Posted by
OldRelayer on Thursday, August 20, 2009 6:06:56 PM
GM in this case stands for Government Motors, they have managed to get their claws on two of the 3 American manufacturers, let us hope that ford can hold out. This post is not political as such but has some overtones and a trend that is bothersome to people like myself who actually like cars and like cars with horse power.
I was looking at two $40,000 cars yesterday and the differences are striking. The Chevy Volt, which gets good mileage no body knows just how good because just like every government lie, it can't even be calculated because it is electric, unlike the hybrids this car is made to run as an electric car with a dinky 1.4l engine that is something like the donut they now give you for a spare, enough to get you to the nearest garage to get you tire fixed or in this case to charge your battery, I suspect that battery charge takes 8 to 10 hours but no body is saying. Un like the Smart Car AKA Stupid Car the Volt is actually a good looking car and it is hard to see what kind of payload it will carry or how it will perform with a full load. I suspect neither will be good. I can't even see how this car will have any value and GM saw it that way too and had no intention of marketing it until the government took them over, all of a sudden it is a good idea. It was a bad idea when General Motors decided not the produce it and it is still a bad idea. It has a 40 mileage range, "OH no Mr. Boss I can't take that job, it is out of range, I can only travel about 15 miles one way or I won't get home". Well, you can get home but I can see trying to get on the highway with that motorcycle engine they are putting in them, at that point the electric stuff becomes a 400 pound payload with nothing to do but wait for a charge.
On the other hand I was looking at Ford's Taurus SHO. A very nice car we have a 2007 500 before they renamed it to the Taurus, that was a brillant marketing move the Taurus sold more and like people wouldn't notice it was the same car. In any event our 500 is a 3L which has an adequate amount of power but not much reserve but it is such a great winter car with AWD, we don't use it in the summer but we certainly could with no problem, but we have an older rear drive for the summer that has real horse power. They offered in 2008 a 3.5L in the Taurus that they were using in the Lincoln MKS which is a very nice engine offering 265 HP at 6500 RPMs very respectable and a lot more power than my 500. But the SHO has the same block but different plumbing and gets 345 HP at 5500 RPMs, not a mis print, this car must fly and gets 28 MPG. The Volt has a 15 year payback if you can keep batteries in it which I doubt, whereas the Ford will payback the first time you drive it without sacrifice and your boss will actually want to ride in your Ford.
When Obama was working "I am not taking over the car companies.. wink wink" it was clear to some of us this was the Statist chance to green our road ways with these make believe cars and here we are only a few short months later and they dust off a looser and will market it even if it has to come with a $10,000 bonus from Gov Motors.
The estimates are that 2% of the dealer transaction from "Cash for Clunkers" have been paid, if it wasn't so sad it would be comical. We all know that the reason why they were not getting paid was Government incompetence so what do they do allocate another $2 billion, let us throw some more money away. Another brilliant idea. This was such a bad idea and nobody said boo and nobody even knew it was going through Congress. I know the car business quite well, my friends tell me that the cars that they have to destroy are usable. So again the very people that the Dems claim to be a friend, the poor, of are hurt. This is going to drive up the cost of older usable cars, 250,000 have already been taken out of the market. Even if they were bad cars there would have been many good parts, this can only hurt the used parts business. The idea pushed some people into the new car market that never would have been there, I am wondering how many defaults this will cause? I wouldn't want to be a car dealer in this situation, they are going to loose big time, the buyer goes out fat and happy while the dealer is left to collect from the government buearacracy, just one of these deals gone bad can cancel any profit from about 5 sales if not more. Mark Twain was surely right, the only time we are truly safe is when Congress is in recess. Not to mention the fact, why should I buy somebody a new car, I don't have new cars.