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 ...
What makes you think there is any abuse regarding driving an SUV and the right to drive an SUV could be removed?
I didn't know that. I would never buy one, so I've never investigated. Thanks for the correction.
You make a good point, regarding child seats. They are easier to deal with in a higher vehicle.
Why? Intimidated?
What element is that Honda made of? Butt-uglium?
Har! They probably drive Yugos. I'm series.
Wouldn't the 4 adult males be more comfortable if they were sitting in the front and rear seats? I mean, you've got a heck of a lotta trunk space, but you have to draw the line somewhere... :)
Diesels, on the other hand, keep going and going.
All-important cup holder
He opens the driver's door and points out the cup holder, which sits in front of the floor-mounted gearshift. In "Park," the gearshift obscures the cup holder.
"You come out of Starbucks with your big cup, and you can't put it in the cup holder," he says. "It's the small things that add up. A cup holder becomes a major thing to a customer. If he can't get to it, what good is it?"
Fer cryin out loud! When the station wagon, the most common American family car was phased out of production, something had to replace it! The Chrysler mini-van and then an entire hoard of me-too's did so from the other manufacturers. The Caprice wagons, Country Seadans, Cutlass wagons, and even Fairmont wagons were scrapped for the minivan craze. The minivan craze then became the SUV thru evolution and default. People found out you couldn't tow anything with a front wheel drive minivan, so they turned to the next thing up, trucks and truck style wagons. If the auto makers would respond by giving us the American rear wheel drive station wagon back(like Chrysler has begun to do), the SUV craze would wither on the vine.
"...but are being used as in-town transportation by a single, solitary 5' 3" female yakking on a cell phone who can barely see over the dashboard."
Your experience agress with mine.
Nope. I've already pointed out that I have no problem with the mid-sized vehicles. I simply cannot stand those LOS-blocking behemoths. My gripe is specifically with vehicles like the Suburban and the Navigator. Like I said, if I can't see around your vehicle to the road ahead (and I drive a Ford Ranger), don't ever expect me to allow you to merge in front of me. If you have a Jimmy or something similar, and you don't have 90 percent tint on your windows, I really don't have a problem with you.
What are you suggesting, a least-common denominator when it comes to vehichle design? Is everyone expected to drive around in a Geo Metro?
You reference line-of-site as a contributor to fatal accidents, but why is that only an SUV problem? Why isn't LOS affected by buses, construction vehicles, or for other reasons (such as the following vehicle was traveling too darn closely to the SUV in front of them?) By the way, that was a rhetorical question: LOS is affected by many things, and it's not exclusively an SUV problem.
They are hiddeous, aren't they? They look like something the old Soviet Union would have built.
How is that idea a problem for you?
Why do you wash your hands? When others don't?
Why do you wear a seat belt? When others don't?
Why do you see a doctor and get imunizations ??
You see, You have the same attitude as those people you just dont realize it. Because if you didnt, you would chose not to immunize yourself, or choose not to wash your hands, or wear a seatbelt.
Suckers are born every minute.
On a more positive note however, DC is uping production of the Diesel Liberty, and will be looking into expanding their oil-burner offerings in N.America.
So, at least common sense still exists, if not common.
Why are 6 or 7 SUV's in a row any more ridiculous than 6 or 7 minivans? or 6 or 7 station wagons?
Okay, then. I'll give you the chance to put your money where your mouth is. You pay your $2.50, or whatever, a gallon, send the extra $3.50 a gallon to me, and I promise not to buy an SUV.
(My Wrangler doesn't count, right? It's not really an SUV)
"What a moron liberal suckup you are."
I'm glad to see you can keep this to an intellectual debate. Or, perhaps, that's as intellectual as you are capable of being?
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