GM now worth less than toy car maker Mattel

[crap freakboy]

It's simple- American cars are big, thirsty, under engineered and ugly (sounds like the wife describing me actually, but I digress), just watch any Top Gear review and it usually ends with '...why buy this when you can buy one of these instead?'
I do feel for the families that will suffer but the times they are achanging.

 

[quagmire]

It's simple- American cars are big, thirsty, under engineered and ugly (sounds like the wife describing me actually, but I digress), just watch any Top Gear review and it usually ends with '...why buy this when you can buy one of these instead?'
I do feel for the families that will suffer but the times they are achanging.

Top Gear is for entertainment. Their US bashing is what makes the show so entertaining. It is evident that they have an anti- US bias when they test drove the GT500 and put it on the dyno. Hammond came off as not understanding that the car loses HP when it goes through the powertrain to the wheels. Again, when they test drove the regular C6 when Hammond put a pebble on the road and went over it and said it hurt his back. But, again it is from an entertainment stand point they did it. From the American cars they test drove, they loved the CTS( and CTS-V, though Clarkson hated the bonging) and the Z06.

 

[crap freakboy]

Top Gear is for entertainment. Their US bashing is what makes the show so entertaining. It is evident that they have an anti- US bias when they test drove the GT500 and put it on the dyno. Hammond came off as not understanding that the car loses HP when it goes through the powertrain to the wheels. Again, when they test drove the regular C6 when Hammond put a pebble on the road and went over it and said it hurt his back. But, again it is from an entertainment stand point they did it. From the American cars they test drove, they loved the CTS( and CTS-V, though Clarkson hated the bonging) and the Z06.

True, but unfortunately they and other 'enterjournalists' are the norm now and have the mic.

 

[ErikCLDR]

Top gear is very enjoyable to watch, but very biased.

British cars are always the best. German cars are despised. American cars they make out to be crap but they actually did like the CTS, Z06, Ford GT500, and Focus.

American cars are finally starting to boost up their build quality, but its kind of too late, now that car sales are dwindling.

I wouldn't call American cars "under engineered". They're built so that they can be easily worked on. Unfortunately they're also built to be as cost effective as possible- save $1 here and sell a million cars, save $1m dollars. Its the German cars that are over engineered. Is it necessary to have to remove the air intake to change a light bulb? Or take apart 1/2 the car to change the oil? Or remove loads of plastic covers to do anything.

 

[2ms]

It's simple- American cars are big, thirsty, under engineered and ugly (sounds like the wife describing me actually, but I digress), just watch any Top Gear review and it usually ends with '...why buy this when you can buy one of these instead?'
I do feel for the families that will suffer but the times they are achanging.

Hah, yeah Top Gear, a comedy and entertainment show more than a serious car review show, is The Bottom Line.

Have you ever heard of the Car & Driver 10-best list? It's the Newsweek College Ratings of cars. GM has more cars on there than any other manufacturer in world. The Japanese Big 3 compete the most directly with American car companies since they are most parallel in price and size categories of vehicles. Only one of the Japanese Big 3 has any cars on the list at all. Toyota has more SUV platforms than any of the American Big 3 do. Toyota and Nissan's full-size SUVs and pickups get worse mileage than any of their Big 3 analogs.

Get your car info from somewhere other than an entertainent show in country in which 95% of American vehicles aren't even offered. Or at least, if you're going to go around spewing giant generalizations being applied to every car company in an entire country, check your facts.

 

[godmachine12]

Sorry for off-topic, but.... Why? I mean, I heard that for a long time, the Ford F-series is the most popular car in USA. But it's a pickup! Why do you guys need pickups that bad? Sure, we have pickups in Finland as well, but people who drive them are people who REALLY need one. And that means that usually those pickups are sold to companies that do the kind of business that needs a pickup. Regular consumers never really buy any pickups. I think that overall, pickups have maybe 0.5% market-share. And it's no wonder. Compared to normal cars, they aren't as comfortable to drive, and they don't drive that well to begin with. For hauling cargo, you have station-wagons and vans, and for hauling people you have normal cars and MPVs.

So where do pickups fit in, as cars for normal consumers?
[/URL]

Thankfully, it's reign is over. The Civic has taken it's spot, but trucks are still everywhere. I know people who drive trucks, huge trucks for that matter, that never use them for anything but recreational driving. It's the most foolish thing I can imagine. I'm American and I damn sure can't explain it to you. My best guess is that we have yet to experience truly expensive gasoline. We are going nuts over $4/gallon gas ($1.05/liter), which doesn't even compare to prices in say Finland. How much is gas there now? When I was there last summer it was over 3 Euro/liter and I'm sure it's worse now. Of course our dwindling dollar makes it look worse, but the point is the same.

It took awhile, but I finally convined my brother, mother, and stepfather to switch to more fuel efficient vehicles. Two drove trucks, and didn't use them for anything except normal driving, and my mother drove an AWD Subaru. We live in TN for crying out loud! We maybe get 5 days of real snow a year, so weather is no excuse. Now with two Corolla's and an Accord, they are much, much happier and do all the same things as before. I have a manual Civic and pull 36-37 city and 42 highway. I wouldn't think of driving anything else. If only we could convince everyone else of the same.

 

[idyll]

So sad.. I hope we see more of GM's European flavors "imported" to the US