GM joins Ford in jettisoning the minivan market

That may be your opinion but GM and Ford still outsell any import brand. Obviously millions of buyers do not agree with your personal opinion. I personally have owned imports and the imports were no better the domestic I currently buy, ever though they cost more to drive home. So what is your point?

mike

Catch up to whom? GM and Ford out sell any import

mike

Not true.

My point is GM is in trouble and that you are doing nothing to help the situation by defending their piss poor products. What are you on that makes you so delusional that you cannot see the need for immediate, real, radical product improvement on the part of the American manufacturers if they want to remain even marginally competitive.

Toyota, Honda, VW, et. al.

They don't have the same design or quality and your statement is no longer true. Only GM currently outsells Toyota.

nate

I had a 98 Ford windstar that dropped 2 trannies in 28k miles and now have a Honda Odyssey on its 4th tranny at 100k miles. There will be no more mini vans for my family when this one is gone. btw, had a dodge crapavan before the ford and the trannys and AC were good for about 20k miles also. I don't think there is a good minivan.

The Astro was actually a decent minivan, it just didn't appeal to the soccer mom set due to its truck-based nature. However, it proved to be a good, reliable service vehicle and therefore would probably have lasted forever in soccer mom duty.

Of course, as repeatedly stated earlier in this thread, they aren't made anymore, and there's no new equivalent from any manufacturer of which I'm aware.

nate

I have a 2000 Safari with 80K miles that has only had maintenance performed on it so far. Transmission was flushed at 60K. Just put the third set of tires on it this month.

Your experiences could well say more about your driving style than the viability of minivan transmissions. In my 45 years of driving, I've only had one auto trans fail, and it had over 200k miles on it.

Dave

GM and Ford are in trouble for sure but contrary to what you believe, GM and Fords current models are great reliable vehicles that have outscored many imports, including the Camry and the Accord in recent opinion poll of owner of 2006s like J D Powers and CR Gm and Ford by far makes the best truck the eclipse the sales of any import truck. .. GMs sales were up in the last quarter, as well. Fords light truck sales are down but their car sales are up. I own a 2006 and a 2007 domestic myself and they are great vehicles. The manufacture with the most recalls in 2006 was Toyota. I have tried to point out to you that what you believe is not factual. You many prefer imports but the fact is more buyers in the US bought vehicles from GM and Ford in 2006 than any import whether you agree or not..

mike

Not necessarily, just poor vehicle choice - but how was he to know? I dunno about the Odyssey but the Windstar and Caravan trannys were notorious time bombs.

nate

This post brought to you by Mike's new book" Condescension: how to make friends and influence people by coming off like a know-it-all."

I think Joe knows what he's doing. Nothing available there that's not available elsewhere, and besides he's been posting here for *years*.

This may all be true, but GM and Ford are still losing boatloads of money. Some of their problems go back many years and will haunt them for many more years. They need to do much more than just sell cars. They have to restructure costs so they can sell cars at a profit.

His trannys seem to consistently go at about 20k. Nobody makes 'em that bad.

Dave, I have owned 18 vehilces in my life and did not have one tranny problem except on minivans. I have ALL my trannies serviced every 20k miles and drive very easy. Have you done a search on Honda and windstar tranny problems? The 00-01 odyssey was so bad that Honda extended the warranty to 100k on my year model. Now Ford was a different story.....

I seem to remember those as maybe pie-in-the-sky projections for years down the line. I'm talking about projections for *next* *year*.

Any specific reason not to, or just sort of a general paranoia?

I had a 95 Windstar with 170K km on it with no sign of transmission trouble when I traded it on Venture. The Venture had some slipping problems when I traded it on an 03 Windstar.

I asked the opinion of a local well respected transmission shop on which current domestic minivan has the best transmission for pulling my 2500 lb boat. He said they are all "pretty good" and should be ok if they are serviced regularily. Of course the trans cooler is a must. The ford and chev allow you to disable the overdrive when towing, the Chrysler doesn't. Therefore I eliminated the Chrysler.

BTW, I love my Windstar. By far the most comfortable of the big three.

I can easily imagine an AXOD failing that early under "severe service" but not abusive conditions.

nate

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 13:30:58 -0600, Hairy got out the hammer and chisel and etched in the wall:

Possibly, but those two instances have known issues. The ford FWD 3.0 (?) tranny was known for failure. Also, I've read of several people with the Honda 3.5 engine who've had tranny issues. My wife's VUE with a 3.5 so far is okay, but I'm crossing my fingers. :)

When you begin to get dozens of calls at 5 PM from telemarketers and all of the paper in your FAX machine is printed out with spam at 2 AM you may feel differently, unless of course it is not YOUR paper ;)

mike