IfICouldWouldYou?

What? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Of course the higher priced stock will have higher absolute fluctuation with a percentage change--look at daily movements of Google or Berkshire Hathaway. And Toyota's market capitalization is $143 billion, compared to under $6 billion for GM.

Considering Toyota is backed by the Japanese government, $143 billion is chicken feed.

>>"You HONESTLY think the Toureg gets confused with the Cayenne? Really?"<<

If the person is not any sort of car enthusiast; yes I do. Not only are the pair very obviously similar, neither is unique or remotely eye-catching. That's my take. If design has any sort of weight in this segment....

Mmmm, boy! ( ) OR:

+1

Too many self appointed enthusiasts don't realize that most people out there don't know and don't care. Many on C&G are guilty of shoving their own brand of beliefs down our throats.

I'm glad that enzl puts up with the blind loyalty and continues to post meaningful, well thought out arguments that balance out some of the more radical "Let's defend GM at all costs, they have never done anything wrong, it's everyone else's fault gallery"

While it can be pointed out that there are some levels of bias against Detroit, and some of it is indeed unfair and unnecessary, the fact of that matter is that the biggest problems they face are of their own doing.

Most recent example: instead of investing money and R&D into small and midsize cars and trucks and SUVs, they invested mostly on the latter. Now that $4 gas has everyone in a panic for small cars, the Big 3 are caught flat on their asses. I mean, what do you they have to offer for small cars? The Cobalt? Caliber? Aveo? Focus? These pretty mediocre products are selling now because they are cheap and relatively good on gas, but with the exception of the SS, SRT4 and SYNC!!11, have little in the way of desirability. They are products that remide you that you made a sacrifice, instead of merely downsizing to something that's still nice and is good on gas. Thing is though, and this is key, Mulally has made sweeping changes within Ford, and is making decisive decisions which may yet save the company, while GM continues to sit with its thumb up its butt, wondering what it should do. The company is like a chicken running around with it's head cut off, and who knows what's going on a Chrysler.

The first key is to admit you screwed up. The second key is to actually fix it. FWD Caddies, too many similar vehicles that compete with each other, and killing platforms and thereby wastes precious money is not fixing the problem.

Also take into account that enzl isn't a GM hater or basher, if he did it would be "OMG GM sucks, Toyota rules, etc." He's critical to it because he wants it to succeed and it gets frustrating when it shoots itself in the foot, taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

That's my little speech.

Brand loyalty? I have one word: Dodge. Now there is blindness. Chrysler has been 3rd place since Walter rented the Waldorf Astoria to show off his new cars. They've brushed bankruptcy more times than Bill Clinton never had sexual relations with that woman.

To me, Enzl and Carbiz are opposite sides of the same coin. However, GM has enough armchair critics who are piling on these days.

There's another vehicle that wore out the welcome mat. The Trailblazer was a nice enough vehicle when introduced, but it has languished far too long.

How do we explain the Board's actions in all this? Are they all a bunch of fools? Is Rick so smooth that he has them all hoodwinked? I can't believe that these learned men and woman can't see the bigger picture.

I was thinking about this earlier today... for decades Cadillac couldn't build a competent small luxury sedan to compliment their large luxury sedans. Now that Cadillac has one, it can't build a competent large luxury sedan... sad...

What's worse? I went to the Cadillac dealer a few evenings ago. The CTS is attractive inside and out, but I prefer the STS exterior and proportions. And there's just something seriously odd with the DTS' front-end styling.

The Chinese SLS would be a perfect replacement for them both.

I'm not going to get into the Buick dead/alive debate. It's just pointless here.

Depends on your definition of 'small,' doesn't it? The original Seville was 'small' by Detroit's standards of the day. It was a decently competent vehicle - even beautiful. It was the second generation that ruined that name.

If you're not going to qualify for 0% at Chevy, you're not going to qualify for 5.9% at Toyota.

Shh, don't confuse him with facts.

You always take the sales approach to your analysis...and, quite simply, you're wrong. In the states, financing rates are similar (although Cobalt has been out many years, so its not surprising to find better APR) for most buyers, as most don't qualify for "promotional' rates, so throw your finance savings out the window.

Toyota is proving Adam Smith right: Supply & demand give you pricing, not magic calculations. Toyota can get $20K for a Corolla--GM simply can't get that for a Cobalt. All of your other stuff is sales crap---closing a deal, not about Toyota or Chevy or Honda for that matter.

'Biz--you're simply too biased to see it for what it is---but we've already established that long ago.

Just in case you believe I'm just being a jerk---did you notice GM's dump of bad news last Friday before the long weekend? Or the fact that 2 Zetas have been cancelled? GM can't get out of its own way & people who think like you are only standing in the way--just enough isn't good enough anymore.

When you're selling the deal instead of the vehicle, you're already on the losing end of the argument, my friend.

To win this running argument, you're going to have to do better than selling me a car. GM's got plenty of salesmen...its the engineers and designers that need to save this ship.

The trouble with nay-sayers like you, sir, is that you have a short memory when it suits you. Chevrolet has never meant 'top drawer' or cutting edge. When Chevrolet kicked Ford into second place back in the early '50s, it was through a good ol' fashion price war. There were better vehicles out there (Buick, even some Packards at the time), but it was the volumes set by Chevrolet that catapulted it (and GM) to #1. Get more, decent product into the layperson and show them how things have changed.

The average Joe doesn't care about # of valves or # of gears - they care only about price, quality and a bit of style. Nobody is going to argue that Toyota is a style leader. If you look at price, they haven't been 'cheap' in about 15 years. If you look at 'quality,' the difference between GM and Toyota has been like a half visit per year to the dealer. What does that mean, exactly?

The real challenge is in convincing people with hidden agendas that every car does not have to perform like a BMW or be constructed like a Sherman tank.

Personally, I love the idea of offshoring our manufacturing base and jobs to China, then having to compete with them on the world stage for dwindling resources. I think that is the definition of irony.

Oh, and look: there is the awful Impala on the Top 10 List.

First of all, I don't know that they still require that. Do you?

Second of all, if true, that's a Honda "thing." I don't hear about the 3.6L HF V6 needing that sort of maintenance.....

Ask, and ye shall receive:

http://www.hondawest.ca/en/service/mainten...7CCoupe+EX-L+V6

Of course, I had to dig for this. Honda certainly doesn't advertise this on their website!

No....but they know their Camry or Accord V6 purrs, hums, and has great NVH.......

Durable it might be, but an Impala with the 3.5L or 3.9L simply doesn't match up to the Toyota and Honda V6s......these kind of differences definitely show up in a test-drive.

And don't forget the $800 timing belt change on your super quiet Honda V-6!!!

Lord you seem to CONVENIENTLY forget that I'm taking a look at these things from a MARKET standpoint. It has nothing to do with whether I like it or not. (Even if I don't.)

I'd love to have a 6-speed manual combined with the Malibu 3.6L engine.....but as much as I might like that, I realize that it makes little sense for the overall market.

If it happens to be that GM makes decisions contrary to what the market is dictating......and I don't like anyways......well that doesn't mean they don't still run contrary to what the market is dictating.

It's been WAY too long that GM did something that dictated to the market. Wouldn't that be nice instead of going "against the flow?"

1/4 million people disagreed with you last year. Yes, even the fleet people. Not bad for a 15+ year old platform. I wonder how many consumers give a rat's ass about 'overhangs' and pushrods, except when so-called enthusiasts point it out.

While I think there's real merit to both sides of the argument, I have to quibble with a few points...

1. Tilt & Telescope isn't too hard to master if designed correctly. I suspect most like the good systems---and GM's ratchet tilt was/is awful.

2. If On-Star was sooo good, wouldn't it have become the standard by now? Why would co.'s build their own? There's nothing OnStar does that internet connectivity won't provide.

Other than that, GM is doing many good things product-wise, but they still tend to half-ass just enough to drive me crazy. Luckily, it has been occurring with less frequency.

I heard Honda was using OnStar a couple years ago. Why would GM give over proprietary information that they have worked on for 10+ years and more (via Hughes when they bought it)?

The Yaris is cheap and cheerful, minimalist or spartan, depending on your view. I happen to like the three-door hatch - art school knobs and all - and I imagine with the right wheels and paint, it could pass as a funky little European runabout. Yes, they dumbed down the Yaris for the North American market, but the excellent first-tier, modern world car "bones" remain.

The Daewoo Gentra (Aveo), on the other hand, was developed on a tighter budget for a different audience long ago. It may be nicely finished and nicely updated over the years, but the engineering still pales in comparison to the Yaris. Just look at safety and fuel economy...

http://www.iihs.org/ratings/image.ashx?rh=719&id=2

http://www.iihs.org/ratings/image.ashx?rh=711&id=2

Safety? Fuel economy? The Yaris is only 4 Stars, frontal. GM is claiming a 9% improvment in fuel economy on the '09 Aveo with a virtually new powertrain. I rented a Yaris. Not my choice. It was all they had left. It was, disappointing to say the least. Certainly not in the same class as the Fit or Versa.

Yes--there is clearly an impact. But how much of an impact? The earth is still geologically coming out of an ice age...some warming is to be expected.

One thing to consider is the amount of "pollution" generated by natural events like forest fires and volcanic eruptions. While there's nothing to be done about volcanos, forest fires are a lot less common or long-lasting as they used to be due to firefighting. Can you imagine if there were no firefighters to put out the forest fires?

My point is that while many models show this significant global warming due to humans, it's a model--that's what models do. Models take results and try to create algorithms to explain those results. Even the most complex models leave out some variables that are either overlooked or their impacts of those variables on the process are not yet known. Considering how recently humans started recording the daily temperatures, and how recently those instruments became scientifically accurate, we don't have a lot of data.

Now, I'm not arguing against being proactive and caring for the planet, but I'm not going to go all Chicken Little on everyone's ass.

+1

A wise man once told me,"you never want to be #1 in the business world, because everyone will put a target on your back. If you are #2, you can live a happy, comfortable life and people will leave you alone."

I have learned that whether it is the business world, sports, fashion or whatever - it is far better to be #2. Officially, our culture dictates that we 'aspire' to be #1, but in reality jealousy prevails and it become competitor's mission to take down #1. This largely explains why GM (and by extension, America) is often hated throughout the world: jealousy.

I think you are in the minority.

I'm the oddball around here. I don't care if my car is a V8, V6, I3, or radial 7. I don't care if it's fueled on puppy dog smiles as long as they're cheap, renewable, and doesn't cause pollution.

What I want is a classy exterior/interior, roominess, and lots power.

There are many out there who only want to fuel with gasoline.... not even diesel is acceptable to them.

There are many out there who only want to be at the helm of a V8 powered vehicle, a V6 or even a Turbo-4 with great performance is unacceptable to them. <I believe you fall in this category>

These people just dismiss global warming because it conflicts with their wants.... not because of any specific research out there.

Besides, one article doesn't wipe out years of research. When Switzerland gets it's glaciers back, when 1,500 year old ice sheets 7 times the size of Manhattan stop breaking off Antarctica, when the Northern Passage is no longer regularly navigable, then get back to me about global warming being total BS.

Nobody is arguing that these events are happening! Where the controversy lays is in the mechanisms that are making them happen. The biggest challenge is that there weren't meaningful records kept much before the beginning of the last century and weather satellites only go back 40 years. With Mother Nature we are talking tens of thousands of years to formulate a decent weather model. For all we know, the fact that the North AMerican plate is separating from the European plate by an inch a year could be doing it. Before you laugh too hard, in 100 years ( a mere blink to Mother Nature) that means North America will have moved 8 feet!

How does that affect ocean currents?

so, let me get this straight, and thank God you're a car salesman and not involved with investment management somewhere, oh and might I mention I love that you think you're very qualified to make this statement. but let me get it straight. so, once, GM owned over 50% of the marketplace. yeah, given the circumstances, new nameplates being introduced into the market, absolutely there was going to be some shrinking of the share, but the market itself also expanded. so we go into the early '90's and we're down to 35% of the market, still a big majority! now we're down to barely 20%, less than 20% if you're looking at it from a retail perspective, and we should all be patting them on the back?!?????

I know you're Canadian, but the market is very different here. We matter, and not your $C dollar. when you want to have a discussion about your canadian dollar and the canadian marketplace please feel free to do so with Canadian friends. We here are talking about our market, in which over 16 million vehicles are sold anually, of which your country only sells a small fraction of. Gosh, it's like somebody from Mexico coming in here and trying to add perspective on the Mexican car market, no one cares! It's our market that is the lucrative one that everyone is fighting to get a piece out of.

as for your argument on GM's market dominance, I would not go there if I were you. there is no market dominance anywhere from GM......let's see the CTS comes close to the top of its segment, the Impala's artificially enhanced sales figures are close to the top in its segment..........Silverado is second.............let's take a look at even the '80's, much less '60's and '70's to see how drastically different that story would have been then. hmmmpp....must have something to do wiht the way the company is managed

Actually, as gas prices rise and the imports ratchet up their business plans, the Canadian market and the American market are becoming more and more similar. I've seen stats that show GM's market share is about the same north and south of the border, with the same steep drops in major markets (L.A., Miami, Toronto, Houston, etc.). You can slam Canada if you want, sir, but GM sells nearly a half million vehicles there - I doubt they can afford to dismiss those sales.

You, my friend, are falling into the same half-baked, half-thought out arguments as real critics do: GM dominates the pickup market. The Sierra/Silverado outsells the F-150 in both countries. I've seen figures that the Impala/Malibu/LaCrosse/Aura/G6 outsell either the Accord or the Camry, so where do you get off saying GM does not dominate in any one market? It dominates in most. Let's look beyond the headlines, shall we?

I think Carbiz comments about Canada have more to do with the fact that Oshawa was once the cheapest plant to run (when the Canadian dollar was .65 plus the free healthcare) but now that plant is one of the most expensive. GM has to look at all its options, no? Putting a RWD Impala replacement would have made sense at .65, but not so much at $1.01, wouldn't you agree?

For the record, I drive an Impala. Had it two years. Love it. Never had any problems. I routinely get over 30 mpg in my daily commute. Prefer it over my neighbor's TL (he has to put premium gas - boy is he screaming now!). Heck, my wife's Tracker doesn't get much better gas mileage than my Impala!

I see a lot of shouting, a lot of opinions, but not much substance on this board lately.

Good comments in this thread. Climatology is a young science. I loved the remark about scientific 'theories.' Too true. Even evolution is considered a theory, despite the piling on of evidence from different disciplines.

It only makes sense that 6 1/2 billion people are making a dent on this planet. It also makes sense for us to gently move toward saner energy and resource uses. The Cold War remarks were spot on!

Enzl's right: Saturn languished for a long time. It would be a shame to kill it just as the product renaissance is beginning. Most of their problems have to do with lack of advertising $$$. How many people are even aware of the Astra or Aura?

I would personally rather see it go than Pontiac, but at least give it another year or so to see if the new product takes hold.

More stupidity from our elected officials. The last time I checked, non-OPEC oil was counting for nearly half the world's dead dinosaurs. The North Sea, Russia, Canada and others are pumping out more and more - they have nothing to do with OPEC. I agree with the WallStreet suits remark, though: let's sue those bastards. They are the ones running up the price of oil. Speculators, pure and simple.

Gotta get past those orange lights at night, though

I wish GM would differentiate the G5 and Cobalt a lot more. They are such obvious badge jobs. Not quite as bad as the Aries/Reliant, but almost!

There is nothing wrong with a little passion. Both GM and Ford could use an injection of it. Hell, America could you a dose of it. Maybe we wouldn't be so damned complacent about our problems and anaesthetize ourselves with moronic TV programming.

Moltar, I couldn't agree with you more; however, none of those countries spend the amount of GDP on the military like the U.S. We could have cured cancer or put all our lawyers and accountants on Mars by now, half the money we spend on the military every year.