2QuickZ's

I love the 159. I would consider buying one for sure if the pricing was right. I was in Italy about a year ago and they use them as cop cars in Rome. Meanest looking cop cars ever!

I saw one last week at a local dealership. I honestly don't remember what it shifts too but I do distinctly remember that I wasn't remotely impressed with it and wouldn't pay a penny extra to get that color.

In some cases that is true but definitely not in all. That is the whole reason Toyota finally had to issue a service campaign and eventually perform a recall. After initially blaming the owners for the problem (a common Toyota theme when there is a problem?), they eventually had to own up to it when people started having sludge issues and were able to prove they had the vehicle dealer serviced by the recommended service intervals. In typical Toyota fashion, they never did admit to a design flaw.With all these "little" problems popping up with Toyota products combined with their response to these problems it has me wondering if Toyota is turning into another Mitsubishi and is sweeping problems under the rug!

What am I missing? That list seems to imply that the 6 speed auto is only available with high feature V6. I thought they were going to be the first ones with a 6 spd auto hooked up to a 4 cyl.? Maybe I'm reading something wrong.

If it stickers for under $25,000 "well equipped" then this may just be the vehicle that replaces my Saab 9-2x.

The headlights remind me of this:

Am i missing something? There seems to be a lot of references to the Camry being a "two mode" hybrid. I thought the Camry and Prius were just "hybrids" and the difference was the two mode hybrid had two electric motors and a regular hybrid only had one. Perhaps I am confused. Well, I was kind of right. One mode = one planetary gear set, two mode = two planetary gear sets. At least so says the always reliable New York Times : Hybrid Article

Every other car maker on the face of the earth "hand fits" all the interior panels before sending the car off for marketing photo's. Apparently GM doesn't play that game because the fit and finish of my wife's early production Aura is better than what they show in the picture. Agreed. The gray just doesn't match with the brown. It should have been tan/brown. My wife liked the Morrocan brown seats but the door panel inserts and armrests look even cheaper in brown plus we didn't want the ugly plood so we got the ebony leather with silver trim.It never ceases to amaze me how GM can get so much right but still has to throw in those cheap, careless details to remind you that it is a GM product. Very disappointing.

You do see these things all the time in Michigan. I think it is because there are so many GM employees around and they are giving insane deals to GM employees. I think the last one I heard about was a $42K 9-7X was going for $269/month with no money down if you had Saab lease loyalty. Even once you add on taxes and consider the $1000 or so you will spend out of pocket for acquisition fee, etc., that is still damn cheap.

No, they aren't. There are no sensors back there. Think about how fast an airbag deploys. Inflate and deflate all happen in fractions of a second unless they are rollover protection airbags that are designed to stay inflated longer. The physics of a rear end collision would have the occupants moving rearward, away from a front airbag upon impact. Deploying them would serve no purpose. You could maybe argue side impact bags should deploy if the rear end collision was from certain angles but they don't.The best was the Geo Prism (read Toyota Corolla - it was a company car) I was driving when I got into an accident on the interstate. The first impact I took was an offset frontal similar to how IIHS tests (a van spun out right in front of me with no time to react). Because the impact was above the bumper, my frontal airbags never deployed!

Just this morning I read that Toyota was offering as much as $7,000 in incentives on the brand new Tundra! I don't know if that is true or not so I need to check it out. If so, that is amazing!!!

Sadly, the 4 speed model is probably geared more toward fleet sales. Hopefully that isn't the case. I was beginning to think GM had figured out that if you only sell your old, stripped down, outdated POS's to the daily rental fleets that consumers who's only recent GM driving experience was in a rental car would think all their vehicles are old, outdated, POS's.

My wife had a 9-3 linear and we both really liked it. We drove it from Michigan to Florida twice. It was a great cruiser and very comfortable on long trips. It also got excellent gas mileage. She averaged 26 mpg in mixed driving and it regularly got 32+ mpg on highway trips. It was also very cheap to insure. I say go for it!!! That's too funny! My wife and I had the exact same combination until her lease ran out on her 9-3 and she replaced it with an Aura.

I know this will wind up in the Silverado and Sierra but I hope it also winds up in the Avalanche, Colorado/Canyon and at least the STS and CTS for car platforms. I guess we'll see. I would hope since they've gone to the trouble of making it DOHC that they would at least give it a decent RPM range.

You want to talk about dumping cars into fleets, take a look at the Grand Prix! No way the sales went up 71% based on retail sales alone.

My wife and I were in Italy about 6 months ago and I was surprised at all the cars over there that I liked. I think my favorite is the Alfa Romeo 159. They had them as police cars in Rome and they looked bad ass!

My wife will NEVER control my automobile purchases and she knows it! Hell, both of my cars have manual transmissions and she can't drive a car with a manual trans. Still, I don't dictate what cars she will purchase either. I try to guide her towards certain vehicles (she trusts my opinion) but ultimately its up to her what she gets. That's why I was glad when she decided on an Aura!

I live in SE lower Michigan so my view is definitely skewed from the rest of the U.S. as far as what I see driving around. You see quite a few Aura's around here, though I only recall seeing one other one on the road before we picked ours up in November. Still, I too am shocked they aren't selling that well on a national level. I'm sure part of it is a smaller dealer network and part of it is L-x00 owners who wanted a new car before the Aura came out wound up in Camry's or Accords. Hopefully when they are ready to dump those cars they will come back to the Saturn fold. We love our Aura.

I agree. GM has way too many brands for their current market share to justify. The problem is, it cost's them way too much money to discontinue a brand. Closing out Oldsmobile proved that. That could be part of the reason why they are combining Buick/Pontiac/GMC dealerships. It wouldn't be that difficult to shutdown Buick if their were no longer any stand alone stores.

I just had the emblem on my 9-2X replaced for the same reason. The dealer said it is super common on any Saab built since 2004. You'd think GM would have figured out to replace it with something better by now but I guess not. Surprisingly, it never happened on the 2005 9-3 we had leased for my wife. It made it the whole 2 year lease with the original emblem.

So they've killed the Lucerne CXL with the V8 and they are still soldiering on with the 3.8l V6 and 4 spd auto? Just when you think GM is starting to figure stuff out they continue to do stupid stuff like this. They almost had a 35 year old sold on a Lucerne as his next family car (to replace a modified Saab 9-2X Aero no less!) but they still can't manage to figure out they need the high feature V6 and 6 speed auto in the thing before people stop considering the damn thing an old mans car. To top it off, you can now only get the V8 in the top of the line model? Too much for me. I guess I'll have to find something else to buy and just enjoy the wifes 2007 Saturn Aura XR for now.