GM's excess baggage - Buick, Pontiac, Saab, Hummer

Eeyore proclaimed:

I see them, but you are correct. Then who needs a 7 liter monster when a 2 liter will silently move your vehicle at over 200 Km/hour with reasonable gas or diesel mileage. Plus it might go around the first corner...and stop. Not that some so called luxury brands are that good at safety, when a big Lexus sedan takes longer to stop than a Range Rover.

People tend to forget the imports were "born" in countries were gas always costed a lot so they tned to be masters of the art of high MPG while Detriot has long been the master on gas guzzlers and does not want to change its ways. Some US model "promise" good MPG but you you own them you find that some manufacture EPA ratings are more fiction than fact. Take Dodge, in 2008 they are yet again going to try to market the hemi SUV as fuel efficent vehicle in the mask of a hybrid using some GM technology. Rather than reinventing the vehical and concept they keep trying to keep the old one alive.

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

I was surprised at the number of Porsche Cayenne and 200 series Mercedes on the Autostrade a few weeks ago. Fair number of A6 Audis also. Yes, the percentage of less than 2 litre machines is greater, but some mid to large cars do exist.

Sure they exist but many of those Audis will only have 2 litre engines. Even Merc does a 1.9 litre. At the other end of the scale there are a number of cars with engines smaller even than 1 litre.

Graham

The most popular in the C class is a 2.5 litre. (2496 CC to be exact)

Audi does have a 2.0, a 2.4 and a 3.2.

The percentage of larger cars seems to have grown though, and the smaller ones seem to be losing ground in some areas where there is some room. The Smart, for instance, is doing well in the big cities. Scooters are still highly popular too, I might add.

The government must stop the American people from buying the vehicles they want and need. The government must force them to buy small cars so we can save the world for our grand children.

mike

Look again, particularly at the Lucerne.

Willy

I don't agree. Although I own two new Chevy's (Impala and Equinox)... I previously owned 13 Nissan's..... so it's not like I'm doing the rahrah American Car sthick. But in looking at the Chevy's line up, you'd be HARD PRESSED to find any brand that offers better gas mileage in a similarly sized vehicle. Even the huge Tahoe now delivers amazing mileage - better than anything else in it's size or class.

Willy

You are bazzare. We have do not have unlimited resources (though some like to think they are) and detriot sarted the whole SUV thing to get around the MPG and crash standards for many years. I would venture to say that over 90% of the people with 4x4 drive "think" they need it because that is what detriot pushes, not because they need it. Had Detriot no exploited the SUV MPG loop hole for profit, there would be no SUV craze. You make money by making a product and convincing people they need it even if they do not. If you want your children and grand child to have anything in future things need to change now or by the

----------------- TheSnoMan.com

Geezus - do you see black Chevrolet helicopters hovering around your house? Detroit started all of this for their own purpose, and not to respond to their customers? Then who the hell would ever have bought them? And what about all of those vehicles being produced by every import manufacturer? They're producing SUV's to satisfy something other than their customer's demands? Those vehicles are selling for some other reason than consumer demand? Man - you've got to get a grip.

Bull. You don't understand much about market dynamics, do you?

Save the planet then - quit breathing. You'll emit less CO2. Global warming is caused by people like you blowing hot air in groups like this.

Around 10% of all man-made CO2 is from human respiration.

Graham

I did look, particularly at the Lucerne. The only model that has the Stability Control is the CXS and starts at $35440. That is $10,100 more than the sticker price of my Sonata Limited. As for GPS, you need the OnStar that costs $200 a year for the base program plus $100 for navigation. For the cost of one year, I can get a Garmin or Tom Tom that fits into any car I own. Over a five year period, I'd spend $11,600 more to get the same features in the Lucerne.

My LeSabre has OnStar. After the free year ran out, I never re-newed and never missed it.

I was pretty serious about buying a Lucerne, but the Sonata is just a much better value, IMO. After 8 months and 15,000 miles, I'm still liking the Sonata as much as the day I bought it. Performance and handling are outstanding. It has not needed any warranty service either, only oil changes so far.

Not anymore. You're way behind the times. Traditional U.S. handling has simply gone out of style. I admit American cars are just a pile of cheap imported junk, but your description wasn't really very good. You may be right about the last bastion-ing. There's only one U.S.-made car with a live rear axle. Can you name it? I wonder if it's the last one in the world. Might well be.

And as for the G8, I'll take all the Australian cars they will send us. They have big rear drive cars in Australia, and people here want them. At least I do.

Let's don't get too picky. Aston had strong growth, and actually makes money now. As for trashing, Jaguar doesn't need any help. That's gotta be the most incompetent auto manufacturer on earth that actually still builds something. Ford has been nothing but salvation for them the whole way. Billions were spent, and they'll never get a nickel back.

Boy, that's the truth. I thought the Mark VIII was a good follow-on, but I thought the 89-98 or whatever t-bird was kinda ugly.. What on earth were they thinking when they canceled the whole platform? Their badge engineering is a bit scary now. Neither Mercury nor Lincoln has anything with its own sheet metal now. They're just changing the grilles on stuff. A 1995 Mark VIII seems extravagant now, compared to the obviously badge-engineered MK-Focus.

That's a GREAT set of criteria for cars. You know, I think there are some products out there. The Mustang and the 300 are both interesting. At least they look like a car instead of an egg on wheels. The 300 can be pretty economical if it's equipped right. GM doesn't have a product in that same "interesting/reliable/safe/economical" race. I have to admit that I woke up and realized the HHR really does look like a 47 Chevy. The panel truck is what woke me up. It's very questionable whether that makes it interesting, but I bet it's reliable, safe, and economical. Makes you wonder how Chrysler is going to follow up the PT. That was interesting, and a huge huge success. But now they have to do that again, don't they?

Gosh - all those years of purpose-built rental cars. I don't see how some of the brands make it. I guess the truck sales paid for all the money they lost on rental cars.

I'm not surprised. The Cayenne is kind of a bargain, really. I couldn't say that about an A6, but that's just me.

Actually, that's just what they're talking about in Washington. It's for real.

I can't speak to the whole lineup, but I have an '05 Chevy Impala as a company car. This is a very big car and I am not particularly fond of it, but this is what they give me. It gets over 30 mpg on the highway doing a steady 75 mph. Last week I drove from Manchester, NH to Baltimore, MD on a single tank of gas and was flabbergasted to find that the tank took less than 16 gallons.

I thought the earlier Thunderbirds (89 era) were handsome cars, but when I drove them, in anticipation of buying, they were still just shimmying Fords. What a disappointment!

Then the new Thunderbird, on first glance, looked pretty good, but the more I looked at it, the uglier it got...They nearly put enough lipstick on that pig to make it look pretty.

I am just not a Ford person...not since my old 66 Mustang, at any rate, and it had a bit of the patented Ford Shimmy and Shake to it.