0bama to Destroy U.S. Auto Fleet

thirded, as long as your life doesn't involved sex with captive minors in the southwest. but you two would exclude that too, right?

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Gonz said:
Wanna bet that if the government hadn't started this shit in the first place, we'd not be watching 2/3 of the Big 3 go down the tubes.
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Current government intervention has nothing to do with 2 of the Big 3 going under.
They were short sighted in their product development and fleet offerings. They spent so much time and effort making newer, larger and more gas guzzling vehicles that their car fleets suffered as a result. When gas suddenly skyrocketed, nobody wanted the monster vehicle anymore and they didn't have any decent cars to sell the public.

You would have thought they would have learned from the OPEC embargo in the 70's. They got caught flatfooted then too with an over sized inventory of over sized vehicles they couldn't sell. The only reason they survived that is because they were so much larger than any foreign competition at the time.

The only way they can continue to be profitable in this market is to have a wide range of vehicle offerings and more flexible production facilities.
I won't even go near the union issues.


Americans don't want Metros, they want Expeditions.
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Americans will drive whatever they are told is a cool vehicle. Bunch of sheep running out and buying Explorers.
 
Dave said:
Current government intervention has nothing to do with 2 of the Big 3 going under.
They were short sighted in their product development and fleet offerings. They spent so much time and effort making newer, larger and more gas guzzling vehicles that their car fleets suffered as a result. When gas suddenly skyrocketed, nobody wanted the monster vehicle anymore and they didn't have any decent cars to sell the public.

You would have thought they would have learned from the OPEC embargo in the 70's. They got caught flatfooted then too with an over sized inventory of over sized vehicles they couldn't sell. The only reason they survived that is because they were so much larger than any foreign competition at the time.

The only way they can continue to be profitable in this market is to have a wide range of vehicle offerings and more flexible production facilities.
I won't even go near the union issues.

Americans will drive whatever they are told is a cool vehicle. Bunch of sheep running out and buying Explorers.
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other than the sheep part, you're right on target.
 
They are a bunch of sheep. The early SUVs were specifically targeted at people who were tired of driving minivans. Suddenly it became cool to own a vehicle that was rugged and could go anywhere even though 99% of them never left pavement. The marketing was along the lines of being able to own a macho vehicle with room for the rugrats and all their stuff. Once Joe Bob down the street bought one, everyone else had to have one. I have asked dozens of people why they love SUV's so much and the majority couldn't give me a good answer. Most of them replied "well...because its an SUV."

The car manufacturers loved it because it didn't cost them any more to build compared to a car and the profit margins were higher.
 
This is probably the funniest car review I have ever read. It is three pages but well worth the read. I will post the first few paragraphs here.

SOURCE

From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid

Jeremy Clarkson

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).

It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

[more]
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Dave said:
No, but I watched the ads.
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ah, advertising, the fountain of wisdom.

now i understand. if you start with ads, sheep are the obvious conclusion.

hmmm. what do you drive?

my recollection is that they were marketing to some segments other than just "minivanners." but then i've haven't really had much insight into that stuff since U152 and 137.
 
2minkey said:
ah, advertising, the fountain of wisdom.

now i understand. if you start with ads, sheep are the obvious conclusion.

hmmm. what do you drive?

my recollection is that they were marketing to some segments other than just "minivanners." but then i've haven't really had much insight into that stuff since U152 and 137.
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Not wisdom but it can clue you in on who they want to buy their products. If one cares to pay attention that is.

What do I drive? An '08 Acura TL Type S.

Yes, some segments. The majority was aimed at the minivan crowd.
I do seem to remember minivan sales dropped with the mass marketing of SUVs.
 
When gas was $4.00 gallon, Americans were scrambling for Metors. When it dropped back to $2.50, Ford had to rwcall all it's F-150 workers. :shrug:

I think Explorers are pointless. So, we don't own any. Same with Metros.

My '96 F-150 long bed has had more dirs & sand in it than 99% of the pickups out there. A truck is a work vehicle, not a big car.
 
i saw an ad for some piece of junk about a week ago. i want to say it was a scion but im not positive. they never referred to it as a car, or even a vehicle. they called it a transport system or something equally lame. told me all i needed to know about whats coming down the pike in the too-near future
 
still they sold their souls to teh debul. now its time to pay

noticed the gm truck ads over the last 4 months? how the voiceover keeps parroting the "we have an infrastructure to rebuild" crap. wonder where that shit came from?
 
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