dealer, he would have told the manufacturer to shove it, but that is precisely what the imports trained their customers to blindly do. Dealer servicing = service bulletins that the customer knows nothing about. The trouble with blanket statements like 'Toyotas in the 1980's would run on next to nothing..' is that compared to their contemporary domestics, they were built of nothing. For example, a former BF of mine gushed about his 1990 Accord and what a great vehicle it was: 5 spd, a/c, radio and not much of anything else. (But he overlook the cable and switch on the floor to operate the heater that his father had patched together for him.) The wave of owners 'pissed off' by bad experiences with Detroit in the mid-80s, who would trade in their '85 Pontiac 6000 for a '91 Camry, and then expound to anyone who would listen how their Camry was so much better. HELLO! I would hope so. It's called PROGRESS. If a '91 Camry wasn't better than a 6 year old 6000, Toyota should be ashamed. This wave of anger toward the domestics has carried on for a generation because the so-called writers of the car rags today are the very same people who hated their mother's '79 Dodge Mirada, complete with lean burn ignition, and bought a Datsun 510 out of college. All of their biases are based on those experiences which now taint everything they touch or look at out of Detroit. And we still hear the BS coming from 'experts' on both sides of the pond.

1. Toyota is over-rated. (Ever see the service department of a Toyota dealer empty?) 2. Japan is in many ways an closed market. 3. Frankly, I hate the arrogance of certain people who have the audacity to tell me that 'they' buy Japanese cars because 'they' are a certain ethnic group. I will admit that a lot of my dislike for Japanese cars is largely based on my horror in the early '80s as they started to flood the market with tiny tin cans of crap. Admittedly, Toyota has come a long, long way from the likes of the first generation Tercel and Corolla, but even before I got into the car business, I had a strong dislike of the ugly little tin boxes polluting the roadways around here. It didn't help any when I was studying international trade at university that I began to dig into the shenanigans that Japan Inc was (and continues to) pulling. However, times change and I have come to realize that there is more to life than driving the highways in a 220" monster, so I've made my peace with small cars.

Felize anniversario, O blu. Wow, we're born 3 days apart.....................

Our sales are still holding up because of the 'value packaging,' but let's not have the Cobalt turn into another Uplander. One vehicle that we have to give away with a set of Tupperware is enough, thanks.

Remember that you are looking at what GM is offering, not what is selling or what dealers are ordering. With the 1SB package offering the 16" alloy wheel upgrade, ABS, leather steering wheel and other goodies, plus a free sunroof (in this market), and since the LT packages have a $1250 rebate (around here) and since leasing is a big, big chunk of the market, dealers are not even bothering to stock the LS Cobalt or the base LT. It's like Hyundai offering a $9,999 base car: dealers don't stock it and certainly don't sell it, but it makes for a great lead in an ad. I lived through the 2003 'let's-yank-ABS-out-of-everything' festiva, and I can tell you it was a big yawn. Personally, I freaked when I saw ABS gone, but very few customers gave a damn. Still, the Cobalt is starting to get very long in the tooth. It is going to take a lot more than a few paint code changes to breathe new life into its sales into yet another year.

It was a big bust around here. Of all the skyscrapers downtown, only the CIBC building turned off most of its lights. The TD-Canada Trust tower was completely lit up like an Xmas tree. Predictably, many of the downtown residential towers with a high concentration of dykes/gays had most of their lights off. Welfare Villas (St. Jamestown: the world's tallest freestanding slum) had all their lights on. The CN Tower was black. The restaurant was having a candle lit dinner. My lights were doused at 7:58, but then we were leaving anyway.

Thanks, guys. Dodgefan, be careful what you wish for! I'm going to gain 5 lbs this weekend: dinner last night with one group of friends, dinner in about an hour with another group, then my sisters want to do a family dinner thing tomorrow night! I don't actually call this a birthday, but rather an anniversary. It is the 18th anniversary of my 29th birthday! Gotta go, it takes more than one coat of portland cement to make people believe I am 29.

.......oh, do I have a present for you........! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

As a society, the Japanese also have more respect for the 'rule of law,' even if it is only their law. In China, laws (like traffic signs) are mere suggestions. Japan possesses a lot of intellectual property, so the Japanese government has done a reasonable job of protecting intellectual property on their soil. Not so the Chinese. The Chinese government is resisting using Microsoft because they will not be beholden to its rules and regulations. Western companies daring to do business with China are forced into 'partnerships' where an exchange of technology always takes place. Hollywood is tied up into fits of apoploxy with the amount of bootlegged Cds, video games, etc. coming out of China. Perhaps it is paranoia on the part of the Communist government, or maybe there is a more insidious reason they insist western companies hand over their technology. China has targeted airline manufacturing and aerospace next. I am all for friendly cooperation, but I have yet to see any from China. I just can't see why we are all in such a hurry to jump into bed with them. We have a sorry history of entering marriages of convenience (the Shah of Iran, for example), only to have those marriages blow up in our faces after a couple decades.

I hope you aren't entirely right! I would imagine that the internal combustion engine as a mode of power will have its day end, but I strongly hope that personal transport in all forms do not disappear. Ever since the wheel was invented, humanity has been striving for better ways of personal transport. I do not look at public transit as an successful social engineering project. Quite the contrary! At least in an elevator, the odds are that you are surrounded with people of similar backgrounds, interests, or at least goals. Public transit is far too egalitarian for me. If we are to end up jammed into increasingly crowded trains and cities choked with humanity, like Mumbai and Tokyo, then I think more extreme measures need to be taken. I think we need to focus on quality of life for those that are here, rather than the tenet (to coin a phrase from Monty Python), 'Every Sperm is Sacred.'

I would paint all the Chinese companies with the same brush, but it broke (Made in PRC, of course.)