CARBIZ

Unfortunately, none of our future energy stocks will be 'free.' The Alberta tar sands, which are purported to have more obtainable oil than Saudi Arabia, are going to require a lot of energy to extract the oil. Alberta is even considering the possibility of building its first nuclear power plant to provide 'cheap,' sustainable electricity nearby the productive oil deposits. I think we should bypass all of this and learn how to harness the power of a singularity. Let's skip all the middle-men.

Japanese products were never as horrible as the Chinese products are. I will agree that Made in Japan would have evoked derision and laughter 40 years ago, but I don't remember Japanese products having the wholesale flimsiness and downright criminal cheapness of the Chinese made products washing up on these shores now. I have had countless kitchen and other products break or stop working after 2 or 3 years. I had a 'cheap' Japanese made cassette deck when I was a kid that I used and abused for years. Besides, there was a time when you could CHOOSE between a cheap, Japanese made product or a better (more expensive) North American made one. I challenge people on this board to go shopping (and not just Wal-Mart), but Sears and other places - entire segments of consumer products are EXCLUSIVELY made in China now. I have done so. I looked for weeks for my portable a/c unit and for a replacement for my crappy blender - everything is made over there now. Where is the choice in that? I would pay DOUBLE to buy a microwave or blender or whatever that was manufactured here. That is not an option. (I saw one Cuisinart food processor that was $230 and did a lot more than my lowly cooking required - it was made in the States. I said I would pay DOUBLE, not QUINTUPLE.)

It's a lot easier to fool your average soccer mom (like my mother who is absolutely gushing over her cousin's CR-V) then the guys/gals on a job site. It would take a lot of cojones to show up at a construction site in a Tundra, even up here in Canada where we love our Civics and Mazda 3s. I am surrounded by construction sites in my downtown apartment, and all I see are Rams, F-150s and Silverados. I saw an older Nissan small truck yesterday. The Tundras sit in Rosedale, next to the wife's Audi Quaatro.

Being as I am CANADIAN, and being as General Motors is listed on the TSX as a CANADIAN car company, then I am to believe that Oshawa is fully independent and not in any way owned by General Motors in Detroit? It so easy to see why we are in the mess that we are: lawyers and accountants can muddy the waters of any discourse or debate and it is in their best interests to do so. I have seen many, many simple issues get bled away and debated into oblivion by professional obfuscators who delight in twisting arguments to make them unnecessarily complex. Whipping out impressive charts and references to obscure links do not necessarily prove a point. For the record, I studied Japanese trade practices when I was at university, albeit that was a long time ago. How can it be explained away that MITI granted Toshiba and others sugar beet import quotas to Japan at a $1 a ton higher than the going rate? How can it be that companies like Toys R Us, or Houidille INternational (a Texas tool and die company) had visas cancelled by the Prime Minister's office? I am not intimidated, sir, but after posting on this site for 3 years, it gets a little wearisome to tackle every new Poster of the Month who comes along with too much time on their hands, who throws a lot of $20 words around (or in your case 15 pound words) and thinks that it is jolly good that we should have our countries bought up and exported to Asia and let our children pay for it. We only discuss the auto industry in detail because that is what this site is about, but it is not merely the auto industry that is at stake here. Japan does not practice open markets. China does not practice open markets. If we are so foolish as to think that China is 'allowing' our companies to transplant their for the over all good of the planet is stupid. Insanely stupid. Japan never even bothered to pretend foreign nationals could compete there. China is too clever to think we would be so stupid to go down that road again, so under the guise of 'partnerships' we are allowed to participate in their miracle economy. Strange how those 'partnerships' always involve the transfer of technology, no?

Exactly. I see calls for a growing backlash against Chinese imported products, but the scary truth is that many products are simply not made here any more. I searched for over a month to replace my 30 year old Airtemp window a/c unit for a North American made one, and simply could not do it. I had a Chinese made blender stop working after 3 years (replaced my mother's 35 year old blender), an RCA Cd clock radio (made in China) break down after 2 years and the switch on my Chinese made electric frying pan broke after 6 months (it still works, so far.) I don't care if the products are half the price of the ones they replaced: they are no bargain if they have to be replaced every 3-5 years. These type of appliances should last decades. But wait - there is hope. As of 2006, China surpassed the good ol' USA as the #1 emitter of carbon in the world. As of today, China emits 9% more carbon than the U.S. They have more coal-fired power plants than the U.S., UK and India combined. In fact, they have plans of building another 560 coal-fired plants by 2012. If only $45 a tonne of carbon dioxide (about the going rate in Europe right now) is levied against China, that would raise $55 billion from Chinese exports to the U.S. alone - equivalent to a 17% tarrif. Suddenly, I am seeing this whole carbon trading scheme in a new light. Could the greenies inadvertantly be scheming with the politicos to grab back our manufacturing plants? Think about it: coupled with triple digit oil prices (that greatly add to the cost of shipping across the Pacific) and suddenly cheap labour no longer is the over-riding factor in off-shoring factories. Carbon trading would be the over-riding factor. The Chinese have absolutely no interest in cutting emissions or worrying about such trivial things like fish hatcheries. They are decades behind us in those areas. I am looking at KYOTO and other proposals in a new light. Maybe there is hope after all.

It's 7 a.m. I just read the last page or so of discourse. I guess my past 35 years of education and experience has been wrong. I stand corrected. MITI does not exist. Japan throws its doors wide open to any and all competition. (I guess the people at Toys R Us were just plain incompetent when it took them 5 years to open their first store.) Japan builds the best cars on earth, which is why no GM, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Fiat or any other cars sell more than a handful in Japan. GM and Ford are purely American companies that build and sell cars only in America, not Canada, Germany, Brazil or the UK: those companies are separate entities that are not beholden in any way to Detroit or New York. The fact that a Ford Mustang (highly covetted in Japan) costs about DOUBLE what it does here, must be Detroit's fault, too. Have I left anything out? Ladies and gentlemen, please restrict ourselves to exclamations about the beauty and features on automotive products, we are too simple and uneducated to understand high finance and international trade. Japan Inc has found another convert to represent them.

It's odd: we both want Detroit to recover but we seem to look at the problem from diametrically opposed poles. Of course Detroit is not faultless! But America's hubris and belief that everybody wants to be like you is finally coming home to roost. Detroit ignored Japan Inc. at its own peril. Washington continues to ignore Japan Inc. at its own peril (and China, for that matter.) When Japan starting dumping (and I use that term literally) its cheap electronics on our shores 50 years ago, nobody cared. The Pengaton only raised its head once when it realized Zenith was about to close up shop, wondering where the future aircraft would get their flatscreens from. When will Washington and the American media finally wake up to the fact that the farm has been sold off, the mortgage is held by someone who does not have your interests at heart, and your children are going to be virtual slaves in the coming decades? Americans pride themselves on entrepreneurship and capitalism, assuming that it will always win the day. How often do the heads of Ford, Chrysler and GM ever get together? Never. How would that look? The WSJ would scream 'collusion' and 'conspiracy' from the rooftops. However, the heads of Mitsu, Nissan, Toyota and the gang practically lived together throughout the '80s when the assault on North America was being planned. Americans are big on laissez faire; Japan lives and dies by a controlled economy. China is following Japan's lead - and we are giving them our technology on a silver platter. Does Washington think China will be won over by Tupperware and McDonald'? Hell, you guys even finance the protection of Japan for the past 60 years, freeing up Japanese capital to undermine the American economy at every turn. I don't know. Perhaps we deserve what is coming. Darwin must be spinning in his grave. Perhaps every civilization is destined to rise, become fat, lazy and stupid, then fall. History keeps repeating itself. I thought that maybe, just maybe, our civilization would be smart enough to see this one coming. It isn't enough that Detroit has had to battle an indifferent Washington, jaded public, lazy media, a growing Japanese manufacturing collossus, but also the might of the Japanese government?

Over all, I like this vehicle. The one I sat in had a nice lay out inside, but the grey plastics were underwhelming. I wish the automotive world would get away from grey. I am sick of grey. Even in the Malibu, the grey interior is boring. The two-tone cocoa-cashmere and the ebony make the car look far more 'expensive.' Detroit should bring back COLOR. It would go along way to differentiating themselves from the boring imports. I don't think the plastics in the Dodge are all that bad, it is just the grey color makes them look cheap.

No, actually the union accused Toyota of fudging how many employees actually worked at the plant.

Y'know, my disagreements with Enzl over the media laziness and 'piling on' center on what I consider to be conspiracies such as this. When I was in University, even a casual investigation (and that was in the pre-internet world!) revealed hundreds of sources where MITI in Japan was guiding and propping up Japanese corporate raiding on North America. The information was easy to find and readily available. The fact that MSNBC throws out this quote from Jim Press so casually, without any real remark, shows how lazy the media is. This should be front page news, especially for the New York Times, which has often gone on the attack against Wagoner and GM. I wonder why the deafening silence? What Japan Inc has done on these shores over the past 30 years is nothing short of an act of war, IMO. Washington/Ottawa is allied with out lazy media, manipulated by a culture that understands us far more than we bother to understand them, and the recipe is a wholesale hollowing out of our manufacturing/technological base over the past 30 years. Coupling this with the scandalous cost over-runs and incompetent strategies in Iraq/Afghanistan (incidentally, being paid for with borrowed money by the same people who are hollowing out our manufacturing base!) and the resultant implosion of America's economy, the recipe is ripe for a 'correction' this contintent hasn't seen since 1929. Torn from the pages of yesterday's National Post, Wall Street has handed out 34,000 pink slips to Wall Street fat cats already, with another 20,000 expected soon, and that doesn't include the Bear Stearns employees, who are expected to add another 7,000 job losses to those numbers. So, the highly vaunted shift from nuts and bolts to paper shuffling that has so enamored us for the past 20 years, glossed over the blue collar job losses and paved the way for a BMW and Mercedes invasion of your two coasts, is now coming to an end. I have said this before and I will say it again: you cannot eat paper. If that is all America (and Canada) can produce, then we are mortgaging our future - literaly. None of this is recent news, it is just that while 'happy days' were here, nobody has cared to listen. Hell, Lee Iaccoca bitched about the free ride MITI and the Japanese government were giving Toyota and the gang back in the early '80s! But the WSJ and other learned media outlets would prefer to dismiss him than look into his allegations.

Any news on the upgrades to the Aveo drivetrain are good news, indeed. I will uncork a bottle of champagne when the hoary 4 spd (non-GM) tranny is gone. The shifts are terrible and undoubtedly the fuel mileage suffers because of this travesty of a transmission.

Hmmm, let me see - how did I come up with mine? Hmmm. That's a hard one. Well, I am in the car business and my last name is exactly the same as my name here, except one letter is different. Guess I was born for this............... Oh, and I use DirkDiggler on other sites............oops, was I supposed to say that?

Ah, yes - I remember my TWENTIES: GM had 42 % market share, the Civic was a cheap car and dinosaurs ruled the earth! Remember: THESE ARE THE GOOD OL' DAYS! Have a good one.

Well, clearly that program isn't working! Even with the millions of Chinese emigrating out of China every year, their population is climbing by more than a one child per couple would indicate. However, at least Beijing is trying to do something. The situation in India is far more dire - for them and for us.

Well, you can speak from your experience, and I will speak from mine. I have witnessed the distortions and untruths the media publishes every day. I am not talking just about General Motors here. We pride ourselves with a honest and open press, but these people are human as well. More importantly, their bosses have agendas and things to prove. Ever hear of the axiom, "If the facts do not conform to the theory, then the facts must be altered?" I have lived that, sir. I have sat through trials where the police and Crown (in your case the DA) have lied through their teeth, the media have shaken their heads in shame but reported every word as fact. I do not wish to hijack this thread, but I have witnessed the lies and distortions. I trust the media as much as I do politicians in general. That is why I would trust open forums like C&G more than I would Reuters or the WSJ. This piling on mentality sickens me. I have witnessed major newspapers (the Toronto Sun, for example) go from rabidly anti-gay (to the point where they were trying to set-up those of us who were working on a gay youth hotline in the late '70s) to employing openly gay reporters today. I do not need a lecture on the lack of bias in the media. It has ruined many careers and people that I know. Unfortunately, too many people actually believe what they see on TV, or read in the paper. It isn't that it is all crap, but you need to sift through more than one source of information to form one's own opinion. I have quite a few press clippings and email arguments with editors of the Toyota Star over their biased reporting, even with Ellen Roseman, their 'unbiased' business reporter who went ballistic over Hyundai lying about their horsepower ratings several years ago, yet ignoring Honda and Toyota doing far worse with theirs. I read Toronto's 3 dailies every day and my God, you would swear you were reading three different versions of the same event in most cases!

There are a lot of gorgeous Citroens and Renaults in Brazil. I've seen a hot looking convertible down there, too. Especially in Florianoplis. Maybe with the rise in the Canadian dollar and rumors about Volvo pulling out of Canada, there will be room for the French again.

But why is gas not $1.50? The War in Iraq? That assclown in Venezuela? Partially. But why is the Canadian dollar gone crazy? The world has waken up to the fact that China, India and Brazil are going to need another Saudi Arabia EACH in the next 20 years to keep up with demand. The Chinese have every right to expect the same standard of living as us, but I don't believe they have the right to breed like rats. Every time I watch a program about these 'developing' countries, the over-riding sense I leave with is that they MUST get their populations under control. We North Americans may consume energy like crazy (and there certainly is room for improvement in that department), but China only has to acheive 25% of the standard of living of the U.S. to surpass it in consumption of resources. What would happen if China reached 50%? Instead, we in the West like to tsk tsk and flagelate ourselves for our consumption, but ours won't mean a hill of beans in 20 years. No, we'd rather blame GM, Lutz and ourselves for all the worlds evils.

And you think $1,000 profit on a $22k vehicle is acceptable, do you? That's not even 5%. Ever see a 50% off sale at Sears or your favorite furniture store? An entire 'for profit' cottage industry has sprung up (mostly in the U.S) to tell the consumer what they should pay for a vehicle, yet the average family will blow more in a month on groceries (where the margins are upwards of 100%) than what they were 'ripped off' for their vehicle purchase. I dunno, but if I was going to spend $5 million, it would not be to open a dealership where I would stand to NET maybe $300 on a $22k vehicle (after you pay the carrying charges, clean up, lot damage, Purolator, sales commission and all the other incidentals that go into the sales process) If you want selection, free coffees, loaner vehicles, weekend test drives and all the other frills, then you gotta pay for it. Otherwise, you get left with Wal-Mart.

Y'know, the real culprit here is not Lutz, General Motors, the United States or even global warming: the real culprit is certain countries (and they know who they are) penchant for spitting out babies. Seven billion, breathing souls on this planet is the real culprit. I saw a show last night about the Shasta dam in California. It was a well balanced show, doing a lot of boo-hooing over 150 'native Americans' and their rights to their sacred grounds along the Sacramento River, versus the 50 million Californians expected to move to live in that State over the next 25 years. That is the real problem. We cannot simply pave over the entire planet. Since nobody wants to live on top of the Cascade mountains, we have to learn to grow a society without doubling our population every 50 years. Think about it: if we had frozen India's population at it's 1960 level of 500 million, China's at 600 million and the U.S.' at 200 million, there is no reason on earth we couldn't all be driving around in 6.2 litre, fire breathing Corvettes and Escalades. (Now, I know this is the coffee talking!) Instead, the greenies are going to force us all into Mumbai-like slums and jam us into Tokyo-style subway trains because nobody has the cajonies to start educating people to KEEP IT IN THEIR PANTS.

It's really fascinating how the car industry around the world has evolved. Economics have always been at the forefront, obviously. Although there clearly is a need for change, it isn't the size of vehicles that has me worried, it is the insistence by the far left that the automobile is the scourge of the planet and those people will not rest until we are all driving bicycles or squished into buses. I live 3 blocks from a subway station, and my place of work is between two subway stations, yet I will never take transit to work. This is partially because Toronto's transit system has gone from one of the best in the world to one of the worst in the world in a generation, but also because I have no interest in having someone who hasn't had a bath in a week shove their armpit in my face while blasting [insert your most loathed music form here] on their iPod. Toyota is not alone in foisting 'soul-less' appliances on the world, they are probably just the best at it. Somewhere between the anarchy that has become Mumbai and the hedonism of greater Los Angeles has to exist an answer that humans as an advanced species can cope with.

The media creates the news, they don't report it. I remember reading an article serveral years ago where an Israeli General complained that every time the Palestinians had a peaceful rally the Israeli military was obliged to escort the international media to the sensitive areas to 'cover' the peaceful rally. Then, inevitably, once the Palestinians saw the Israeli trucks, the peaceful rally turned into a brawl, which the media dutifully reported. Too much information can be a bad thing. It can be a dangerous thing in the hands of the stupid. People respond in a mob mentality. If the media reports that banks and brokerages are doing badly, guess what: banks and brokerages do worse. Iaccoca talks about that in his first book, that the news of Chrysler's ill financial health in '79/'80 nearly put the company under because customers stayed away in droves - at a time when Chrysler could have used a bit of loyalty. Look at the mess we are seeing on the pages of the financial press today. I just laugh at it, because I understand the way the media thinks, but how many people in Middle America are stuffing their life savings under the mattress because of the doom and gloom press? All around us, we are hearing the 'shocked' outrages of the financial media over the collapsing mortgage market. Hello! Wake up. What idiot couldn't have seen that one coming? And now the outraged media are demanding boycotts of the Olympics. Doesn't anyone find the timing of the unrest in Tibet, which has been going on for -what, 50 years, a little suspect? The IOC gave the Olympics to Beijing - that, in of itself a highly political move. Now whose agenda has changed? The WallStreet Journal is most likely one of the 'better' publications out there, but who really knows where their marching orders come from.

Japan Inc will only build enough factories here to APPEAR domestic. They learned from the beatings they took in the early '80s. As I've said, MITI is very clever and orchestrates everything Japan Inc. does overseas. The one thing that Japan Inc does a lot better than Detroit is crank up the PR machine.

People will get used to almost anything. Witness the explosion of Chevy Corsas, Fiat Unos and Ford Kas all over Brazil - where they are paying about $8 a gallon. Still, I have to agree that we North Americans have piss poor rail service, and buses are mostly for the peasants, so it is the highway we go. I personally have driven across this continent 3 times. I've been to the west coast, the East, driven almost to James Bay (Cochrane is as far as the roads go, then you have to take the rail) and Florida countless times. I can't say I would do any of those trips in a Ka. It may also be an age thing. I didn't mind traveling 10k km in my '82 Rampage with no a/c and a 4 spd manual, but then I was 24 and carefree. The next trip I made to the west coast was in my '91 Caprice barge - that was a much better trip. You can actually witness the transition in progress, if you watch the progression from the U.S. (big, gas guzzlers, but the people have money, for now), Canada (medium gas guzzlers, but we have the taxes), Europe (small, fast cars because there must be somewhere better than HERE), and Brazil (tiny tin cans that can barely get out of their own way.) Let's hope there is something better on the horizon so we don't have to drive cars like this Toyota concept.

Here's a hint: get used to it. One of the first victims of 'choice' is selection. When GM dealers were making a ton of money, they would carry 40 or 50 of everything. Now that the consumer has the 'choice' of shopping Subaru, Mistubishi, Kia, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, VW, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Chrysler, Mazda, Jaguar - did I miss any? Well, you get the point. Every dealer will inevitably carry less. I've seen dealers that used to carry an inventory of 4-500 vehicles now only carry 120 or so. Spread across a dozen or models, that can get very, very thin. It costs a lot of money to inventory a $20k vehicle, and since you Americans love to pay 'invoice,' who do you think is going to pay the carrying charges? Not GM, that is for sure.

Not speaking specifically about the Wall Street Journal, journalists are a bunch of lazy sods. They also have to tow the party line of their employers, or find themselves out on the street. I could list dozens of examples of not just poor journalism, but out and out LIES and fabrications. There is the subtle tainted approach 'Toyota, the world's largest auto manufacturer by market valuation,' to out and out bull$h! (read CR retractions about the Avalon and Tundra. I could use an example, known locally here in Toronto about a certain 'shoe shine boy' who was brutally murdered a number of years ago, yet none of the local media bothered to point out that he was a male prostitute. Kinda makes the story a little less poignant, no? On a good day, I put journalist's trustworthiness a notch above politicians. Both have axes to grind and agendas to push. An informed person will read about a news story from several sources and then judge for themselves. I have been saying for a couple years now that the fat cats on Wallstreet are taking us all for a ride, and now I have been proven right. The pain is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I mean whomever thought up the concept of zero down mortgages with no payback should be charged with treason. What a concept!