Saab done for? - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Fulcrum525 · #16 02-18-2009, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

I agree. GM could be bringing in decent Opels, Vauxhalls, and Holdens into this country. They would get better MPG and have better build quality than the usual Chevy or Pontiac. While I would hate to see the end of Pontiac or Buick, replacing them with Opel and Holden would be a good idea.

If GM goes under i'm sure that the profitable European brands you mentioned will survive and continue to make cars without the burden of GM management.

As for the ones here....Pontiac made this, let them die.

iwrock · #17 02-18-2009, 01:03 PM

I saw an article this morning in the Wall Street Journal, and it looks like GM may cut Saturn, Saab, and Hummer.

Fulcrum525 · #18 02-18-2009, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iwrock

I saw an article this morning in the Wall Street Journal, and it looks like GM may cut Saturn, Saab, and Hummer.

People are still buying Hummers

!

pj67coll · #19 02-18-2009, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

I agree. GM could be bringing in decent Opels, Vauxhalls, and Holdens into this country. They would get better MPG and have better build quality than the usual Chevy or Pontiac. While I would hate to see the end of Pontiac or Buick, replacing them with Opel and Holden would be a good idea.

Disagree. There's nothing impressive about any of the three makes. They are not Mercedes, Toyota's or Hondas. And they will fail against such just as surely as Pontiac and Chevvy.

- Peter.

Fulcrum525 · #20 02-18-2009, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Disagree. There's nothing impressive about any of the three makes. They are not Mercedes, Toyota's or Hondas. And they will fail against such just as surely as Pontiac and Chevvy.

- Peter.

Yes and no...I think they are more like VW's or Scions. They probably wouldn't sell them here but they would continue to flourish in their existing markets. But if there is a power vaccuum in the car market (Aka 2 of the big 3 go under) Then there will be gaps that need filling and sales quotas to meet.

Hatterasguy · #21 02-18-2009, 01:17 PM

They should kill Pontiac and Buick.

Caddy gets everything $35k+
Chevy gets everything under $35k.

In trucks:
GMC dies.
Caddy gets trucks over $35k.
Chevy under $35k.

There, now GM has a nice simple layout.

Brian Carlton · #22 02-18-2009, 01:30 PM

My guess is that Chrysler goes out first.

Anything run by Nardelli turns to crap within a few years of his arrival. He's got to be the highest paid moron in the free world.

#23 02-18-2009, 01:32 PM

Hat that still doesn't address the horrible quality of some of the vehicles and DEFINATELY doesn't address how ugly cadillac has gotten!

Fulcrum525 · #24 02-18-2009, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hatterasguy

They should kill Pontiac and Buick.

Caddy gets everything $35k+
Chevy gets everything under $35k.

In trucks:
GMC dies.
Caddy gets trucks over $35k.
Chevy under $35k.

There, now GM has a nice simple layout.

If only GM management could pull their heads out of the ground long enough to realize that everyone else has figured out their restructuring plan for them....

SNL got it right, they are just going to keep asking for more money

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/snl-spoofs-big-three-bailout-hearing
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29231797/

awsrock · #25 02-18-2009, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fulcrum525

As for the ones here....Pontiac made this, let them die.

Yeah! Good lord that was a mistake. I always called it the "answer to nobody's question" and you can thank Bob Lutz for this masterpiece.
You hardly even see these anymore; not that there really were that many to begin with. However, I saw a brown one the other day WITHOUT any hubcaps...needless to say, it was appalling

Actually, I don't know if words could describe it. I'd rather be in a rusty old Ford Astro than that thing

As for Hummer- people might still be buying them, but I'm sure nobody would be too upset if they couldn't anymore

diametricalbenz · #26 02-18-2009, 02:45 PM

I always wondered what happened in the US automaker boardrooms.

VP of Product Development: "Here is the new......AZTEK!"
CEO: "Wow...you guys spent 5 minutes designing that thing"
CFO: "If we shove enough repackaged brands in people's faces we'll get all demographics."
CEO: "Build it."

Replace aztek with

Monte Carlo
DTS
CTS
Any Minivan
Tahoe
Hummer

awsrock · #27 02-18-2009, 02:50 PM

What's kind of funny is that the rear part of the Aztek, which of course is one of the reasons it is so awful, is pretty dead on with the Prius..hmm!

Honus · #28 02-18-2009, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awsrock

...I'm sort of a loyalist, if you will...before GM, Saab had two models, then GM tries to make them have more, but just takes someone elses and slaps a label on it, instead of trying to get Saab to actually produce one of their own...

I agree with you about that. I am just barely old enough to remember when GM took pride in designing cars and trucks worthy of a customer's loyalty. Why did they stop doing that?

Today's Washington Post has a nice column discussing the decline of General Motors, which seemed to occur in a relatively few short years in the early 70s (remember the Vega?):http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021702594.html

Quote:

My Father's Chevrolets

By Jeanne McManus
Wednesday, February 18, 2009; Page A13

If ever there was a good idea gone bad, an American icon destroyed, a trust betrayed, it has to be Chevrolet. It took only one 1951 Ford to make my father a Chevy man for life. One summer day in 1952 Dad went off to Chevy Chase Chevrolet, unannounced, and traded in the Ford for a Chevrolet "tin woodie" station wagon, dark brown with a tailgate that flapped down, a rear window that sprang up and a third seat in the back that folded flat, though the car was so often filled with kids that it was rarely in that position. That day, my mother cried in front of her four children for the first time any of us could remember.

Mom thought the car was an extravagance, and it probably was, with a fresh mortgage on a three-bedroom, one-bath house in Northwest. Though Dad was in many ways infinitely practical, not in need of luxury, he had his weaknesses, and a new Chevy was at the top of the list.

How could the company that once forged Dad's dreams from metal become the same General Motors that is now begging for billions in government assistance?

That first Chevy station wagon, most often with Mom behind the wheel, hauled us off to daily obligations -- school, church, Boy Scouts, Brownies -- but never was it more valuable than on our annual trek to Bethany Beach. Into the back of that car Dad managed to stuff the sheets, towels, bathing suits, coolers, beach umbrella and summer clothes that Mom had packed for our two- or sometimes four-week stay. It was a badge of pride to Dad that he not resort to tying suitcases to the roof. To his pleasure, the Chevy could absorb the load.
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That brown station wagon disappeared as suddenly as it arrived. This time, Mom, sensing a pattern, did not cry when Dad drove up in the 1957 Chevrolet station wagon, a kind of creamy yellow with white tail fins. None of us liked the color. But this was back when families were benign dictatorships, not democracies, and so we kept our mouths shut.

By then my older sister and I were in the Girl Scouts, and every Saturday we took ice skating lessons at Uline Arena in Northeast Washington. Mom volunteered too often to be one of the carpool drivers hauling half of a troop down North Capitol Street, and another mother, in another station wagon, took the other half. One Saturday morning when the inevitable happened -- a girl fell and split her lip -- the other mother took the injured girl to the hospital and Mom took home the entire troop in the '57 wagon -- 17 of us, all in circular skirts, with skates, coats, hats and mittens.

Looking back now, I see that the next Chevy was clearly Dad's midlife-crisis car, though I don't think the term had been invented yet. By 1961, he had three teenagers, and that's enough to make any man trade in the station wagon for a 1961 Impala convertible -- white with a red interior and a red stripe on the more modified fin. Again, the color: Dad? White?

Still, though I was not yet old enough to drive, I couldn't wait to get my hands on that car. Neither could my girlfriends. While Mom and Dad were at a Redskins game one brilliant autumn afternoon, my gang of friends and I, headed by Peggy, the only one of us who had a license, took the Impala for a joy ride, all the while listening to the game to make sure we got the car back in time. (Sorry, Mom!)

Second cars soon joined the family car. We had not one but two Corvairs (one of the darlings of Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed") and a Malibu. One year, Dad went off radar and bought a little Renault, but it always sounded like a whirring fan, the turn signals were the opposite of the Chevy ("left is up and right is down," we sang to remind Mom), and it rusted out pretty quickly.

When in 1972 I finally had enough money to buy my own car, I knew it was going to be a VW bug. Dad insisted that we test-drive one. Of course, according to him, everything about it was wrong. To be honest, my dad, a veteran of World War II, found it hard to see his daughter in a German car.

Inexorably, we wound up at Chevy Chase Chevrolet with me driving off the lot in a 1972 Chevrolet Vega.

That thing overheated on a lonely mountain road in Vermont at 5 in the morning. It overheated on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on a Sunday afternoon in July. At one point, the only way I could ensure that it would start in the morning was to set my alarm for 3 a.m., go outside in my pajamas, turn it over, warm it up, turn it off, then go back to bed. When in 1979 I bought a Honda Civic, the dealer wouldn't even take the Vega in a trade.

A year later my husband and I drove it into a gas station in Rappahannock County, parked it over to the side where cars awaited servicing, took off the license plates and quietly drove off in the Civic. We saw it there for a while afterward; eventually it disappeared.

Jeanne McManus, a former Post editor, is an occasional contributor to the op-ed page.

awsrock · #29 02-18-2009, 03:39 PM

That only stopped in 1972! What about the years after that, lol. Just think of anything domestic that was made in the early 80s! (with some exceptions, of course)
Chevy seemed to do pretty well with the Caprice, and I still see a lot of those Olds / Buick Regal two doors from the 80s.

Ironic that the author ditched the Chevy for a Civic, since that seems to be the trend these days.
I don't know though, my other grandma had an 82 Civic- talk about bare bones..I don't think it even had a clock in it!

Honus · #30 02-18-2009, 03:53 PM

When I was in college, I had a 1971 Dodge Colt, made by Mitsubishi. That car was superior in every respect to its American competition - the Pinto and the Vega. In fact, it's a joke to compare the Pinto and Vega to any of the Japanese cars imported in the early 70s, especially the Datsun 510.