Luba Ross picks up her brand new Prius at Berkeley Toyota.
Posted on 05/09/2005 6:52:14 AM PDT by MississippiMasterpiece
It's a Saturday morning on San Leandro's Marina Boulevard auto row, and the big SUVs have been sitting on the lots, waiting for someone to come in and start that dealer dollar dance that ends up with the customer slightly bewildered but paying a lot less for that vehicle than he thought he was going to.
Once in a while, there are takers, although the dealer has to discount the SUV heavily just to get it moving.
Salvador Sotello, for example, recently paid F.H. Dailey Chevrolet in San Leandro $41,000 for a new Chevy Tahoe LT (yes, with leather) SUV that had a sticker price of $58,000. The sale was an anomaly in what is otherwise a pretty dismal selling season. "It's been pretty quiet," saleswoman Crystal Gonzalez said the other day. "Been pretty slow."
At Broadway Ford in Oakland, the grilles of the Mustangs, SUVs and the lone Thunderbird smile at the passing traffic, but the showroom is empty, it appears, of customers; several salesmen are in sight. Up at Albany Ford-Subaru, salesman Myers Howard, sitting a few feet away from a big Ford pickup truck, says things on the Ford side of the showroom "are slow." That might be the understatement of the day.
Just this past week, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. underwent the humiliation of seeing their credit ratings reduced by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services to the status of junk. The reasons are becoming clear -- the two big companies can't sell much of what they produce.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Luba Ross picks up her brand new Prius at Berkeley Toyota.
Well, that's San Francisco, so it doesn't count for much... but I will be thrilled to see the SUV count on the roads thin out. When on an average day you can routinely see 6-7 SUVs in a row lined up at a stoplight, it's officially gotten ridiculous.
Well, you may be seeing my new Chevy Avalance st one of those stoplights soon. Especially if those deep discounts hit Texas.
Why?
Yup. Toyota Prius are flying off the lot !!
GM - go figure....
Demand fuels high prices for used Prius hybrids
http://www.suntimes.com/output/auto/car-news-fill09.html
Is this a surprise ? Are there people out there who really believed that there would never be another oil crisis that would destroy the market for SUV's ?
Because SUVs are not passenger cars.
When stopped at a light recently my wife pointed out the vehicles in the left turn lane on the cross street. There were thirteen SUV types, various makes and models, lined up with no other types of vehicles. There are a lot on the road but I drive a large pickup so I can't complain.
No one wants a suv that gets 8 mi per gal on a good day when gas is over $3.00 a gallon. I personally cannot stand the Prius, it is an ugly vehicle.
No surprise to me. I would be willing to pay $6/gallon just to get rid of all the SUVs on the road.
I have no objection to folks who use pickups and SUVs for their original purpose - hauling heavy things from point A to point B, or traversing rough terrain. If that's all it was, there's be nary a complaint from me. But when so many people drive them under the philosophy of "if we get into an accident, it'll be you that dies, and I'll be perfectly safe", I find them just plain offensive.
Toyota Echo owner here - 38mpg around town, 42mpg highway. A little noisy at speed though. Zippy enough if you get a 5-speed transmission.
OPINION JOURNAL - BOTW May 6th:
Be Careful What You Wish For http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050502/full/050502-8.html
The Earth's future looks bright--and that's bad news, according to "global warming" enthusiasts, reports Nature.com:
*** QUOTE ***
Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week.
Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.
That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will also have knock-on effects on cloud cover, winds, rainfall and air temperature that are difficult to predict.
*** END QUOTE ***
Blogger Vilmar Tavares http://rightwinghowler.blogspot.com/2005/05/those-wacky-environmentalists.html weighs in with some advice:
*** QUOTE ***
Break out the SUVs, boys and girls, and let's all go for a spin!!! Take your garage filling, V-8 powered environment killer, fire it up and drive to your mailbox (don't forget to leave it running for a few minutes so the engine is properly warmed it. We don't want excessive moisture to build up in the exhaust system and rust out the muffler.) Go ahead, punch a hole in your catalytic converter, too, and when you drive to the grocery store at the corner....hell, be bold!!! Leave it running!!!
*** END QUOTE ***
But the Nature report says that the improvement in air quality most likely is a result of "the collapse of communist economies and the consequent decrease in industrial pollutants." So maybe you should trade the SUV in for a Trabant http://www.team.net/www/ktud/trabi.html .
What is your main complaint re; SUV's?
Mileage?
Size?
My daughter has a Honda Element SUV, it's ugly but gets 25mpg. Would you have a problem with this SUV?
Just trying to figure out where you're coming from.
I'm supposed to be getting some money by the end of summer, and want to buy one of those Ford Escape SUV hybrid vehicles.
Someone must have one, but I cannot seem to locate one of a dealers lot. My dealer says he's had a couple, but they fly off the lot as fast as they get on it.
I have an Avalanche with the small block V-8. Maybe a touch underpowered, but I get right at 18MPG on the highway. The lifetime fuel economy on the driver information console is right around 15 MPG. The drop down mid gate is an ingenious invention. You can get a 4'x 8'sheet of plywood in there all locked up tight and dry. I purchased mine as a lease return. It was 13 months old, had 16,000 and I paid $18,000 below the sticker price.
Tip - Use Eagle One Tire Shine on the Vinyl Cladding and bed cover pieces. It is the product I have found that lasts the longest and does not streak on the paint when it rains.
The challenge the auto makers have is to match the usability and family friendly nature of the SUV in an alternative. People are buying SUV's because of the human and cargo hauling capacity, notbecuase they are sporty and have 4 wheel drive.
Does anyone know how much costly will be the battery replacement....
$100's - $1,000's ??
Quick, somebody find a way to shoehorn some worthless government intervention in there, so the environmentalists can take credit.
"When on an average day you can routinely see 6-7 SUVs in a row lined up at a stoplight, it's officially gotten ridiculous."
I think the SUV thing was a fad that is now dying out, especially since almost everyone seems to have one. They just aren't cool anymore. How cool is anything once it is marketed to "soccer moms."
The Prius might be the new big thing because they are pretty cool. One of my co-workers has one and the thing looks pretty cool. It also has a lot of touch-screen controls. Plus, they aren't cheap so it is also a good way to display your status.
Our Ford Explorer gets 20 mpg on the highway and about 14 in town.
Note: My Subaru Legazy sedan gets 28 on the highway.
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