cmattson

I'm not sure it will sell like crazy for two reasons: 1) Nissan did this last year. 300hp + 9,500+ lbs. It didn't turn Detroit's world on edge. It garned some sales; but it didn't exactly deliver a "shotgun at point blank range to Detroit's chest" as some were quoted as saying. 2) Toyota has baggage. Yup--I said it. Just like Detroit does with cars. It's not quite so bleak, but it exists. Toyota, for the last decade-plus has advertised their T100, and then their Tundra as full-size. Chevrolet, not Toyota, has the title for the longest-lasting/most-durable + the best resale value. Chevy's '06 5.3l had virtually the same hp, way better torque, and still got better gas mileage. Tundra's legacy, to date, is that it's small, underpowered, and not as fuel-conscious. 3) Pickup truck owner loyalty is greater than car owner loyalty. That translates into Toyota/Nissan/Honda having a harder time picking up auto sales in the truck market than the domestics do in the car market. 4) What does the Toyota provide you that a current domestic cannot? Greater reliability? Even that's questionable nowadays. Matter of fact, when it comes to heavy-duty pickup trucks, Toyota doesn't have any repuation in this arena (within the US). What did Toyota do better? Fit and finish? From the looks of it, that isn't going to be a distinguishing factor anymore with the interior of the latest F150's and Silverado's. I'm very curious to see how this affects Nissan Titan sales. I suspect that this isn't going to help them at all. With the Tundra's debut, I wouldn't be surprised to see their sales be fairly stagnant . What I can eventually see happening here is this: ever-diminishing profit margin. Toyota is going to agressively pursue this market; with prices and features that Detroit is going to have to match. That means diminished profit margins for everyone; something Detrioit can ill afford. That's the real concern with the Tundra. Lastly: that gear shifter looks like it came out of Ford's part bin. I know all manufacturers do this, but when you see something this obvious, it just screams "rip-off", "copy-cat", or "wannabe".

Oops.. my bad.. looks like I misread. My sincerest apologies!

You need to take a look at the whole context. Saying.. ..is an incomplete look at things. These news sources didn't run the cartoon because it was inflammatory -- largely because of the attention & violence it has brought elsewhere in the world. Back when Egyptian media ran the cartoon, that wasn't the case. Like it or not, the western media outlet is going to be held under a different microscope than that of a native, muslim media outlet. Arent we skeptical of Al Jahera? Sure we can point to deceptions and lies by Al Jahera and say "they aren't trustworthy".. but turn it around. What must muslims think when they see a Jeff Gannon (supposed reporter, actual planted partisan bobo) with White House clearance, lobbing softball questions to our President? How about the Dan Rather fiasco? How about the numerous news people that have now been caught as getting payoffs to provide a pro-Bush viewpoint? Each one of these incidents undermine our own media credibility throughout the world. What we view as right and trustworthy has been defined by our culture -- our upbringing; and it taints what we read & see and how we react to what we read & see. That's just being a realist.

According to Edmunds, the Camry will still have the 192hp 3.0l V6: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Autos...rticleId=108838

The '07 Camry will have a 2.4l, a 192-hp 3.0l, and the new 268hp engine.. so how is that different from an Impala/Grand Prix? If GM wants to provide their hot engine in a package that gives you a sportier suspension, bigger tires, etc (& presumably command a higher price accordingly), then who can fault them? Every car manufacturer packages their vehicles differently.

The gov't could seize it only if GM weren't paying the minimum into the fund. The gov't allows corporations to "underfund" these pension plans -- allowing suspected investments to make up the difference -- which is why some of that number is a bit inflated. GM's got a whole division of investment brokers whose job it is to place GM's money in a fashion that it exceeds what the market is doing. There was a nice article on it not too long ago.. I can't remember where I read it. It was quite interesting. GM's had this strategy for a long time & their return on investment was staggeringly good--way better than the average. I'll see if I can remember where I saw it..

I can see where Flint is coming from, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. First point of contention: Gee, it's not like GM hasn't had a 280hp Grand Prix gracing the showrooms for a number of years now, or a 303hp Impala this year. Apparently it's only newsworthy/noteworthy when a Asian make does it. See the Ridgeline's "innovative" dual-hinge tailgate for more details... Now, back to Flint's main point. I don't think that GM's going to build/design an entire platform for just the Camaro. GM's too focused on cutting core costs to pull something that foolheartedly. I think GM can build an affordable series of RWD platformed vehicles - with the appropriate reduction in FWD vehicles. Take the LaCrosse (really, I mean it -> take it) and replace it with a RWD lux sedan. Now you've given Buick some segmentation between the LaCrosse and the Lucerne! The GTO could go to this new platform, but it would seem like (yet another) Pontiac-rebadge-of-a-Chevrolet.. so I'd be hesitant to do this..? The GTO served it's purpose: it held it's own as an affordable, RWD coupe until the Camaro got to market. Let it retire already; besides wouldn't it just directly compete against the Camaro? Why engineer/develop/build a competitor to your own entrant? Seems like a waste of money. If the RWD platform was flexible enough, you could move the Impala to it as a mid-size sedan RWD. That would make a total of 3 North American vehicles: a Buick sedan, a Chevrolet Camaro, a Chevrolet Impala sedan. That would seem adequate for cost-sharing. If you wanted to water it down one step further, you could make a G8 sedan for Pontiac, but I'd think you just be stealing sales from the Impala.. so why bother. Additionally, you could continue Saturn's conquest-sales strategy and then Saturn could get a coupe or sedan. The difference here is that Saturn's target audience is conquest (I'd never buy a domestic vehicle) crowd.. who are somewhat ignorant to the fact that GM owns Saturn. Those people would never bother looking on a Chevrolet/Buick/Pontiac sales lot -- so giving Saturn one wouldn't exactly cannibalize other brand sales.

Would it be possible to keep the solid rear axle and have fold-flat 3rd row seats? Envision a cargo/storage well AFTER the solid rear axle (in between the axle assembly and the rear bumper. Pretty much where the gas tank/spare wheel sits. You'd need to move the gas tanks forward (between the frame rails, towards the middle of the vehicle). This is doable. You'd need a longer filler tube, but wtf. A side benefit would be that the weight of the gasoline would be centrally located in the vehicle; helping stability (which shouldn't be a concern on a vehicle weighing 5500lbs to start with, but again, wtf). The exhaust pipe would also need special routing (off to the side, hug the frame rail for instance). Now picture a rail & hinge assembly. Rather and just folding flat, the seat would need to travel backwards, along the rail - far enough to move it past the rear axle - and then it would fold flat into the cargo well. It would be tight, but why wouldn't it be doable? It would cost GM some engineering dollars, but it would then have the best of both worlds: the solid rear axle for towing and the instant-storage of spare seats for cargo. I'm not sure the Tahoe would have enough length to make this doable -- the I think the Suburban would; which would be okay in my book. It would give something additional for the Suburban to differenciate itself with the Tahoe. Thoughts?

Almost all of the article's written about GM going bankrupt seem to have stemmed from investment/money publications. Since then, other auto-publications picked up on and have floated the idea. Seeing how several big-name airlines have been able to shed their pension obligations (to the US taxpayers, thank you very little), I think they are making the easy and obvious connection that GM will inevitably have to do the same. Being where the stories have originated, this is looked at solely from a beneficial-to-stock-price type of perspective. I'm not putting myself in the same camp. GM's very different from the airlines in several ways: GM can reduce it's labor costs. You've all seen the numbers of how many GM employed 10-15 years ago and how many they employ today. GM's reduced its expensive American workforce by 40-50%. GM CAN move labor/part sourcing offshore. Take a look at an airline. Outsourcing pilot/baggage-handler/flight-attendants isn't an option. The only thing available to an airline to outsource is the mechanic duties. How feasible is it to fly an airplane to a cheap-labor foreign nation to have routine maintenance accomplished? At today's fuel prices? GM didn't go throw the leveraged-takeover bs that several airlines went through in the eighties/nineties. Take a look at NWA: they acquired several billion in debt from the take-over of Al Chechi. When times were booming, they didn't seek to pay-down their debt-load; instead the companies executors took home big fat bonuses. The union labor didn't enjoy any of the boom period because they had agreed on a 10-year wage freeze (prior to the boom the company was struggling under that debt-load and bankrupcy was looming). While GM's pension-debt is astonishingly large, it's future money. It's money GM doesn't need to come up with tomorrow, or next week. As long as GM can right-itself relatively soon, it can work-its way out of it's pension debt -- especially since GM's American workforce is significantly smaller. Bankrupcy doesn't work the same for a auto-manufacturer as it does for an airline. Airlines work with a hub-and-spoke type of system. NWA has hubs in Detroit and Mpls. Detroit and Mpls enjoy direct flights to almost anywhere. Anybody else using NWA will (most likely) have a stop-over in a hub-city. NWA dominates the airport here in Mpls. There is virtually nobody else. They own the majority of the gates here. Matter of fact, within the last year, they were after the governor here to give them *every* gate at the terminal & kick the other airlines to a smaller terminal. If NWA were to go bankrupt, most people flying out of Mpls would *still* use NWA as they'd virtually be the only one to give them non-stop service to their destinations. Passengers wouldn't care about NWA's debt obligations as long as they could pay their paultry couple of hundred bucks and get to/from their destinations. Now back to GM. If GM were to go bankrupt, would you plunk down tens of thousands and not know if the company was going to be there in 5 years? Woudn't you worry about part availability? Your investment, in time and money are much, much larger with an auto purchase as it is for a airline ticket. GM's got money. They've got cash reserves. They've got GMAC. Attempting to sell just half of GMAC is rumored to fetch $10-$15b -- and that price is depressed becasue of the speculation that it's bond rating wouldn't improve that much due to "troubled" GM still owning half of it. Sell it all and it would likely fetch $30-35b. Invested, that would virtually completely negate GM's pension obligations. GM's product is ever-improving. Pontiac Solstice? Saturn Aura? Buick Enclave? Product sells. Nissan was a bit player when they were acquired and they recovered and grown -- all because of the product alone. Nissan still isn't known for their interiors, for their initial quality, or their durability.. but they've got hot-looking and hot-performing products. GM's got more of the market than anybody. They are still the largest auto manufacturer on the planet. Factor this in: build "must have" products that allow you to gradually raise the vehicle sticker price & you've got one hell of a bump in cash flow. Wall Street doesn't care about these perspectives. They *do* care about how GM could file some paperwork and be out from under $billions$ virtually overnight. I'm saying it right here and now: GM going bankrupt? BS.

Back to my soapbox... GM workers build/assemble GM's vehicles. They are directly responsible for the product GM sells. A shareholder, on the other hand can sit back & collect $2/share for doing what?!? GM workers have been continually pushed for pay & wage concessions - we've had several threads right here at C&G regarding the very topic. Yet, here is GM shareholders collecting $1b/year for doing nothing. Finally, the dividends are cut & shareholders can accept some of the burden. They certainly knew GM's financial status before purchasing - so I don't want to hear any complaints. It always comes back to the core argument of: What is the economic engine? Investor money or Consumer spending? Both are needed, but which one really drives the economy? My bet is on consumer spending.

There's two ways of looking at this: The rich are being penalized. or: The rich should pay more because they've profited more (taken more from society) than others from our capitalistic society. You surely don't think that you'd be able to profit in such a manner in another country, do you? Unless you do something WAY over-the-top, I don't think you are ever going to discourage people from trying to earn more and more. Really, the core issue here comes back to this: what spurs the economy? Money invested or money spent? I'm in the latter on this one. Invested money seems to "sit at the top". It makes stocks rise, raises paper worth, gets executives more money to re-invest. Money spent seems to make the economy grow and generates jobs, raises the standard of living, etc. My personal opinion -- take it for what it's worth.. I'm still a skeptic. Everything sounds nice and everything, but take a look at the web-site's numbers. It estimates that mortgage rates would go down 1.75% due to savings from not having to deal with today's complicated tax-policies. While I agree that there would be savings, where is the data? How did they arrive at 1.75%? Being that this is a pro-fairtax website, I'd have to assume they are choosing the rosiest scenario. What if everything isn't that rosy?

Quoting townhall.com doesn't give me anything credible. Not that you can't find a nugget of truth here or there - it's just that it's very political and very biased. Even if Ethynol is energy-neutral, how about the idea that it creates demand for a local-product? And your tax dollars stay here? And our energy-needs aren't being met by some foreign nation? All of that makes much more sense to me. To each their own..

Whether the dealer is offering incentives-that-cut into-the-dealer's profit margin, or the manufacturer is offering incentives-that-cut-into-the-manufacturer's profit margin doesn't change the fact that the car is basically new & already has discounts being applied to it to move it off of the lot. Now, back to the Lucerne: I've seen it & sat in it and the only reason to discount that car is to PERSONALLY GET ME IN ONE. It's no secret that my current ride (an '04 Malibu) is less than 2 years old & that there isn't a snowball's chance in hades that my wife would let me upgrade so soon. I'm also a very practical person & really would struggle with the idea of losing so much in depreciation by trading off a car so new. It really makes a lot of fiscal sense to buy and hold onto the car (i.e. use it up) before moving onto the next one. Which brings me into my final point: NOW ANNOUNCING THE (NEW-FOR 2006): "LET'S GET CMATTSON INTO A NEW BUICK" DONATION-CAMPAIGN. HURRY ACT NOW! CMATTSON WANTS A NEW RIDE! ** YOU CAN BE CMATTSON'S "SUGAR-DADDY" ** Come on now: I *know* there must be some of you out there that aren't living check-to-check! Just by odds alone, surely somebody trolling the internet (that reads this) will be worth millions & will feel that the idea of "freeing cmattson from boring transportation" is a worthy cause.

If this is true, GM's direction with Chevrolet seems to make some sense: The Malibu (probably because of it's numerous, stellar jdpa rankings) would be kept around, but land on EPII -- making it fall somewhere in-between the current Malibu and Impala in size. The Impala would move off of the W body and onto a rwd platform. Why? How about the current overlap in GM's lineup: 2 middle-market FWD sedans in the Chevrolet lineup alone. Now add in: G6, Lucerne, Lacrosse, Grand Prix, and lasltly the upcomming Aura and you can see how far GM's expense-dollars are stretched. If you follow the new scenario, Chevrolet would have a mid-market FWD sedan and a mid-market RWD sedan. Seems ok so far. You want a middle-market sporty-sedan? Pontiac G6. Something more upscale? Buick Lucerne. Something more youth-oriented? Aura. It would seem like GM is finally getting some segmentation and direction in it's sedans offerings. Looks good so far. I'm guessing here, but would the LaCrosse make a jump to RWD along with the Impala? That would seem natural. I'm guessing that if GM choose to segment something about the G6 in the Pontiac lineup, that it would be a RWD'er as well; although with the combining of Pontiac and Buick dealerships, you could argue that a RWD Buick could fulfill that role.

My bad.. I had my eyes dialated this morning .. man this sucks..

Why? Grand Prix fleet sales appeared to be at 16.x% last year. That would seem to be a ridiculously high jump.. The Grand Prix had about 11,000 units sold in Jan. Assuming that you are correct, that would be roughly 7,700 fleet sales for January alone -- or 92,400 annually. For perspective, the Grand Prix had 28,800 units in fleet sales for the entire year. This is (of course) based on stats from (does anybody know of any better stats?) -- page 3 has the Grand Prix: http://www.fleet-central.com/af/t_pop_pdf....05/cars_web.pdf

You are forgetting that (1) the Blazer is old & outdated -- these are CURRENT Hondas we are talking about, and (2) Chevrolet never sold the Blazer at a premium price under the supposed assumption that it was more reliable than other makes. That being said, as a former Blazer owner: it *was* the biggest pos I've ever owned. Now back to the Nokia thing: I just "purchased" (by purchased, I mean that I leaned on a T-Mobile rep (actually it was 2 -- but who's counting?) until they rolled-over and gave it to me free) a new Nokia phone & hope to have it here within the next 1-2 weeks. Oh, how I hope this is true! I can't wait to go have some lunch-time fun down the street at the Honda dealership! How close do you have to be to make the car screw-up? I'm a kid (read: juvenille) at heart!

1. Optima's starting price is $16,195. Malibu is $16,365. The Malibu comes std. with a 4-speed auto at that price -- whiel the Kia has a 5-speed manual. The Malibu gives you more hp and better gas mileage to boot. Seems like the Malibu wins, hands-down based on value -- and on Powertrain. 2. Quality? How about 4 1st place finishes in the last 5 years on jdpa's initial quality ranking? How about 3 1st place finishes in the last 5 years on jdpa's long-term durability + 1 3rd place finish? BTW, Kia didn't place in the top 3 in any of the previous 5 years in either survey. 3. Quality of materials is subjective - but considering how well the Malibu does in the above-mentioned and and the no-show on the Kia for quality and durability, the Kia better be silk with real gold-trim for me to not buy the Malibu.

Congrats Satty. There's nothing like parenthood. Nothing like the child birth either. I was cool until after they were born, and then when I was making phone calls to my parents to tell them the happy news, I just couldn't stop balling. It was complete joy unlike anything else I've experienced. A little tip for ya: DO NOT TEASE YOUR WIFE WHILE SHE'S IN LABOR. Making a smart-ass comment like "If you hurry up, we can turn on the T-wolves game on at 7:30" would be considered a very poorly thought out wisecrack (just an example )

DON'T rent something called "Premonition". My wife found it on the new release wall at Blockbuster. It looked good. It was from Lions Gate Films. The premise is that this guy stops to use the payphone, and while in the phone booth he sees a copy of the newspaper. It catches his eye because it's got a photo of his daughter on it. The accompanying article mentions that an 8-yr old girl died in a tragic car accident. At that point the guy looks at the date of the paper & it's dated for tomorrow. The next moment, a trucker (who has fallen asleep behind the wheel) crushes the guys car with his daughter in it (who then dies) & this starts a cycle where the guy keeps finding advance copies of the paper & then tries to prevent the upcoming tragedies. Sounds ok, right? Well, here's the rest of it: the movie is Japanese. Everything is subtitled. The acting is poor-at-best & the story just falls apart after the beginning. The movie gets confusing & then gets jumpy. For some reason the guy starts to develop a rash. About the halfway part, you'll be searching for sharp objects around your house. It becomes laughably bad. The day after watching the movie, my wife went grocery shopping. While gone, I took a picture of myself (from the family portrait hanging about the fireplace), and cropped it into a webpage downloaded from www.japantimes.jp.co. I changed the date on the page & subtitled underneath the picture (in bold): "Wife rents crappy movie, beloved devoted husband dies of boredom". I then printed it, left it out for my wife & then went to bed. She actually woke me up to tell me "You are such a dork" (which I'll take as a compliment, thank you). Of course I haven't let it rest. When she came home from shopping at target that weekend, I pulled one of the plastic shopping bags over my head, clamped it shut around my neck and asked "can I throw this away or are you going to rent Premonition II?"

This just in: Kevin McHale has traded away the Twolves 2009 1st round pick for a McDonald's Double-Cheeseburger meal. He says he'll throw in their 2nd round pick if they supersize it. See? It's too easy to rip the guy. He traded away our '08 pick to the Clippers + Sam Cassell for something called "Marko Jaric". Who the hell is Marko Jarik? I didn't know Jaric existed until he ended up starting at PG for us. Sam may be aging, but he was still a competant (and clutch) performer. Jaric is a mediocre, erratic hybrid 1-2 guard. He'd be questionable as a backup PG/SG - I certainly wouldn't want to be playing him for the season as my starting PG. At least the Twolves traded away Olowa-stiffy. He was horrible. If you go to nba.com and rank the centers in the league by blocked shots/game, Stiffy (settle down there Satty) doesn't even make the top 50 -- and he was the Twolves STARTER. That means almost everyone's starter AND their backup avg's more blocked shots than this guy. That's more than pathetic..

Are you kidding me? Where have you been? Our oil industry literally sat down, in closed meetings and helped craft our energy policy. That's unheard of. I guess it was coincidence that our energy policy dictated that we increase our strategic oil supply; thereby shortening whats available for consumers and spiking prices? And Enron? No problem there: the entire state of California was screaming for anybody to just look into Enron's policies & the administration made a vague "we believe in a free market" statement and looked the other direction. Don't mind the fact that one of Enron's chief architects, Ken Lay (a Bush "pioneer") hasn't even come close to a courtroom yet. Just to give you an idea of how slow justice is moving here: the Martha Stewart insider-trading deal broke in June of '02. Enron broke in Sept. of '01. Martha has had her trial, her conviction and has served her sentence. Any news on when Lay's trial is even going to start? Before you take me as a political wonk, let me make something very clear: I hold *all* politicians in the same light: it's the 99% that rune it for the rest of them.

Don't you think that's a little harsh? Union member = terrorist? Personally, I think that's way over the top. Those people banded together into a union to provide bargaining power that allows them to get a salary/benefit package better than they'd otherwise be able to have. Most of us don't belong to a union, and as a result, are more subject to declining wages & benefits. So we are going to tear down someone who was smart enough to do better for themselves? That makes a hell of a lot of sense. The unions do need to give GM and Ford significant concessions. They need to realize what the current market looks like in terms of benefits and wages & that a significant correction needs to occur to provide GM and Ford a fighting chance of staying in business.

Let them whine away. As for subsidizing GM/Ford.. get over it. You don't think our gov't doesn't subsidize big business? Our government is bought and sold everyday. We give out land deals to incent a business to build on spot x. My state of Minnesota has something called a "JOBZ" program (short for JOB-ZONE) where a business can get free-land, COMPLETE tax-free operation (construction costs, operating material costs, income -> the whole deal) for x years -- all as an incentive to locate here. And it doesn't just stop at the state level. My old city (Ramsey, MN) gave away free land to lure businesses to develop there. You'd be foolish to think that it doesn't happen more and more - especially the farther you get away from the public eye (up from local, state, and into the federal level). Today's business climate is killing our heritaged manufacturing firms. More sales would help, but when you are the NUMBER ONE MANUFACTURER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD and you still can't make a profit here, at some point you could step back and think -- maybe the sales numbers aren't the whole problem. The fact is that we can idly let them wither and die and put all of those workers FULLY on taxpayers backs, or we can do something to help the auto manufacturers transition themselves and ease them through it. You think I like the idea of giving my tax money to a multi-billion dollar business? Hell no. But I really don't like the idea of putting every 7th american on the soup-line even more.

Speaking of accountability... did Kenny-boy's trial ever get started? Funny how Martha-Stewart can get a trial, conviction, and serve her time before an Enron executive (and more importantly: a campaign contributor) can be brought to justice. Forget the fact that Martha's incident took place 6 months AFTER Enron's screwing of millions of Californians.