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 ...
Note that Luba's head doesn't even clear the seatback nor, I'd bet, the steering wheel.
So therefore, experience tells me her turn signal will be welded in the permanently-on position, and top speed (even downhill) will be 22mph.
Sigh.
Cool! More room on the road for my high speed cruiser!
Here ya go. It's a bit more advanced than a katana though ;)
You still cling to hyperbole. You still imply things that aren't there?
Asking if I belong at the DU is the standard insult here when someone is incapable of engaging in an intelligent exchange.
I said the government does have power. I didn't say I favor expanding that power.
When it regards a natural resource, it's not only free market that comes into play here. Those who use greater quantites set the price and drive up the cost of transported goods. Since gasoline is not a luxury good, and people NEED it to go to work, there has to be more consideration than, if you can buy it, use it.
No go call someone more deserving of it a troll.
I should have read your "about" page before posting to you. Now it's easy to see whewre you are coming from. I should not have wasted my time.
Have a nice day. Unnngh!
Actually, there is a company in West Texas making high priced street machines out of the new FMTV troop trucks the Army is using in Iraq. They are called the BAD BOY HEAVY MUSCLE TRUCK and run several hundred thousand bucks each, depending on options.
LOL, growing up, we had a '76 ford LTD wagon (8 mpg!). The thing was a huge monster, but w/ 5 brothers & sisters, we needed it. All of us got our licenses with that car, too. We used to go camping, and raced motorcylces, and ATV's. Probably 1/3 of the miles on it were pulling some kind of trailer. I would love to see a Prius do that-NOT!
Driving a tractor trailer rig was a piece of cake after learning to drive w/ something that huge!
Yup, just bought one, great vehicle. They are hard to find, though. But, you can order one and wait a couple of months to get it.
Here's my opinion based upon your needs: The Escape Hybrid is just about the same size in and out as the regular Escape. I am 6'2" tall, 220 lb., and I fit comfortably in the driver's seat of the Escape, although I fit better in the Explorer, which is what I drive. Opt for the six cylinder engine. The four cyclinder will get you where you want to go, but you will notice the difference driving off road, accelerating quickly, and moving heavy loads. (In contrast, the six cylinder 4WD Explorer performs as well as the 8 cylinder AWD Explorer, except when towing real heavy stuff.) Do not expect the Escape Hybrid to save you a lot of gas if you're going to do mostly highway driving as opposed to urban driving. The hybrid engine kicks in when driving around 25 mph or less. Once you top that threshold speed, the engine is running on internal combustion, the same as the regular Escape.
I completely agree.
But the term has evolved into something else, now. I am not sure it meets the current iteration of the term. I tend to think of my Jeep as more of a street-legal ATV.
Your logic still implies some kind of least-common denominator, which would mean a loss of choice. What if you and I bought heat our house with natural gas, but you had a 1000 sq ft. house, and I had a 3000 sq ft. house? If I purchased a smaller house, I'd use less natural gas, and reduce the demand. Is that really where you want to go with this argument?
You're on a very slippery slope toward a Communistic economy.
"I should not have wasted my time. "
Given your limited capacity, I would venture that most of your time is wasted.
"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."
You choose to drive a small car therefore you've choosen to accept the risks of that type car. You have no right to dictate to any other driver the types of risks that they should take.
Nowadays, there is no such thing as giving gap -- at least in the big cities down here. Any gap bigger than a car length (and occasionally smaller) will immediately be filled with someone. I chalk it up to all the yankees who've never actually had to drive till they commuted south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Interesting. I may not be as practiced a debater as you, but your spurious little personal attack is without merit, lib.
"You're on a very slippery slope toward a Communistic economy."
Agreed. It's a tough one for me to reconcile.
There are situations where the stronger, economically, can keep the weaker down, even when the weaker is more capable. What's the answer? I don't know.
I don't endorse a communistic economy.
I think there are shades of gray though.
I guess one thing that irritates me, and it's not SUVs. There are many here who don't care, don't give 1 second's thought to anyone but themselves.
Call me communist, call me a DU escapee, call me a flaming liberal, but I was raised to actually think about others.
links bump!
links bump!
"If I were running things, SUV's would at least have a minimum gas mileage requirement, at least the same as a pickup truck."
SUVs and pickups have the same mileage requirements, ie, light truck. A SUV is nothing more than a pickup truck with a different body shape on it.
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