Posted on 01/22/2006 7:19:36 PM PST by Flavius
Will not part with my SUV. Get a new Mountaineer or Explorer every year. Will do without something else to put the gas in it, or work longer to pay for it.
Real close to retirement although (thank goodness)
So, you're close to hitting the 45 year old mark or are you not union? :)
Article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today said Ford is planning to offer a number of buyouts. Hope you get an offer!
GM is another matter. My mother took her Grand Am to two different dealerships six separate times and they couldn't fix her car, althought they didn't fail to charge her anyway. I took her car to a hole in the wall muffler shop in Covington, and the guy fixes it and doesn't know why the dealership couldn't diagnose and correct an "obvious" problem.
LOL, I have a GM card with $2000 on it, and after I had a similar experience with their dealerships not being able to fix my car yet charging me a fortune for trying, I bought an import. A note to U.S. car makers: you jerks had better take away the dealership service departments and start repairing your vehicles yourselves. The dealerships are universally unworthy to trust with this work. Word, baby--WORD!!!
The union and the employees priced themselves out of a job. This is just the beginning, GM is next.
You know that would be great. I'd love to go home to Ky. The weather here is killing me.
I've seen several Five Hundreds and I like them. I haven't driven one though. It's basically the evolved Taurus. If it tanks, I can't see why.
Yep, I've driven an SUV for the past 15 years. No big deal with the gas prices - I have a job. I want and use the capability of the vehicle. Let the liberals hate them. For some reason they don't hate pickup and vans which get the same mileage, often times worse...
The Five-Hundred is OK-looking...looks like a servicable VW Jetta.
I told my folks that I heard the Five Hundred had gotten good marks
on safety ratings.
They said they'd heard the car is under-powered, thus "it's so slow
it can't get into trouble!".
We had a '73 Land Cruiser that went anywhere off road we wanted to go, that was one fun vehicle.
I like our Ford Escape as an all-purpose mini-SUV except the steering wheel column arrangement is the lamest. Headlights, windshield wipers, windshield wiper wash front and rear with adjustable delay mixed in with turning signals.. What a bunch of nonsense.
You can easily turn the headlights off while driving when trying to use the wipers or washer fluid if it's not your main vehicle.
It's functionally illiterate as the Aztek is physically ugly.
Only too many managers would explain this, can't blame this one on the unions.
My everyday car is a 2001 VW Beetle.
General Motors manufactures some incredibly boring small pickup trucks like the Chevrolet Colorado. The updated Dodge Dakota isn't much to write home about, either.
The company could help their financial bottomline by introducing an updated pickup that is basically just a smaller version of one of their top-selling F150 models. That is why I believe they need to offer some of the upscale features that "transition" buyers desire. This "transition" buyer is probably a young person who has lived in apartments his/her whole life and has just purchased a home within the past few years. Home ownership creates a whole new need for truck utility without the need to haul enormous loads.
That is where I see success with a small (but comfortable and stylish) pickup truck that could really compete with the Japanese models.
~ Blue Jays ~
That said, if our country had tort reform so that paying corporate lawyers were a smaller part of the cost of a car and if the UAW were out of the equation so that paying union bosses weren't a part of the cost of a car, all of the American automakers would be in a better position. Furthermore, tort reform that reduced medical malpractice costs would reduce the cost of health care and reduce another factor that causes higher car prices and yet lower profitability for the car companies.
While I understand the steps that led to medical insurance paying part of every doctor's bill, we also need to return to a system where individuals generally paid their own doctors' bills except for major medical claims. If people paid their own doctors' bills, they'd "shop" more for treatment and probably take care better care of themselves in order to avoid needing treatment. Of course, companies also have to get past the idea of sending people to doctors for every little thing. My company has a policy that if I have a flu that causes me to miss four days of work, I have to go to the doctor before returning to work. I know what a flu is and when I have one. I don't need to go to the doctor for every sickness of that kind. The policy only increases the demand for medicine, and the increasing demand drives increasing costs.
Bill
You selfish SUV drivers don't care about the extra fuel that all of you use that drives up gas prices for all the rest of us "normal" car drivers. Just admit that you want to drive around in a vehicle half the size of a tractor-trailer. At least be honest about it...
Ford and GM blew it by focusing on market share at the expense of quality improvement (many engineers at said companies agree with me on this). Toyota, which is TOTALLY focused on continuous improvement of quality, gained market share nonetheless. Honda (who's cars I never cared for) also put more emphasis on quality and investment in engineering improvements than the Big 2 did.
No, I like a vehicle that will carry the whole family, and all the stuff I need to carry when I travel. My vehicle is my office, and I need the space. So what, that it uses a little more gas, and that I am larger than your pedal driven foreign car.
Selling The Detroit Lions to winners like Bill Davidson (Detroit Pistons) or Illitch group (Detroit Red Wings) would be a good place to start in marketing.
How cool would it be to have the Super Bowl at home in a couple of weeks?
Don't know where you have gotten your information. My husband's job is to travel to the plants to make sure their quality numbers are good, and if not to find out why they aren't, then correct the problems. Quality has been a major concern for many years.
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