CARBIZ

Good points, but putting comparing Audi to GM is not realistic: Audi doesn't make $15k cars. Nobody denies the Cavalier was cheap in the negative sense. Reliable? Yes. Rugged? Yes. Good looking? Subjective. Exuded quality? Flat out no. Audi has done a very good job on the last two points. Kia builds junk and crap, but they never pretended otherwise. You takes your chances with their products, but they advertise them cheap - and who reads the fine print on the warranties anyway? Ditto for Hyundai, although at least with them (and let's not forget they are one and the same company as Kia now) their vehicles look nicer than Kia's. VW, I cannot explain. Perhaps the hippies that bought them 30 years ago are still high, I don't know. Charitably, they've built quirky cars in the past, their reliability has been spotty for decades - about the only thing I can say they've done well is that 'appearance' of quality. That seems to be what the car mags live and die for: if a writer can fit his tiny weener in the seems of the door he goes ballistic. VW has always understood that. My experience with the, ahem, girls I know is that they wouldn't know a piston from a dildo, so they will buy whatever they think is 'cool:' the Mini, the M5, Subaru (for the men), etc. They don't give a damn if the car starts, as long as it looks cool on their way to the wine bar.

Step aside, girl - I'm packin' my bags and I'll be there in the mornin'! Perhaps it is because I am so o-v-e-r the scene here: it's been 30 years of parties and bars for this one ( I was an earlier bloomer ). Toronto's scene was far more dynamic in the '80s when there was a big warehouse supply here, real estate was affordable and taxes/insurance were cheaper. All the old warehouse space we used to party in 25 years ago is now $500k condos! My buds and I used to have heated debates about where to go because there were so many fun clubs back then. Toronto has really become anal again. They are 'gentrifying' the downtown and - get this, people in the Entertainment District are bitching about the noise and parties! Let's not forget the world class traffic, $7.50 a half hour parking, $4 a gallon gas and the highest insurance rates in North America - well, you get the picture. Frankly, Montreal is more fun. My peer group has all become 'bears' (we used to call it fat and hairy, but now they have a name for it) and go to leather bars. The twinks all go with their straight friends to the straight clubs. All that is left are a few crowded, noisy bars on Church St. (made famous in the Queer as Folk series). There is only one mega-gay club left in the city and it's half empty on Saturdays! Not to mention Canadian booze is $7 a glass!

So much of what I see municipal politicans doing these days is obfuscation to counter their own incompetent decisions in the past: why would storm sewers flush directly into the lakes/ocean anyway? With all the chemicals and crap on our sidewalks/streets these days they should be treated first, then returned to the water table. This is one area where Toronto has seen the light and even recently built a huge catch basin in the west end so that during a storm the water would pour into the basin from the area streets and collect there until the treatment plant(s) can catch up. Politicians of all strips are blaming everything on progress so they can spend our tax dollars on what they (and their pet lobbyists) think is important.

The BF and I will probably be spending the night, shirtless, dancing til dawn at the only gay dance club left in the city. Or not. I don't much care this year. It's going to take more than a couple dozen drinks to make me forget how bad this past couple months has been.

Still, the GLBT community is one of the most fractious, 'trendy' communities out there. Nobody knows lables like we do, and that is the trouble. Imported wine, imported designer labels, trips to Greece - these are the 'entitled' bragging rights of the affluent gay people I know. If given a choice between a Sky or M-5, most will default to the Mazda, not knowing a damned thing about it. Besides, most gays live in urban areas and don't own cars. I would challenge this with a big 'why bother?" It's going to take more than cute advertising to correct that. I personally ran ads in a local gay newspaper for 6 months, about 8 years ago, and did not get one single contact from it. In fact, truth be told, a few years ago there were many car ads, even from the likes of BMW, Acura and others in the local gay press: it's all gone now, which leads me to believe they couldn't produce results either.

Not an entirely implausible idea, cire, although Renault and AMC tried it already. On the outside, the 'merger of equals' sounds like a great idea and each company brings its own strengths to the table; however, mergers have been historically unsuccessful. Renault has a lot of interesting products in South America, and as much as I'd personally hate to compete against them, the concept you're proposing makes sense - ON PAPER. However, there are probably too many egos/petty fiefdoms to be conquered to make it work. After all, I remember thinking a decade ago how the Daimler/Chrysler merger made sense and we all know what a disaster that turned out to be.

The fuselage era Plymouths were my favorite, too. Unfortunatley, in badge engineering run amok, Plymouth got the busy end of the stick with respect to the interiors: their dashes were FUGLY and cheap looking, compared to what Chev and Ford were doing. Sales-wise, the market seemed to agree, because Plymouth's full-sized offerings peaked in '65 or so, then plummeted, while the fuselage Chryslers sold very sell for the first couple years. I think Dodge and Plymouth scared off a lot of potential customers with their wierd looking designs in the early '60s (not to mention the disappearance of true full sized cars in '62). We had a '71 Duster in the family, but like Honda of today it was an engine wrapped around a mediocre body. They had horrible rust and paint problems. Good looking cars, though, IMO.

My first 3 vehicles were Dodge, so I've always had a soft spot for Chrysler. My dad always bought 300s in the '60s when Chrysler engineering was top notch. I don't hope or wish Chrysler would die, but we are seeing a repeat of the mid-50s crunch in more ways than one: too many brands, lacklustre economy, fracturing markets. Brands have to go, and since the Japanese 5 are protected at home, it will have to be one of the Detroit 3. If GM 'absorbed' Chrysler, kept Jeep and maybe the minivans, it would be fine by me. GM could use a 5% market share bump right about now and maybe then Chrysler could live on in memory. However, if Tata or another foreign manufacturer grabbed Chrysler, then conceivably GM could be the one going down and Chrysler would be just another foreign-owned entity anyway. Lesser of two evils, IMO.

... and your experience in the car business is exactly what? My nephew told me he saw Santa Clause last week, does that prove he exists? There is anecdotal evidence (example: I see two rusty Civics in Ontario) and there is good anecdotal evidence (I see rusty Civics in Ontario AND Indiana). I've worked at 2 different dealers and for 11 years. I don't know everything, but I have a keen eye and I travel a lot, plus I actually like my job so I investigate all aspects of it. I also read quite a bit and my natural curiousity has kept me in the car biz loop all my life. Plus, I've haunted C&G and other car forums for years, absorbing this and ignoring that. You don't have to agree with me, and your service advisor may even be the one on the planet who does give a rat's ass about sales in the front for all I know, but read people's posts ove a span of years and you will get a feeling for who knows what they are talking about and who are just wasting pixels. :AH-HA_wink:

Am I the only person seeing Civics with the rear bumper hanging off where it attaches to the wheel well? It's a common sight in Ontario. Sorry, but the Civic is a good engine with a crappy car wrapped around it. The bodies do not hold up that well.

Don't forget that Chrysler was in the process of killing the Desoto brand as well. The mid-priced market was flooded with too many offerings. The final Edsel was a barely warmed over 1960 Ford. Ford's styling in the late '50s was restrained, relative to GM and Chrysler's offerings of the era; however, the Mercury and Edsels were heavy without being balanced, IMO. Similar in the way that the Plymouths were more balanced looking than the odd looking Dodges of the same era. Oldsmobile and Buick were emerging unto themselves, which put a lot of pressure on Mercury, Edsel, Desoto and even Chrysler itself.

We've already been told that production of the Camaro has been pushed back to mid-March. Notgood.com. I have one on order and the lady needs it by April 1 when her Grand Prix lease is up.

MYEH, being able to steer is highly over-rated.

I've made the remark to our District Manager that if the Traverse had come out in '01, instead of the TB, Toyota would be filing for Chapter 11, not the other way around. It's not that the TB was a BAD vehicle, it's just that it never sweat the details. In '01 it was middle of the road, but then was quickly surpassed by other products. The Traverse sweat the details, but in this market it is going to get largely ignored, I am afraid.

Well, that service writer must be a genius, then. These guys rarely venture into the show room and really don't have a clue what is selling or isn't. Mostly, they are programmed to crow the company line. Think about it: how would he know? Just because I walk through service twice a day and see a lof of (insert model name here), doesn't mean that model has a lot of problems. For two months, we had no Aveos, because there was a work stoppage in Korea. Now we have 40, but I guess the service guys a few months ago would have said,'we can't keep 'em on the lot' and he'd be telling the truth. I'm not knocking the service guys, but most of them are just drones. They write their orders, sell whatever the company is hocking that month and move onto the next customer. Nothing wrong with that, that's just what they do. Actually, the same can be said of most of the salespeople I"ve met, too. They don't know or care what is going on in the back. Just saying, is all.

too much coke?

Gutter? My mind is in the sewer - I aspire to climb into the gutter one day.

Nor to the Bentley Arnage!

??? The Equinox is bigger than the Escape; the Traverse is bigger than the Highlander. Not sure what your point is. I would have hoped for a smaller Equinox, personally. We sold a lot of Trackers, once upon a time. I'm all for fuel mileage improvements. Didn't one of the websites say that passenger volume (whatever the hell that is) was lost because the windshield is more raked? Other than magazines, I don't think the public gives a crap about statistics. They will sit in the vehicle, drive it and decide for themself if it suits them. The point is, the vehicle has to look nice enough for them to even bother going that far. The new 'Nox certainly addresses that, IMO. I'm sure we lost sales to the Escape with the current Nox, but the back seat certainly kicks ass.

.... oh, they can come in chaps, as well as skirts. :AH-HA_wink:

Jim: PUT DOWN THE BONG!

+ 1 This is a very serious problem, IMO. It's bad enough we have to worry about losing sales of the Equinox to, say, the Escape or Tuscon - but we have to worry about the Torrent, too. It's absurd. GM is the only company that does this, and although it may have made sense when GM had 40% market share and people waited breathlessly for every new GM model launch, 90% of today's motoriing public doesn't GIVE A RAT'S ASS. They wouldn't know a Pontiac from a Chev if you stamped the bowtie on their forehead! I'd like to see GM do a study of how many customers they lose because of the tug-of-war between Chev-Pontiac dealers desperate for a sale, trashing each other's vehicle when it's the same friggin' vehicle. I don't know how many times I've had customers say 'oh, the salesguy over at Pontiac said the G5 had more [fill in the blank] than the Cobalt.' What am I supposed to say? No, the Pontiac is a POS, buy the Cobalt? Or do I laugh and say it's the same car, built on the same line: do you like green dash lights or orange? Either way, it creates confusion, uncertainty, and I'll bet a lot of customers just throw up their hands and buy a Hyundai instead.

Wall Street is closer to Rockefeller Center than Detroit, I guess. Cozy cousins? The media is lazy, plain and simple. There is no budget for actual research anymore. They're all too busy looking for that 5 second sound bite. Any idiot could smell the stench in the banking industry - it could be smelled for blocks, but they're all so cozy down there. All these debt swaps and asset backed crap were all about the commissions. These f'ing clowns laughed all the way to the bank - literally. I have zero respect for accountants and lawyers - and this is why. They bamboozle us with total BS and rob the public blind, yet we keep going back for more. The banking industry is the wild, wild west, yet we've been convinced that 'this isn't the twenties.' Yeah, right.

I'll keep that under advisement, but I've found that when travelling in Brazil with a native, one gets treated completely differently. Downtown Rio is pretty scary, too, but there's something about the firm rebuff from someone with a Brazilian accent (the BF) that commands respect. 'Gringos' (me), attract attention, but I tan quickly and let the BF do all the talking.