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 ...
"The roads around here are full of soccer moms in suburbans who can't make a right hand turn without using up 3 lanes of traffic. If you are going to drive something that big, you should have a commercial license or a cheaufer license."
A suburban is nothing more than a Silverado 2500 light truck. Are you saying one should have a commercial license to drive a pick-up truck?
How do you reconcile selfish wants versus the security of our country?
Predominantly-capitalist systems are the only ones that works in the real world.
The cake is capitalism, the icing is socialism. You can have cake without icing, but icing without cake is not sustainable.
Which, of course, they can't. Might as well put square sails on them - might make 'em handle better.
I have more problems with kids in their sticker/spoiler festooned, fat-pipe equipped little compact cars than anybody else.
Sr. citizens run a close second.
Before buying the Prius, Luba should have read Newsweak's "The Hype About Hybrid Cars". See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6477931/site/newsweek/)
Am I logged in? Is this FR? Not according to some of the comments I'm reading on this thread. I thought this was a conservative site that supports less government, capitalism/a free market system, freedom (of car choice, etc.), self-reliance and personal responsibility. Instead, I read comments about "your car is blocking my view". I thought traffic school taught one to watch the car directly in front of one's car. Or "you SUV drivers are hiking up gas prices". Here's a (sarcastic) idea: let's have separate gas pumps/prices for SUV and teeny-tiny cars. FYI, I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee (which gets none-of-your-business MPG), a Suburban (same MPG). However, occasionally, I ride my bike to work (8 miles, one way), alongside traffic in a bike lane. I wear a helmet, and am not 'afraid' of all the bigger vehicles around me. And as soon as I get my teeny-tiny 70 MGB back on the road, I won't be afraid of the bigger vehicles, nor will I be pissed off at the other larger vehicles around me for blocking my view down the road, because I pay attention to the vehicles directly around me, not 20 cars ahead. (Although, since the MGB is so teeny-tiny, maybe I'll be able to look under all those big, mean, nasty larger vehicles, which, to an MGB, will include sedans.)
"The language of the left. "
The left is not always wrong.
The right is not always correct.
ping
"The cake is capitalism, the icing is socialism. You can have cake without icing, but icing without cake is not sustainable."
We are in complete agreement there.
They brought all those 70's vintage Ford engineers out of stasis. ;-)
I never said it was the SUV's responsibility. I simply stated why I do not like the super-sized models. Methinks many on this thread read too much into many of these posts.
I never blamed it on the SUV. Once again, you people are reading stuff into these posts that is not there.
Deep discounts, eh? "Deeply saddened." ;O)
It seems the price and size of bling-bling are changing as we speak.
You didn't respond to my previous post on this topic about the car manufacturers who are losing their cash cow.
Don't mince words, it's beneath you. You said:
I know of at least one fatal accident caused by blocked line-of-sight; the SUV in question suddenly changed lanes and the car behind him plowed into the vehicle stalled in the lane.
This is what our education system has done to us. It is automatically assumed that, if we don't like something, we want it outlawed. Hell, I've got a libertarian streak a mile wide. I may hate big SUVs, or smoking, or any of a myriad of other activities or objects, but I would never recommend the government step in and outlaw them. Hell, buy the biggest vehicle you can afford. I won't like it, but it's none of my business what you do with your money. I won't cut you any slack on the interstate, either.
You do know that conservatives are allowed to have differing opinions, right? And what do complaints about view blocking and inconsiderate drivers have to do with not supporting capitalism? Hint: I can support your right to drive an SUV, and still call you an a@@hole if you use it as a battering ram.
Be real.
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