grbeck

The pre-bankruptcy 2000s were the era of the "Halo Vehicle" at GM (no doubt driven by Lutz). There was the Cadillac XLR, Chevrolet SSR, Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice. These vehicles were supposed to draw the curious to the showrooms of their respective parent brands. The hope was that these people would then buy a more mundane vehicle. The real problem, of course, was that Halo Vehicles can't compensate for mediocre bread-and-butter offerings. The Saturn Sky, for example, couldn't hide the fact that regular Saturns weren't competitive with a contemporary Ford, let alone a Honda or a Toyota.

Drove by our Ford dealer last night (LB Smith Ford-Lincoln in Lemoyne). A blue 2020 Explorer was parked in front. Didn't get a chance to look it over closely, but it looked good from the road.

That's because Saturn only made money for one year, from what I've read. The warm-and-fuzzy commercials and Tennessee "homecomings" were not enough to compensate for the continued losses racked up by Saturn.

The other rationale was that Buick gave the dealers a line of passenger cars to sell. With Buick cars going away, that is one less reason to keep Buick around.

This Saturday, I saw a 2020 Explorer on the road, but our local dealer does not have any in stock!

I thought Focuses equipped with the three-cylinder engine have a conventional automatic transmission that has not been problematic..?

I wouldn't necessarily dub these reviews as "surprisingly positive." Motor Trend and arsTechnica, for example, kept comparing it to the Escalade, not any of its direct competitors. I would hope that this crossover would be better than the current Escalade, which is scheduled to be replaced in the very near future. No doubt the XT6 is a good vehicle, but that is because the basic platform is solid. Whether it is fully competitive with its chief competitors - which will NOT include the current Escalade - remains to be seen. These reviews don't tell us that.

It's handsome, but it will take awhile to adjust to a Corvette with a stubby hood. The current Corvette has a very distinctive look, including its proportions...I'm not sure one can say the same thing about this one.

Doing so would no doubt strengthen the case of people suing Ford. When Honda and Acura automatic transmissions on V-6 equipped vehicles were failing regularly in the early 2000s, the failure was often sudden, and occurred while the vehicle was in motion. The vehicle dramatically lost speed as a result. Needless to say, this could be quite scary on a limited-access highway. But the government never characterized the defect as a safety issue, to the best of my knowledge.

The Mother Jones article that got the entire ball rolling is not factual. It overstated the number of Pinto fire-related deaths, and completely mischaracterized the notorious memo. The memo had NOTHING to do with the Pinto. It was simply a cost-benefit analysis of possible federal regulations that had been requested by the federal government! That is why the judge in the Grimshaw case refused to allow the plaintiffs to enter it as evidence. If I recall correctly, the fuel-tank bladder that Ford's critics repeatedly refer to was not used on any production vehicle - certainly not one within the reach of most buyers of that time. So Ford not equipping the Pinto with it was hardly egregious. The bottom line is that the Pinto was no more dangerous than other small cars of its era. A good starting point is the Rutgers Law Review article, "The Myth of the Pinto Case," from 1991. An analysis of actual accident data shows that the Pinto's record for fire-related deaths was not out of line with other small cars of that era. It's overall safety record (meaning, all types of accidents, not just those that involved fire) was actually better than average compared to other small cars.

The return-lease vehicles are often resold as "certified used vehicles." Most likely the third owners are the ones left holding the bag.

My cousin's husband works in the service department of a GM dealer. This is a dealership that has been owned by the same family since the late 1930s. He told me that the Blazer is simply too expensive when equipped the way buyers of this class of vehicle expect. That is why sales aren't that great.

Most of those German luxury cars are leased. Word is out that one does not want to own a European luxury car after the warranty ends. People simply lease one, and turn it in for a new one after the lease ends.

My brother-in-law bought a first-year Fiesta. It was gone within a year, and that was largely because of how the transmission behaved. And he had nothing against Fords, as his other vehicle at the time was a 2010 F-150.

Somehow, I doubt that FCA management will do this. GM management, on the other hand, seems to be in its own world right now.

The big fail of the bailout was that it left far too much of the "old" GM culture in place. Some of the moves GM has made make sense - finally taking decisive action on the European operations - but others leave me scratching my head. The press and buyers have been carping about poor quality interiors for years now on various vehicles (not just with GM vehicles), so one would think management would have paid heed. And changing the Cadillac ATS into the "new" CT4 reminds me of poor old AMC changing the 1970 Rebel into the 1971 Matador.

I don't doubt that the cancellation of the consulting contract has colored Mr. DeLorenzo's view regarding Mr. Farley. But I will say that I've never met a high-level executive who was a shrinking violet...

Yes.

Ford didn't help matters by letting the car go too long without a complete makeover. People who fork over money for the top-of-the-line (and more profitable) models expect fresh sheet metal. They don't want a car that looks like the one their neighbor bought five years ago.

Henry Ford II personally fired Harry Bennett - who wasn't a shrinking violet himself, and no stranger to violence - because he felt that history would judge him a coward if he delegated the job to an underling. I seriously doubt that he was intimidated by a ride in a fast car.

For what it's worth, vendors are already selling some brochures from the early 2000s at Carlisle and Hershey.

I was surprised that the local Ford dealer has brochures for the new Ranger. I just picked up a brochure this weekend. Honda has brochures, but not for individual vehicles. They have one brochure for minivans/crossovers/Ridgeline, and one for all passenger cars.

California only has a surplus if one ignores the state's massive pension obligations, which are not getting smaller: http://www.newgeography.com/content/006159-california-doesn-t-have-a-budget-surplus When pension obligations are taken into account, Kansas outranks California for fiscal integrity. And a large reason for California's surplus is a healthy stock market. California's state income tax is very heavily dependent on top earners in general, and income from stock dividends and capital gains (including capital gains generated by the sale of homes), in particular. https://californiapolicycenter.org/californias-budget-surplus-ignores-crushing-debt-burden/ To illustrate just how unusually swollen California’s current state tax revenues have gotten, compare state tax collections in FYE 6/30/2017 (our most recent available data) to seven years earlier, in 2010. Back in 2010, California was in the grip of the great recession. Total state tax revenue was $94 billion, and $44 billion of that was from personal income taxes. Skip to FYE 6/30/2017, and total state tax revenue was $148 billion, and $86 billion was from personal income taxes. This means that 80 percent of the increase in state tax revenue over the seven years through 6/30/2017 was represented by the increase is collections from individual taxpayers, which doubled. It isn’t hard to figure out why this happened. Between 2010 and 2017 the tech heavy NASDAQ tripled in value, from 2,092 to 6,153. In that same period, Silicon Valley’s big three tech stocks all quadrupled. Adjusting for splits, Apple shares went from $35 to $144, Facebook opened in May 2012 at $38, and went up to $150, Google moved from $216 to $908. While California’s tech industry was booming over the past decade, California real estate boomed in parallel. In June 2010 the median home price in California was $335,000; by June 2017 it had jumped to $502,000. Along the California coast, median home prices have gone much higher. Santa Clara County now has a median home price of $1.3 million, double what it was less than a decade ago. As people sell their overpriced homes to move inland or out-of-state, and as tech workers cash out their burgeoning stock options, hundreds of billions of capital gains generate tens of billions in state tax revenue. But can homes continue to double in value every six or seven years? Can tech stocks continue to quadruple in value every six or seven years? Apparently Gavin Newsom thinks they can. Reality may beg to differ.

For the record, I'm all for California being able to determine its own policy in these areas. (Although, if I lived there, I'd be more concerned about rampant human waste on the sidewalks of various urban areas, and the spread of diseases such as typhus from massive homeless encampments.) But let's not pretend that such policies don't result in some serious side effects (such as much higher costs for people, particularly the poor). Said side effects are valid reasons for other states and jurisdictions to tread carefully before adopting them, or some variation of them.

California has "solved" the electrical generation conundrum by simply outsourcing a large portion of it to other states, many of which still use coal and other fossil fuels as power sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2016/04/03/californias-growing-imported-electricity-problem/#1b362d954469 It also has some of the highest utility rates in the nation, which has helped raise its poverty rate - when adjusted for the cost of living - to the highest in the nation. https://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jan/20/chad-mayes/true-california-has-nations-highest-poverty-rate-w/