Pontiac. Kaput.

[Ollie]

General Motors announced that Pontiac will be dissolved and 2010 will be the last model year. No GTOs, no TransAms, Firebirds, etc.

Good grief. What am I am going to use to keep the price of gas at $4 a gallon anymore? I really NEED those 500mph cars. Boy... I sure hope Aston Martins start selling at Floyd's Barber & Used Car lot down the street.

Oh well... back in the '80s, I'd written a new theme song for Firebird. Good power rocker. Everyone loved it but the decision makers. Firebirds and TransAms were gone soon enough. I laughed. But now... none of 'em?!! Oh well... scoot over Stutz, Packard, Studebakers, Oldsmobiles. Can Buick be far behind?

[moira finnie]

The only thing that I ever recall liking about Pontiacs was this symbol that they abandoned long ago, but that a local dealer kept anyway. I'd pass it each day on my way to work in Norwell, MA. It used to blink during snow storms and no'reasters like a beacon! Even this image is politically incorrect as well as defunct now, I suppose.

Heigh, ho. It's not as though no one saw this coming.

[klondike]

I, too, was stunned; kicking loose Saab, Hummer, Saturn, yeah, OK, sure, they're all niche lines to begin with, anyway; the Geo's, sunny, happy Japcrap that they were, deserved their overdue demise in the late 90's, and then Oldsmobile back in '03, well, sad, but we saw that slope getting steep for over a decade, like a fine old vetern more infirm every season . .
But Pontiac . . the fun, breezy, youth-identified stable that occasionally whelped blueblood stunners like Starchief, Tempest, GTO, Firebird, TransAm, and just 2 years ago - that sensual little sportster, the Solstice ??
And it's historically a shame to boot, as Pontiac was one of only two GM brands ever created entirely from scratch by General Motors (the other one being the GMC truck line, oddly healthy despite in-house rivalry w/ sister-line Chevy); Pontiacs were originally introduced as entry-level economy models to compete for the blue-collar automotive buck against Chrysler's new cheap-out line, Plymouth. All other GM brands (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile) were purchased from independent manufacturers (Scotch immigrant David Buick not only founded the auto line bearing his name, but also invented the overhead valve engine, the modular lawn sprinkler and a revolutionary method to successfully electroplate porcelain to steel, in effect making him the father of the modern bathtub).
So why Pontiac, and not the less exciting, less versatile, less affordable, less attractive Buick?
Sadly, it's quite simple: sales figures. Buick sales have been inching up for over 5 years, while Pontiac has struggled, with soft bottom-lines and unstable demographics. And it didn't help that Pontiac hung shallow on warranties, while Buick took top spot on the JD Power reliabilty index, beating out even Mercedes & BMW.
Requisat in pace, oh great Chief.
We'll always have our memories.

[ChiO]

Just for you carburetor heads:

[youtube][/youtube]

[Hollis]

Good morning,

Except for the Pontiac dealerships, I don't see why anyone would shed a tear for the badge's demise, unless of course, you couldn't stand Chevy's "bowtie." Every car in their lineup is a duplicate of a Chevy but less expensive. Pontiac has always been GM's "loss leader." Get the customer in the door and start selling him optional equipment that he didn't even realize he needed (or wanted.) Did the downfall of Oldsmobile (a Chevy with slightly different sheet metal) contribute to the perilous financial position that the parent company finds itself in now? Of course not. It, in all likelihood, saved them millions of dollars building cars that weren't selling at a fast enough clip to turn a profit. Dealers, in case you didn't know, have to purchase their stock and have to finance them as well. No dealership has the cash available to put two, three or four hundred cars and trucks into inventory and then wait for them to sell to recoup their expenditures. Granted, the interest rate is somewhat lower than what you or I would expect to pay when we buy a vehicle, but it accounts for a big chunk of money the dealer has to pay initially and month to month just to keep his doors open. In addition, he encounters the same expenses as any other business would, like salaries, commissions and utilities. He also has to insure his inventory while they're still in his possession. A GTO? A Monte Carlo with different skin. A Bonneville? This time, an Impala with a different name and badges. Did Chrysler Corporation suffer when the Plymouth name was retired? Of course not. It was simply and quietly put to rest. If its owners wanted to stay with Chrysler because that's what their parents bought or they just liked the sound of Mopar rolling off their tongues, there was always the Dodge dealership down the street where you could buy the same Hemi engine that contributed to the mystique. Who's to blame for the predicament the American automobile manufacturers find themselves in? That's an easy one. While the "Big Three" were building overpriced "land yachts", the Japanese saw the demand for smaller, more efficient (and better built) vehicles on the horizon and that's just what they built. Ditto for Volkswagon. GM, Ford and Chrysler were much too slow in reacting to a potential market shift and by the time they did, we got Chevettes, Escorts and Omnis. It's to laugh as they say. American quality has never been better than it is right now, but as I see it, it's a case of too little, too late. Further, has anyone heard the Teamsters (or any other union that represents the American automobile worker) grant concessions to keep their people at work? Of course not. Who's going to pay the union bosses salaries if there's no one to "represent"? I wonder which one of the Detroit lemmings decided to march off the cliff so that the others would follow. As patriotic as I am, and I do love this country (I wouldn't have worn it's uniform if I didn't) I have to look out for myself first of all. As to the car I drive, it has to be the highest quality vehicle I can afford to purchase. Before I bought my Subaru, I looked at every other four wheel drive vehicle there was to see in the same price range, aided by Consumer Reports and Edmund's both. And you know what? I headed straight back to the Subaru dealership and worked the best deal I could. I've yet to regret my purchase and I doubt I ever will. In four years of ownership, I've had to replace filters, lubricants and a battery. Nothing else. Except for its scheduled maintenance, it's never gone back to the dealership to correct even one little problem. I honestly don't think that would have been the case had I purchased a domestic vehicle. So in the end, while I'll miss the throaty sound of a Holley carburetor sitting on top of a big block v-8, I won't bemoan it's passing for long. It had it's day back in the 60's. Time marches on and with it comes change. It's inevitable. Does anyone really think the world would be the same place it is today if the dinosaurs still walked the Earth? I don't think so. Not for a New York minute. As I see it, while world conditions were changing, and with it our own behavior, Detroit was still building dinosaurs. They have no one to blame but themselves. TARP money? Please, don't make me laugh. It hurts too much.

Back down off of my soapbox,

Hollis

[Ollie]

I always looked at Pontiacs as EXPENSIVE Chevys, and generally far higher performances - TransAms vs Camaros, for example.

I too thought the insertion of some pretty interesting cars of late - Solstice, the GT8 - might be new assurance for their future, but, oh well. I wish GM would consider a 'sabbatical' idea and have one division take off for a few years and get a completely different power-system developed. But no, they're going to strip off workers.

I never had any problems when the Jap-Bashing Days in Detroit occurred except Detroit let their quality go and the Japs didn't. I can still drive Jap vehicles at 50,000 and 80,000 miles with original equipment and get decent rides, but nothing out of Detroit lasts that long. It's their choice, and consumers have theirs. Fortunately.

If only cable companies didn't have such monopolistic strangleholds on us!

I'm just glad I can complain publicly!! ha ha

[movieman1957]

I always liked the look of Pontiacs. The nose on the 1977 models were the best. I know because I had a 1977 Grand Prix. Whether they were better or worse than anything else I don't know but you knew right away what they were. This was what mine looked like.

[knitwit45]

When my ex returned from Vietnam in October of 1968, the first thing he wanted to do (well, ok, almost the first) was buy a new car. We purchased a 1969 Black over Gold GTO. It didn't matter that I couldn't drive a stick (Oh, honey, it's easy, I can teach you in a matter of minutes....). We drove that car all over Kansas City, got in more drag races than I can remember, and usually wiped the floor with all comers.
When he finally consented to let me behind the wheel, I was headed up a long hill, going from first to second, when he yelled, "SHIFT!", and my reply was "WHAT?????". Poor guy almost had heart failure before he got me to shift...
That was one sweet ride.
RIP little GTO

[Hollis]

Hey Ollie,

I can only assume that you never saw or experienced a Camaro or Chevelle carrying the SS ID and with it a big block 396 or even a 427. Either one was more than a competitive rival to what Pontiac built. The biggest difference was that goofy looking bird decal on the hood and maybe a "shaker" hood scoop. Even Oldsmobile had the Cutlass 442, which when optimally tuned was probably faster then either of the other two. My next door neighbor had one and he scared the living daylights out of me when he dropped it down into 3rd gear (a Hearst 4 speed on the floor, 5 speeds hadn't yet come to pass in 1969) and put all of his foot into the gas pedal. As an aside, it was Cherry red with a white convertible top and a white Interior and had I been able to buy a brand new, out of the box vehicle, that would have been mine too. To its credit, Pontiac also offered the Le Mans with a six cylinder inline and a 3 speed (on the column) automatic transmission. Talk about your vanilla ice cream!

As always,

Hollis

p.s. Chris, was Pontiac trying to become an American BMW when over the last half dozen years it's grille took on an almost "twin kidney" appearance? Hmmm... One last note. Did Pontiac ever field an IROC Firebird? I think not.

p.p.s. Ollie, it's not too late to go back and correct your posting and change "Jap" bashing to "Japanese" bashing. The 2nd World War ended in 1945.

[klondike]

Hollis, Hollis, Hollis, mi hermano - so goodhearted, so frequently misinformed!

Every car in their lineup is a duplicate of a Chevy but less expensive.

Wrong; you're getting misled by purchase-price brackets; similarities do not make for duplicates. Jayne Mansfield owed most of her success to the public's craving for more & more Marilyn Monroe, whom she was tutored to emulate . . but I wouldn't say she was ever really swappable for the other; there are several models of Ruger handgun that closely resemble a .50 Desert Eagle, but none of those will blow a round through an 8-cylinder engine block (Chevy or Pontiac); Dodge Neons & Ford Escorts drive remarkably similar to one another, and were almost identically cheap . . but their average service records told 2 very different stories; Ivan is not just Russian for John, and a gimlet ain't just a martini with lime juice, and Vermont's more than NH turned upside-down. Even when rival brands deliberately copy each other the results can greatly vary . . consider the Plymouth Duster & Dodge Challenger.
Often, separate really does mean different!

Pontiac has always been GM's "loss leader."

Nope; from the late 70's through the early 90's, Pontiac was GM's economy-model leader, with sales easily surpassing Buick & Oldsmobile, and some years even topping Chevrolet's car division. Did you think someone was giving away all those ubiquitous Sunfires?

Get the customer in the door and start selling him optional equipment that he didn't even realize he needed (or wanted.)

Oh, please, Neighbor! Did you fall asleep playing tenpin with gnomes in the Catskills? Every dealership does some of that, to some degree or another, with no brand-name from anywhere being any less guilty than another. Four years ago, my daughter had to bring in a deputy sheriff in order to recover a down-payment check from a Nissan dealership when they overloaded her selected purchase with unrequested options that nearly doubled her bottom line. And yet, I know several customers of that dealership who were treated so well they never go elsewhere; go figure, eh?

Did the downfall of Oldsmobile (a Chevy with slightly different sheet metal) contribute to the perilous financial position that the parent company finds itself in now? Of course not.

I agree: of course it didn't . . but whoever claimed that it did? I never recall reading anywhere that GM ever blamed any of there financial woes on closing down the Oldsmobile division, a move which most adult American breadwinners saw written on the proverbial wall years before it happened.

Dealers, in case you didn't know, have to purchase their stock and have to finance them as well.

Untrue. Some do, some don't; depends on many factors, like the relation that dealer has with the manufacturer, how long they've been in business, what their lot turnover is like, what kind of arrangements they have have with other dealerships, with whom they frequently move surplus vehicles back & forth, what their cash asset is with the banks they service.

No dealership has the cash available to put two, three or four hundred cars and trucks into inventory and then wait for them to sell to recoup their expenditures.

If you mean, they don't actually purchase the models they sell to the public, well duh, of course they don't . . that would make their inventory used cars, whether they'd ever been personally driven, or registered for ownership or not . . come on, they're called dealerships for a reason, ya know!

A GTO? A Monte Carlo with different skin. A Bonneville? This time, an Impala with a different name and badges.

Wrong, wrong, wrong; Hollis, did you drive none of these when a young buck? I sure did; and boy, there was dang little similarity amongst the four, beyond the propensity for teenage boys to wrap any one of 'em around a power pole!
Wanta lay rubber? Monte Carlo was your baby - that girl could two-wheel on any corner, with enough breakaway to whiplash a fullback; need to smoke that Cobra in just under a mile? Go for the Goat, and watch how ya pop the clutch. Need to look extra good on the long cruise and play it for flash, get yer old man's Impala, polish up all the chrome, and the girl's will be flockin'! The Bonneville? Well, really, by '70, all you'd want from that boat was the extra "parking" room in that big wide backseat ( seriously deeper, wider & lower than the 'Pala)!

Who's to blame for the predicament the American automobile manufacturers find themselves in? That's an easy one. While the "Big Three" were building overpriced "land yachts", the Japanese saw the demand for smaller, more efficient (and better built) vehicles on the horizon and that's just what they built. Ditto for Volkswagon. GM, Ford and Chrysler were much too slow in reacting to a potential market shift and by the time they did, we got Chevettes, Escorts and Omnis.

There you go Van Winkling again, H!
Detroit gauged the appetitie for small, thrifty rides pretty quickly at the start of the 70's; those years saw the genesis of models like the Pinto, the Vega, the Gremlin, the Pacer, the Opel Cadet, the Matador, the Mercury Bobcat and the Chrysler K Cars; that they couldn't compete with imports in areas like warranty & service, I certainly will agree; looking back, it was almost as if Detroit put it all down to some short-term phase they felt they just needed to weather, then move on. But that was OK with me; just coming off discharge, and heading into fulltime work, I was fast evolving into a hardcore pickup man, and as ever, Tough Guys Wear Bow Ties.

American quality has never been better than it is right now, but as I see it, it's a case of too little, too late. Further, has anyone heard the Teamsters (or any other union that represents the American automobile worker) grant concessions to keep their people at work? Of course not. Who's going to pay the union bosses salaries if there's no one to "represent"? I wonder which one of the Detroit lemmings decided to march off the cliff so that the others would follow. As patriotic as I am, and I do love this country (I wouldn't have worn it's uniform if I didn't) I have to look out for myself first of all.

No arguement with any of that, My Friend!

As to the car I drive, it has to be the highest quality vehicle I can afford to purchase. Before I bought my Subaru, I looked at every other four wheel drive vehicle there was to see in the same price range, aided by Consumer Reports and Edmund's both. And you know what? I headed straight back to the Subaru dealership and worked the best deal I could. I've yet to regret my purchase and I doubt I ever will. In four years of ownership, I've had to replace filters, lubricants and a battery.

Good on you! Not counting seasonal tire changeouts, I can also say the same for my '05 Chevy Silverado.

Nothing else. Except for its scheduled maintenance, it's never gone back to the dealership to correct even one little problem.

Me neither!

I honestly don't think that would have been the case had I purchased a domestic vehicle.

You're definitely hanging out at the planetarium too much; my full-size 4x4 American-built half-ton pickup truck is the same age, is headed for 80,000 miles, and has an equally good service record, and I work her hard, on-road & off. And I know at least half-dozen other folks with similar brags on their middle-aged American vehicles.
Come on, Hollis, if you just plain prefer your Subaru over anything else, well, congratulations . . . but just come out & say so!

So in the end, while I'll miss the throaty sound of a Holley carburetor sitting on top of a big block v-8, I won't bemoan it's passing for long.

Well that's a good thing, H, 'cause carburetors went extinct on passenger vehicles about 1988; practically everything's been fully fuel-injected since the early '90's.

It had it's day back in the 60's. Time marches on and with it comes change. It's inevitable. Does anyone really think the world would be the same place it is today if the dinosaurs still walked the Earth? I don't think so. Not for a New York minute. As I see it, while world conditions were changing, and with it our own behavior, Detroit was still building dinosaurs.

If that's a fair assessment, Friend, and I feel it just might be, I would say the majority of that blame lands square on the foreheads of the UAW; as Iacocca put it in an interview just last year: "Who can afford to build competitive motor vehicles while paying wages of $65.00 an hour?"

They have no one to blame but themselves. TARP money? Please, don't make me laugh. It hurts too much.

[/quote][/quote]

Ya ask me, Compadre, what really hurts, as a taxpaying American, is the bailout cash we tossed at Wall St, and AIG, and the U.S. banking industry!
I mean, as maddening as its gotten in Detroit, at least they produce a tangible something, besides debt, foreclosure, penalties, and fees, fees, fees . . .

[Hollis]

Hey there Klonnie,

What fiscally sound individual that happens to own a dealership (of any make) would tie up hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) when he could simply finance his inventory at a point or so over prime, and write off the interest (legally) as a cost of doing business? And no, I'm not being misled by purchase price brackets. I sold Oldsmobiles and dated the F&I (finance and insurance) managers daughter. I learned about how dealerships do business firsthand. It's called "floor planning" and every dealership does it. It's the only way to stay solvent when virtually everything they sell is a big ticket item. By the way, the only thing that sold Sunfires was their low price. It sure wasn't their cutting edged engineering! And what was their competition? A Cavalier? Let's be real about this! Regardless of the make or model, all the way down the line, price is the single largest determining factor in the purchase of a car with styling a distant second. And being GM's loss leader? Very few were sold at a profit beyond their 3% holdback cost. Zero percent financing? A myth. Calculate the cost of interest lost on the sale and simply deduct it from the discount normally offered. Why do you think the MSRP is so high? It allows the dealership to offer a hefty discount to make the customer happy, or add the amount of the discount to the trade in value of what he's currently driving (which is never worth as much as the owner thinks it is.) His first born child may have been conceived in the back seat for all the dealer knows! As far as selling a car, any car, salesmen love to see a woman walk in to buy a car because to this day they think that women are less knowledgeable about cars then men. We know that that isn't true. How many men can do more than refill the windshield washer reservoir these days? And bringing along a deputy sheriff to recover a check? If her name was on the buyers order it's a case of "he said, she said" and the deputy would have no jurisdiction in the matter. If she felt that she was wronged, she could always file suit, and then the deputy could serve the offending party with a summons and complaint and take the case to a civil court. All your daughter had to do was stop payment on her check (a cost of $25 or so?) and buy the car somewhere else. If she hadn't yet signed a buyer's agreement or retail installment contract (rarely done prior to a customer taking possession of the vehicle) she could walk away Scot free(sorry.) By the way, if the dealership (an authorized representative of the manufacturer) did in fact buy the car to resell, most states would still recognize the car as being new. Even a "demo" with three to five thousand miles on it would still qualify as a new car since no title had ever been issued. And in most instances, the warranty on said vehicle would begin with the retail sale of the vehicle, much like the "roll over" minutes of certain wireless phone companies. Monte Carlo, GTO, 442, it mattered little given that they all shared the same chassis and drive trains. How much difference between a 426 and a 427? I don't recall the name but even Buick got in on the muscle car craze for a while. Now I remember, it was the Grand National and was certified as being the fastest car of it's time 0 to 60. And it was built on the Regal/Cutlass/Monte Carlo chassis! Couldn't do much more than go fast in a straight line, but it did that very well, thank you. As to the compact and sub-compact models you mentioned, they were never taken seriously by anyone who had more than a modicum of gear head knowledge. Put a Band Aid on a bullet wound to the femoral artery, and guess what? It's going to continue to hemmorrhage until the patient dies. Too little, too late. By the way, the $65 hourly rate factors in the cost of health insurance and pension fund contributions. If I could have knocked down $65/hr for tightening lug nuts, do you really think I would be living in Alabama? That's $2600 a week and $135K a year! I wonder if the workers at the Mercedes Benz or Nissan plants here in Alabama are making anywhere near that much without a union. Think this is what Mr Reuther had in mind when he brought the UAW to prominence? Lastly, I commend you for buying American. I don't know that a Titan, Tundra or Ridgeline could take the abuse that American pick up owners regularly dish out on their vehicles. I've owned Hondas, Nissans, MG's, Triumphs, Saab's, Mini Coopers and Volvo's and for my money, I don't think that on a dollar for dollar basis (factoring in inflation of course) any one of them pleased me as much or provided the level of safety that my Outback does. I see it as being the last vehicle I'll ever have to buy. I can't wait to begin not writing a check each month for that pesky car payment! As always my friend, you make several valid points. I'll excuse you for being wrong on most of them but that's life, right? Oh did I mention the 1970 Datsun (not Nissan) 240Z that I bought from a sales brochure before the cars were even in the showroom? My best friend Dave and I drove his '69 Subaru DL (feel the irony?) from Marietta, GA to Jacksonville, FL (POE) to pick it up and avoid the BS the dealer was sure to add. What a car! Rudimentary by today's standards, but back then? I was king of the road! Courtesy of the Navy Federal Credit Union. If I remember correctly, the POE price was $3200! Talk about your bargains! Well that's it for me tonight. Hope everyone that happens across this is well!

As always,

Hollis

[mrsl]

You take that photo of that blue car and change the top to black leather, and the body to gold and you have one of my best rides. Of course as a mother of 4 I couldn't race or do any other fun things with it ( certainly not with pre-teens along. But I can say this; just to look at it was a much bigger pleasure than looking at the maroon morphite I have parked in the lot outside right now from Dodge, Neon :!: :!: :!:

Anne

[Garbomaniac]

This is JUST LIKE my grandfather's Pontiac. He was so proud of it. He used to drive me around to all of his important friend's houses: two and three story brick mansions. He was a band master. Won the trophy for Highland's High School in Kentucky three years in a row (My mother, from Kentucky, always used to say HEY instead of Hi). I still have the three foot trophy in my living room. He new all the music guys at The University of Pacific here in Stockton. He smoked cigars. He died of mouth cancer. But, to this day, I love Pontiacs and the smell of cigar smoke! It was a beautiful car at the time. So sorry to see it all go.

[Ollie]

Wow, one writer delivers so many fact-errors, so many mistakes, and continues to throw in his own hypocrisy about political correctness, too. Priceless! But it's not like this isn't well-known and understood. Rant on!

Garbo, those were some classic designs.

[klondike]

Ding-ding! Round Two!!

What fiscally sound individual that happens to own a dealership (of any make) would tie up hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) when he could simply finance his inventory at a point or so over prime, and write off the interest (legally) as a cost of doing business?

Why are you hung up on this "rule" that you need to completely own something in order to sell it? Selling an item or service on behalf of its originator is called agency . . you know, real estate agent, sports agent, talent agent . . . do you realize how few auto dealerships there would be if they all really had to pay up front for every new vehicle they offered?

And no, I'm not being misled by purchase price brackets. I sold Oldsmobiles and dated the F&I (finance and insurance) managers daughter. I learned about how dealerships do business firsthand. It's called "floor planning" and every dealership does it.

Wrong. There is no "one way" for dealerships to do business, with their customers or their suppliers. That Olds dealership did it that way because they could afford to, and at the time, it doubtless worked well for them. As for your firsthand information, well, Good for you; back in the day, I also dated daughters & nieces of dealership managers & salesmen, & owners, and my son even dated an owner's ex-wife; I am the brother-in-law & first cousin, respectively, of two men who currently sell new cars for a living, at 2 different dealerships, and in last 4 years I've employed 3 individuals who were just coming off different jobs at different dealerships . . so I believe my inside info is a good deal more current and more diverse than yours.

By the way, the only thing that sold Sunfires was their low price. It sure wasn't their cutting edged engineering!

No foolin', Dude! That's what made them entry-level, base-line economy models!

And what was their competition? A Cavalier? Let's be real about this! Regardless of the make or model, all the way down the line, price is the single largest determining factor in the purchase of a car with styling a distant second. And being GM's loss leader? Very few were sold at a profit beyond their 3% holdback cost.

Boy howdy, you love those myths don't ya, Bro? "Holdback cost" is a soapbubble that get's floated from one PR dude to another. How can their be a true holdback line, when manufacturers have never revealed what their absolute manufacturing, assembly & transportation costs are?
As for models not making enough profit, that my friend, is very black & white: models that don't make sufficient profit just get scrapped. Mercilessly. Period. Just look at the Ford Taurus & the Chevy Lumina; both, in their heydays, sales juggernauts, to the point that both manufacturers designated them as their "flagship line", individually; but the first year that they, separately, began to dip significantly in demand, hasta la vista, Baby!, they were identically GWTW, and not a tear, commercially, was shed.

Zero percent financing? A myth. Calculate the cost of interest lost on the sale and simply deduct it from the discount normally offered. Why do you think the MSRP is so high? It allows the dealership to offer a hefty discount to make the customer happy, or add the amount of the discount to the trade in value of what he's currently driving (which is never worth as much as the owner thinks it is.)

That is all true & factual, My Friend, my only point of distinction being that I'd bet "zero percent financing" really never fooled anywhere near as many people as the ad men were betting on.

As far as selling a car, any car, salesmen love to see a woman walk in to buy a car because to this day they think that women are less knowledgeable about cars then men. We know that that isn't true. How many men can do more than refill the windshield washer reservoir these days?

Most of the men in my family, and about half the men in my neighborhood, still do all their own oil changes, basic tune-ups, brake work, battery maintenance, tire rotation and bulb & fluids replacement.

And bringing along a deputy sheriff to recover a check? If her name was on the buyers order it's a case of "he said, she said" and the deputy would have no jurisdiction in the matter. If she felt that she was wronged, she could always file suit, and then the deputy could serve the offending party with a summons and complaint and take the case to a civil court. All your daughter had to do was stop payment on her check (a cost of $25 or so?) and buy the car somewhere else. If she hadn't yet signed a buyer's agreement or retail installment contract (rarely done prior to a customer taking possession of the vehicle) she could walk away Scot free(sorry.)

Like her dad, she hadn't just jumped down off the turnip truck, H. She did cancel the check (after speaking to every Nissan salesperson available, and sampling their individual nastiness), and then 6 days later, she was served with papers by a deputy sheriff, charging her with theft by misappropriation; at that point I intervened, & informed the deputy of the true circumstances; we were invited to accompany him down to the dealership, where, after having our situation confirmed by the owner, the deputy quitclaimed the theft charge, and demanded the return of the cancelled check, or he would be arresting the owner on a charge of fraudulent business practices. We got her check back, and everyone in the showroom got a quick, hot lecture about consumer protection laws in the state of Vermont, and where filing a false report of theft will get you. Hardly a "scot free" day for anybody, but at least nobody landed any further in Dutch.

By the way, if the dealership (an authorized representative of the manufacturer) did in fact buy the car to resell, most states would still recognize the car as being new.

Really? Based on information from where?

Even a "demo" with three to five thousand miles on it would still qualify as a new car since no title had ever been issued.

Again, says who? I know for a fact that that is patently untrue in Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts & Idaho. Is that a special loophole, maybe, for Alabama, or Pennsylvania?

And in most instances, the warranty on said vehicle would begin with the retail sale of the vehicle, much like the "roll over" minutes of certain wireless phone companies.

What a stange allusion; you're comparing the business procedures of auto retailers to cell phone service providers? Hmmmm . .

I don't recall the name but even Buick got in on the muscle car craze for a while. Now I remember, it was the Grand National and was certified as being the fastest car of it's time 0 to 60. And it was built on the Regal/Cutlass/Monte Carlo chassis! Couldn't do much more than go fast in a straight line, but it did that very well, thank you.

Hollis, you've just got to stop processing second-hand info, especially when it's over 20 years old! So happens, I owned an '86 Buick Regal GN (Grand National wasn't a separate model, it was a package, or "type", like Chevy's SS, or Dodge's Rally, or Pontiac's GT), and Brother, it could do a lot more than go fast in a straight line; that gal could hold the red line in double switchback S-curves, and handle a hairpin at speed with little or no fishtailing . . hated to let her go, but it was too much muscle & too little space for my still-young family, though I did manage to get twice what I paid for her, just five years after purchase, so that softened the blow; sides I'ma pickup man!

By the way, the $65 hourly rate factors in the cost of health insurance and pension fund contributions. If I could have knocked down $65/hr for tightening lug nuts, do you really think I would be living in Alabama?

Heck, you're talkin' to a wool-dyed Scotch Yankee, son; I wouldn't consider living in 'Bama if it did pay me $65 an hour. Reckon you Phillie boys must just be gluttons for punishment; but that's just me!
Anyway, let me clarify that Iacocca remark I quoted: the interviewer followed-up by asking if that really was senior UAW laborers were making an hour, and Lee backed up and said no, not yet, they were still 5 or 6 dollars per hour below that, but soon they would be at the 65 mark, unless the UAW "woke up & faced facts"; and if they don't, he was asked; "Then they'll be making zero dollars per hour, because all the plants will be shut-down!", Lee responded.

That's $2600 a week and $135K a year! I wonder if the workers at the Mercedes Benz or Nissan plants here in Alabama are making anywhere near that much without a union. Think this is what Mr Reuther had in mind when he brought the UAW to prominence? Lastly, I commend you for buying American. I don't know that a Titan, Tundra or Ridgeline could take the abuse that American pick up owners regularly dish out on their vehicles. I've owned Hondas, Nissans, MG's, Triumphs, Saab's, Mini Coopers and Volvo's and for my money, I don't think that on a dollar for dollar basis (factoring in inflation of course) any one of them pleased me as much or provided the level of safety that my Outback does.

Outback are, indeed, bulletproof rigs. It's by far the most popular choice for the majority of working-class Vermont families. You'll be gratified to hear that most of us traffic controllers refer to it quite often as the Vermont State Car.

I'll excuse you for being wrong on most of them but that's life, right?

That's very generous of you, Hollis; and I extend the same courtesy to you, for all the same reasons!

What a car! Rudimentary by today's standards, but back then? I was king of the road! Courtesy of the Navy Federal Credit Union. If I remember correctly, the POE price was $3200! Talk about your bargains! Well that's it for me tonight. Hope everyone that happens across this is well!

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Great anecdote, HC, and a great memory; mayhaps we'll do a roadtrip together one day, you & I, eh? Hit all the best diners (maybe a bar or 2), and solve all the world's problems, whaddaya say?