Robert Hall

Yep... It's amazing ho ignorant people like that really are.

My NASCAR buddies here in Charlotte are VW and Honda fans. We had about an hour long debate at the bar about how I thought the Detroit companies should get a "bail out" and how they didn't think so.

A couple gigs back I had a manager that was a huge NASCAR fan, and her husband works for NASCAR in marketing. They drive an Accord and a Tacoma.

That is pimping. How about a CTS coupe instead of the sedan? That would even make it an ironic combo.

Ya, that would be cool. Wouldn't necessarily need 2 4drs.

SUV, sports/luxury coupe, luxury sedan, convertible. That would be a nice foursome for me (for years, I had an SUV and 2 sports coupes). I'm currently rotating between an SUV, older luxury coupe, and an older luxury sedan as my daily drivers. (I also have 2 vintage Mustangs in storage).

I'm thinking of keeping the SUV for winter (the '00 Grand Cherokee has been my daily driver for 8 years), maybe adding a late model Town Car for a daily driver in the next couple of years (they depreciate too much to buy new), and/or maybe a CTS sedan or coupe. I'm thinking about a '10 Mustang GT convertible for my 40th--- I want a V8, RWD convertible w/ a manual, and I don't see the Camaro convertible happening anytime soon, and love Mustangs.. maybe wait until my 50th for a Corvette convertible. Of course, if gas prices go through the roof, I'd consider a diesel daily driver. Mmmm...diesel CTS coupe. Would be nice.

You could always end up with both and really stir up the economy with cross town rivals sharing the same roof rather than a CTS and a Maxima .

Heh-heh...my ideal garage would have both a CTS (w/ a manual) and a Town Car. One for modern sports sedan lux, one for old school land yacht lux. Both appeal to me.

Moltar that was esentially it. GM was slaughtering the competition. Ford felt it need to do more to compete.

I'll bet along with all the things lined up against this new division, the name 'Edsel' sounded a bit nerdish. I wonder. Not the best name in the car business. Maybe they should have used 'Meteor' from Canada.

Ya, it's a bad name, IMHO. They could have called it 'Fred' or 'Elmer' which would have been equally nerdy. I've read that they hired a poet to come up with possible names--they came up with a long list, some were pretty outlandish like Utopian Turtletop. In the end, they chose the name of Henry's son. In keeping with the planet name Mercury, maybe 'Saturn' would have been a good name. (Though I think Mercury was named for the Greek God more than the planet).

Edsel did have some good model names, though--Pacer, Ranger, Corsair, and Citation, all of which have been used elsewhere since then.

Also, I would assume the decision to create the brand was made around '55 or '56, when the middle market was quite strong...then it was launched just in time for a recession.

Update:

The Wikipedia entry on Edsel has a pretty decent analysis of the failure and some backstory...makes for interesting reading while I'm sitting at the airport waiting on my flight..

Edsel story

So the difference between a compact (Cobalt at 180 inches) and fullsize (G8 at 196 inches) is 16 inches?

That's nuts.

No wonder I have to argue with the rental car people when I ask for a fullsize and they give me an HHR or a G6.

16 inches doesn't make that much of a difference in fuel economy. It doesn't really make that much of a difference in parking. I don't even think that makes much of a driving feel difference.

I imagine the general public couldn't judge the size difference if the cars were 20 ft away.

Why even bother to have different platforms with a 16 inch size difference?

Well, the official EPA classification of subcompact/compact/midsize/fullsize is based on interior volume + cargo space, not overall length or wheelbase, so there are cars within the same category that can vary quite a bit in length or wheelbase.

Fuel Economy Classes

I'm not sure how rental car agencies categorize their cars, but I know in the past they've categorized a Grand Am as a midsize and a Taurus ('00) as a full size, so who knows.

Yes! Woohoo! Yeah guys! Awesome! We did it!! Yes we can!! YEAH! Come on guys! Woooohoo!! Alright!! Freaken awesome!!

TOYota 4 LYF! Toyota FTW!! This is just SUPER neat guys! Ah! So awesome. I'm lovin' it! Everything is gonna to be A-O.K. now that Toyota is at the top! YES! No more polluting the environment!! Everyone is going to get like 50mpg!! Swweeet! You guys can now go buy full-size Tundras and don't have to feel guilty! It's just so great! I can finally buy that truck I've always wanted and not have to worry about destroying our planet!! I'm just so.... happy. Omgosh!!

Best post of the week nominee.

Yep, all the people east of the mountains are red necks. Or so I hear.... Only been over there once. Got chased out by a mob wielding torches and pitch forks. Apparently they don't take kindly to intellectuals.

Lol.

Heh-heh...sounds like the eastern part of Colorado...anything east of the Front Range is just a dull Kansas-like empty red state void.. the Front Range has the Denver metro area and Boulder which are pretty cool and blue stateish, the mountains run down the center and western half of the state, but to the south of the Denver area is Colorado Springs, which is part of the Bible Belt... I used to live in the Springs-- it does have some nice qualities (great scenery, great bike trails, etc but far too many evangelicals and neocons for my taste).

But what was the point of Edsel? Why did Ford feel they even needed it?

How was Mercury not mid-priced enough?

In 1957, Packard was on the ropes. Nash and Hudson were basically gone, merged into AMC.

Desoto was pushed down market by Chrysler and Imperial, so now Chrysler was competing with itself in the mid-priced market.

No idea, but at that time, Chrysler and GM each had 3 mid-priced brands, so someone at Ford must have felt Mercury wasn't enough...

you can get ugly gray plastic in a jetta also.

True...though the Jetta's plastics look better...the previous gen Jetta's interior was much nicer than the previous gen Malibu, IMHO...

Cool..I'll be there again this year...will try and take some pics and post them.

The point is, Edsel was hardly the failure it is made out to be by some....

Well, considering Ford launched a new division/brand range and folded it less than 3 years makes it a pretty big failure. Imagine if GM had folded Saturn in '94..styling was part of the problem, but there were plenty of ugly cars in '58...my folks bought a '58 Mercury that year...I've seen pics of them, they were pretty dreadful looking, IMHO.

How is the last generation Malibu automatically inferior to a Jetta, for example? By whose estimation? Because it wasn't available with a stick? Because it had electric steering? Because GM didn't send the writer of C&D to Milan to drive it?

Ugly gray plastic interior and lack of a manual availability puts the last Malibu down pretty low on any list..

Get a room you two

Anyway, it is hard to come up with a list of 3, but as I grow old my love and appreciation for classic rock grows more and more so I'll go with that. That being said here is a "I just woke up, brain still in la la land list"

In no particular order:

Pink Floyd- Comfortably Numb ( I know it's a cliched song, but the end solo still gets me every time)

Comfortably Numb is probably my favorite PF song...and I've seen it twice in concert, on their last tour in the mid '90s and a couple years ago on Gilmour's solo tour. Gilmie is incredible live...

Wow! I forgot all about Asia. This reminds me of another short-lived band, any one remember The Firm?

I remember The Firm...Paul Rodgers and Jimmy Page. I have both their albums (neat '61 Cadillac w/ fog lights on the cover of their 2nd album).

After seeing Queen + Paul Rodgers in concert in '05, I started getting into Rodgers past bands...Free, Bad Company, The Firm, and The Law..

I didn't realize Asia existed beyond 1985 or so...I remember them from the early '80s.

About the psycho lady in a Mercedes, two words: Irma - Bunt

About Northern Italy, be sure to drive the SS 48 (Strada delle Dolomiti) between (roughly) Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites south of Austria. Three words: Oh - my - God.

Cool...I'll make a note of that. Stelvio pass from Switzerland into Italy is also on my to-do list...after seeing it on Top Gear, it looks epic...and Motor Trend ran some pics of the Challenger SRT8 on that road in their Europe road trip.

Wow.... fan-dangled intranet-web always misinforms.

Who knows... the only people that really know the formal name of that concept are probably long dead or over 85. I had never heard of it before this thread...you and I are probably the only people under 40 that have heard of it..

The Special Speedster, though erroneous it may be, is quoted outside of Wiki.

now who can name the otehr two?

See my first post above...

From Urban Dictionary:

Popularized by Bob Roll during Tour de France coverage

"The schlugs having transmogrified into schmenge"

So there you go. Shmenges are former Shlugs.

I remember that....Bob Roll is hilarious...I read his book a few years ago, there are some hilarious passages in the book, about his crashes, having to stop and make mad doo while on a ride, etc.

+1

Empty parking lot.... The guy can OBVIOUSLY drive pretty good as well.

I really don't see the issue with it, as long as he isn't endangering other people.

As for the stupidity at the end of the video... Well, either the guy has an interesting sense of humor or he's just stupid. (That part did annoy me)

I was young and dumb once and I did some stupid sh*t in cars, but usually it was out in the country and very late at night. I would never drive my classics like that though.

Ya, I did my young and dumb stuff in my teens and 20s, when my '87 GT was new or a few years old... luckily, I didn't do anything too stupid like several kids in my high school did (3 new GTs and one Grand National were totaled my junior and senior years, one Monte Carlo SS and one Trans Am GTA were heavily damaged). Mostly for me it was going fast and power sliding/drifting on Ohio back roads. I've never been hard on the '69, since it's kind of a family heirloom (my late father bought it new, he and I restored it when I was a teenager).

I never did anything really stupid with my M3, except for a few late night 140-150 mph drives on deserted freeways that I pretended were autobahns..

I can only imagine how much worse the anti-big 3 talk would have been with the bailout, etc had gas prices remained at $4.xx/gallon.

Ya know...

That just made me more bitter about the automakers. I want SO badly for GM & Co. to succeed, but c'mon man! Where is our 'Nissan Sentra'?!?! Is it really that hard to design a GREAT class leading product?

Maybe the Cruze will be GM's world class FWD compact. Their Last Great Hope.

That gives car guys like us a bad name with the general public.

Don't get me wrong, I like Mustangs, but for some reason the Mustang owners group seems to attract more than its share of loosers. I could be (and probably am) wrong...

Not that I would mind a '70 Boss 302, mind you.

Thanks for posting that, Mustang84.

Chris

I've met a few obnoxious Mustang owners... lots of 'em in Florida, for some reason. Though I met a lot of decent people at the Mustang Roundup in Steamboat Springs...were over 400 cars there a couple years ago. Speaking of '70s, a buddy of mine in Denver is restoring a '70 Mach 1 (351C, 4bbl, 4spd) that he found in a field outside Regina...he's been working on it for the last 6 years, should be on the road next summer. Grabber green w/ black interior..

When I was in the BMW world, I did meet a lot of pompous pricks, worked with a few of 'em..

Except in Seattle they have no idea how to keep the roads clean when it snows.

I have good tires on my Jeep... I'm sure I could get around there when it snows. When there's an ice storm, though, I'd hide under my bed and not go out.. (I still have nightmares from driving in an ice storm in Portland 3 years ago).

The video was fine besides the guy hitting himself with a shovel...that lowered my IQ a few points. The Mustang itself was pleasant to listen to, and did look like fun.

Looks like it was a work in progress resto project, missing a lot of parts.

I remember as a teenager w/ my Dad pushing our '69 around, in and out of the barn after removing the engine, transmission, exhaust, the full interior, etc. That was a 4 year resto project. It got NOS/salvage yard front fenders, doors, rear quarters, floor pans, bumpers, trunk floor, and misc. chrome trim. Had to have it hauled to a body shop for all the welding needed in replacing the rusted out front shock towers..

Years of Ohio winters had left it rough shape when we started in the summer of '83. We lived 9 months a year in Florida from '82-88 and 3 months each summer back in Ohio, often working on that car.

Buick Portholes are one of the first things I remember learning about on a car. My mother grew up in the 1950's, and I remember her telling me about what cool cars everyone thought they were and how stylish she thought "portholes" were.

Chris

For some reason, when I see portholes now, I immediately think of Homer Simpson and 'speed holes'.