Zipperhead is a vietnam term. Their heads look zipped open when you shoot them in them

Hay Deanster thats not nice (Romanians “Fucking thieveing gypsies”) my girlfriend is romanian and shes a gypsie but shes not like that at all and Russians “Shitfaced descendants of Mongols.” Anyone from Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan/Turmenistan or one of those other shitty breakaway ex-Soviet Republics. remember Aleksander Burmanesski he is half ukrainian and half russian but born in ukrain, also Romania was never part of the U.S.S.R they stayed away from them, they were part of the austrian-hungarian empire, that is why there language sounds more like german than russian.

Why do you call the Zipperheads Gooks?

Although I’m impressed with the Korean cars (Kia, Hyundai), I have to say those slitty-eyed gook dogeaters are totally pricing themselves out of the entry level market. In Canada, the Hyundai Veracruz tops out at $45,000. ???!?!?!?!?! You’re $10,000 away from a base Cayenne at that price. Makes no sense.

And when we’re talking about nearly 10,000,000 units, that’s 100,000 units difference. Which is about half of one manufacturing plant’s capacity these days.

They are close, but we’ll see how they match up for 2007CY.

GM’s revenues and net profits and everything else ALL benefit the AMERICAN economy. Toyota’s revenues and net profits go BACK TO JAPAN. They contribute to the Japanese economy. Toyota’s contribution to the US economy is VERY minimal – they just pay workers. That’s it.

Over the past several decades GM and Ford had no choice but to sell (and cheapen) their products to rental car companies, primarily because of the horrible UAW contracts they tied themselves down with. It was either that or allow those employees in the Jobs Bank to sit around and build nothing while still getting paid. Better to use that sunk cost and break even than lose money out the mouth AND ass. Now that this problem has been solved, they can right-size their work force and focus on building the right amount of cars without the fear of a flooded secondary market.

And Remember, the only real advantage Toyota had on GM as far as building “better” cars was the fact that they paid their employees $25 to $30 an hour less and didn’t have to put $2,000 from every car sale back into health benefits for retirees. Of course GM had to cut a few corners over the years to stay in business. You give someone twice the amount of money to build something and of course it’s going to be better. It should be. Well, this advantage is going to be almost gone and over the next five years the world will be shocked at what GM and the other US auto manufacturers will be able to do. Toyota will also gain more and more retirees themselves over the next several decades. It’ll all even out soon enough.

If you ask me, it’s amazing what GM has done over the past 15 years considering what they’ve been up against, be it someone self-inflicted or not. Someone over there should be given a metal for getting them out of a jam that for all intensive purposes would have bankrupted many companies years ago. I know, I know, I need to get GM’s joey out of my mouth.

Of course, history will judge all of this and I think GM will be vindicated. But that’s just my opinion, what the hell do I know.

If I were a manufacturer, though, I would consider build specific models only for the rental/taxi market, and not push them in the main market or build a retail model relyin on them. The Ford Taurus is a good example – they can build them cheap, they look okay, are very practical as a taxi or a rental, no one wants them at a retail level, so pull the things off the retail market and move it exclusively to the rentals and taxis, and for resale purposes be sure to offer replacement parts. Then build more exciting and desirable retail commuter appliances aimed at specific end user markets and go at it, thus removing a good portion of the resale anxiety purchasers have. Fords and GM vehicles that are not flooded with rentals are competitive enough in the resale arena to do okay.

im studying medicine abroad in a central american country and beginning march ’08 the united states will be initiated the new CAFTA which is a free trade agreement with a few countries (nicaragua, costa rica, dominican republic, etc.) what i do know is that a brand new AVEO over here costs upwards of $17k and an Avalanche is around $65k..
this free trade agreement should light up the eyes of GM/Ford/Chrysler shareholders bc with the decrease in taxes will come a drastic increase of sales..
in an economy where a base yaris costs $20k and a cobalt will cost $14k where is the sale going to go?

so who knows dmbpearl, perhaps you could wait a little bit more and cash in to get the CTS-V

Then again, in the end, we all do one way or another. Ha!

BTW – stock-wise both GM and Ford are better bets today than Toyota or Honda. T & H are pretty high on the market and so the upside is limited, whereas all GM & F need are a couple good quarters and you will crank great rewards, and a well placed sell order will limit any downside (although there is not much left). And yes I do put my money where my mouth is.

Hey, seriously – nothing wrong with selling anywhere possible. Most Japanese makes sell more abroad than in the home market, most european brands sell more in foreign markets than in their home countries, and the US makes have learned the hard way that reliance on one market only subjects you to the economic and political winds of that market.

As for the race for the worldwide #1 seller spot, it looks like it’s gonna be a photo finish. 50k units difference at midyear is not a lot, and can be made up for quite fast with a couple innovative model releases (GM has more currently scheduled releases, I think) or an incentive or two (both Toyota and GM play that game). Will be fun to watch.