GM's truck division is actually it's most solid part. The trucks always sell well, and they control a large part of the market. Also, GM effectively has a monopoly on the suburban market. Yeah there are some competitors, but they still don't sell anywhere near as well as the suburban does.
I guess I'm just used to the utter, utter shite they've sold here for the last 20+ years. My aunt just bought a new Buick and it's like a rolls Royce Compared to their American-designed models. It's too new to speak for overall reliability, but at least the panels all fit together properly and the interior isn't made of Dollar Store plastic. My personal opinion is that a decent truck hasn't been sold in North America for years. The only reason GM sells theirs is because the competition is just as terrible. I mean, if you like that stuff, power to you, but you won't see me driving one.
I've got a couple friends that flat out refuse to own anything that isn't GM. One of them is my best friend who I've known since kindergarten, and from the ages of 16-21, he's owned 8 trucks, none for more than a month, and a majority of them that suffered a fairly awful death. Guess what, they were all GM, (Both Chevys and GMCs) besides two, a pair of Dodges, an 82 W150 with a 318, which he got on a partial trade and wanted nothing to do with. When he got rid of it there wasn't anything actually wrong with it, it was just beat up. The next one was a 93 2wd Dakota with a 318, That I might have talked him into buying. It was probably the "best" truck he's ever owned, powerful, comfortable, clean, not 7 different colors. That truck ran like a raped ape too, but he could stand it not being a GM product, so it got sold. and went back to buying wrecks. His dad has an 01 2wd 7.3 F350 that he refuses to drive unless absolutely necessary.
Not sure if this was your point, but that just sounds like blind loyalty rather than an indication of any sort of quality. It's like rooting for a sports team. You root for them because they're your team, not because they're good.
The whole point of sports teams is that you root for the underdogs. Its far more interesting when they win. But yeah, given the choice between a Peugeot 208 and a Vauxhaul Corsa I know which I would chose. And that's not cause I hold Peugeot in high regard
No, that was the point I was trying to make, It is blind loyalty. But you can't tell him otherwise, in his mind there are only two kinds of people, I'm qouting this now, "People who drive GM products, and people who are stupid" I'd do anything for this guy and he'd do the same for me, but you can't imagine that amount of flak I get for some of the vehicles I've owned, Fords, Mopars, a couple Toyota's, a Beemer and a Benz,
RE: Opel discussion. I'm not sure what effect this will have on GM's ability to stay afloat here, but on the face of it, I can go for anything that gets European influences out of American (and, incidentally, Australian) car design. What I fear, however, is that, thanks to ever-more-insane fuel economy regulations and the rush to court the Chinese market, the European influences might be replaced by Chinese influences rather than American-ness, which would actually be worse since Chinese influences are just European influences but with longer wheelbases, more gadgets, and less attention paid to performance. Unfortunately, judging by the kind of dreck that currently pollutes mainstream and to some degree sporty market segments, I don't think we can count on the typical American buyer to resist an influx of cars that are bloated to heck and clearly built to be ridden in rather than driven. I think, from a mountain driver's perspective, USDM car design was at its best from about the late 1980s to the mid 2000s. -Power outputs were on the climb again after the Automotive Dark Ages of about 1973 to 1986, but cars were still fairly lightweight, as all the encumbrances that weigh down current cars - touch screens and redundant steering-wheel-mounted controls for everything because there were too many functions for simple buttons to deal with, airbags for every bone in your body, electronic nannies than can't be turned off (not that they aren't helpful sometimes) - were absent, in their infancy, or seen as extras rather than necessities. -Manual transmissions were still widely available even in fairly ordinary cars. -As were atmospheric engines of a decent size, even if they weren't always very powerful. -Turbochargers were for going fast, not for propping up insufficient engines. -Sporty variants of said ordinary cars were quite common, yet close enough to their lesser brethren in price, performance, and appearance that they didn't appear to be a completely different type of car (compare the relationship between an old Cavalier RS and an old Cavalier Z24 to the relationship between a new Focus SES and a new Focus ST). -Electronics had become a thing and brought a better power/economy balance with them, but cars were still simple and accessible enough that a reasonably talented home mechanic could still do most maintenance themselves, and could still make significant performance improvements without having to enlist the (expensive) help of a big-deal factory-connected skunk works. -Designers still held the old-time styling adage of "longer, lower, wider" in some regard, as opposed to today when European/Asian "shorter, taller, narrower" influences show up dishearteningly often, at least in small cars. -The idiotic specter of the crossover wasn't the end-all be-all of Boring Family Transportation; sensible station wagons and minivans were still widespread. -Real, simple, rugged trucks and SUVs that you could go crashing around the farm, jobsite, or backwoods in were still a thing. My, how the mighty have fallen.
Just to throw it out there, in Europe a lot of people drive manual. I doubt it was European influence that made US prefer automatic vehicles. Equally there is an argument to be made that touch screens are lighter than physical buttons and gauges. While I can understand why the emissions stuff is irritating to you, being a person who lives in a city, I do quite like to breath. Currently in the US you can drive any vehicle anywhere you like, if you want less stringent emissions the compromise there will be that you aren't allowed to drive anything that pollutes the air badly in urban areas. At the end of the day car guys/gals are not the only people who live on this planet and as much as I love cars compromises do need to be made to ensure that everyone can enjoy life. While I don't doubt the regulations have had some negative effects on cars its worth mentioning "never let a good catastrophe go to waste". I highly expect that auto makers took advantage of these regulations to cut corners and have a scape goat to blame any repercussions upon. Equally that doesn't mean that all regulations are logical or grounded in reality. But that is a different problem entirely. Personally I think the reality is that most people want self driving cars. I can understand why too even if I do enjoy driving. Long motorway journeys aren't a whole lot of fun and it gives people who couldn't give a damn about driving time to do something else. Which IMO is a good thing. My hope is that manually driving cars is still a thing going into the future, I mean lets face it, self driving cars are not going to be able to tackle many drive ways never mind off road. So I presume manual override will be around for a while. Especially if insurance companies have anything to do with it. I will agree though, crossovers are far more popular than they have any right to be.
I agree. I have asthma and could very well be dead if I were born in the 1970's with how bad the air was. We can't allow fun to compromise the standard of living of other people, not to mention climate change is a thing and stopping the production of huge, wasteful engines is a pretty reasonable sacrifice when balanced against the consequences. I also agree with your sentiments on self-driving cars. I love cars and love to drive, but a lot of people don't. Self driving cars will only get the distracted, uncaring commuters out of the way, making the roads better and safer for everyone, enthusiasts included. And yeah, bring back wagons. Is it really that tall an order to want a car, but also want to move a deck chair occasionally? Spoiler
Looking into buying a 2nd generation Nissan Pathfinder, anything i should know about them? The one I'm looking at is a 2001 with the 3.5L engine and only 150,000kms (93,000miles) Photo of similar one:
I will admit that the onerous pollution regulations have done good things for heavily-polluted urban centers like LA, but where does that leave the (huge) rest of the country? Many places have never had pollution problems worth noticing, even during the worst of the leaded-gas/no-cat days, but they got hit with onerous regulations (i.e. replacing a functioning catalyst becomes a felony) just like everyone else. The solution here is to get the federal government out of it and let state and local authorities deal with their own air-quality problems as they see fit. This is why the founders of the U.S. gave severely limited power to the federal government - because they knew that in such a large country (and remember they were thinking of only the 13 original colonies, not the 50 states we have now), one size often does not fit all. California already has its own standards and rules which are tougher than the federal ones, so it's not impossible. Let the urbanites have their draconian regulations, whatever it takes to keep that many people happy in such a confined space, and then let the rest of us haul the mail without. As for travelers from less-regulated areas, if the boundaries of the more-regulated areas are set properly, then there won't be enough of them to matter because you'll already have covered most of the areas where long-distance commuters would be coming from. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen. "Those in charge" fundamentally believe that coastal urbanites and coastal elites are the only people who have brains or whose opinions matter, and that "flyover America" is populated by ignorant slobs incompetent to manage their own affairs, who are to be "looked after" and occasionally pandered to at election time but never respected or taken seriously. So they create the EPA as a cheeky end-run around the Constitution and proceed to run the whole country as if it was a city, in the process jerking the rest of us around with their heavy-handed rules. Add in the people who believe that Americans in general are idiots or decadent planet-wreckers and should aspire to be more like Europe, and the ones who constantly think fuel economy and pollution regulations need to be tougher no matter how tough they already are, and you get what we have now - ridiculous regulations (that, in a major case of "ready, aim at foot, fire", incentivize the production of grotesque jacked-up soccer tanks instead of normal wagons) that are set to ratchet up to full-on lunacy within ten years. Unfortunately, some of these attitudes have infiltrated American car culture as well. It burns me up inside when I see some obviously-Top-Gear-influenced metrosexual declaring muscle cars and modified cars "Uncool" but hot hatches and the Citroen 2CV "Cool". Indeed, a good many of them aren't. One thing I'll never get tired of carping about is the idiotic reverence with which catalytic converters are treated in American regulations (not laws). Forget about removing it from your car, simply replacing it while there's still life left in it, or using the wrong one for your make and model of car, is a freaking felony (i.e. you can never vote or have a gun ever again in your life, just as if you'd shot someone in anger) carrying $25,000 fines and jail time. This also applies to damaging a catalyst so you have an excuse to replace it, and may also apply to replacing it yourself rather than getting a shop to do it (and fill out a bunch of paperwork about it and hold onto the old one for blablabla days properly labeled in case the EPA wants to take a look at it). A more sanctimonious and fascistic rule is difficult to imagine. Just because no one ever bothers to enforce this rule (to the point where YouTubers openly show off their decatted exhausts) doesn't mean it doesn't matter; I could easily see it having potential dystopian uses as one of a million little "get you for something" laws that can be used to string up people the government doesn't like but can't actually catch doing anything bad. Oh yes, that's the other thing - the apparent increasing muggleization of the general public, especially on the young end (the traditional source of speed maniacs in the lower market segments). The difference is, I'd rather fight it by trying to spark an interest in cars in the younger generation (and I don't mean the new politically correct "building electric car conversions and researching alternative fuels" kind of interest in cars, I mean the older "power tuning engines and racing up and down the main drag all night" kind of interest) than just give up and hope they get out of our way as soon as possible. You can't be a car guy and not, as far as I'm concerned. It's like they were designed specifially to combine the worst aspects of a station wagon and an SUV.
Hmm, at 70's they made some emission regulations in US and then there was over 300 cubic inch V8 motors that made barely 100hp or something like that, fuel economy was quite bad, but they did pass emission rules, by spewing out a loads more other kind of emissions. Many times rules have been nice in theory, but focusing too narrow area which has made things worse. However in a long run, I think that for everyday use object, car has evolved to better, less noise, less emissions, less danger, however they are not very fun or interesting anymore, which perhaps is kind of purpose too. 1968 and 1969 were best years, then insurance and emission stuff started rolling, fuel crisis hit at 70's, car became less and less as a fun thing and more of practical necessity. In Europe, from 60's big movement to cities from countryside, which at 70's had almost emptied countryside of course has affected to what cars had to become, in European city, there is no room for big cars and still most needed cars to visit countryside they came from, public transport is quite poor even at these days other than biggest cities. I did like American cars, cruise control and automatic transmission really makes life easier, fuel prices have been high in Europe so manual transmissions have been more popular and American cars have been pricey so with small number of cars servicing was always bit more challenging, but despite vague steering and other issues, Barges certainly had lot of practical wisdom in them, enough space in trunk and easy of driving. Compared to euro car on same route, I was less tired in American car after 3 hours. However people did get strong feelings when I drove American car, once even a boss recommend that I change car to something that stands out bit less, issue is that people who buy French cars tended to get negative feelings toward person that drives big polluting gas guzzler (while their Renault Minivans had less space and worse fuel economy), so I think that is one big reason why American cars will never be big sellers in Europe, generally people are afraid to make own choices and be different from others. So, I'm sure there is some of the same for American markets, euro cars just don't quite fit in, people want different things from the car in US, also it is bit sad that American cars have gone to be lot like Euro cars, I mean Mc Donalds is nice, but if there is only Mc Donalds, then it's bit boring, at least I like to have options that are really different (of course I'm not allowed to drive anymore, so buying a car would be irrelevant, however I see cars every day and would be nice to see something else than generic soap boxes). Now Citroen has been becoming more and more like every other car for long time, they have completely managed to loose that identity which made Citroen to be Citroen, if this Chinese influence means that soon all cars are same with bit different panels, then things will go to really bad. Of course I can't tell brand from other without reading what badge of car says, they all look like soap box without much of difference each other, so maybe that different body panels would be actually good thing? I'm bit surprised that Opel had made losses again, they were quite poor at one point, then they got good phase, but I guess that stopped when financial downturn happened. French car makers have been difficulties since that financial downturn so I wonder if that move will help competing against Germans, in statistics part of German cars will be french from now on I guess. One thing that about making loss or profit is business strategy, there are many companies which adjust accounts so that despite branch doing fine, they look doing poorly and don't need to pay much taxes etc. In some places politics are trying to take away cars from people and there is big push towards no car city centers and public transportation, not sure if self driving cars will be for everyone or if things are driven to point where people really can't own car easily, but have to pay from use of automatically driving car. There is quite lot of changes happening and probably car manufacturers and big money guys have more information where things are being pushed to, that might have something to do with Opel sale, but normal people will never know about such.
If driverless cars were able to drive on our badly surfaced back roads then I would be quite surprised.
How about our non surfaced roads with snow and ice. Driving when slush comes down hard covers cars front with white stuff, how those sensors are going to work, I wonder. But like almost everywhere, everything is for cities, we away from cities have to bend to whatever they think being this week's future for everyone.
Maybe they couldn't see with the sun in their eyes? Or maybe they're just dumb. I got my first clip with the new dashcam today. Somebody turning right on red while ignoring the big sign telling them not to do so. I tried to let them know with a little bit of horn but I guess they didn't get the message.
I'm looking forwards to the next couple years. The horsepower wars are back, and family cars are starting to get more grunt, with turbos becoming more common.
