PurdueGuy

If I ever buy a brand new car, the removal of all such things will be one of my demands on purchase. I occasionally like a simple pinstripe, but dealer decals are just awful.

I'd go with every 50k if the factory recommends 50-100k. It's far better to over-maintain, but there's no need to be crazy about it. If you were doing lots of towing and stuff, I'd say 30k, but since you're not, I'd hold off to 50k. Proper auto tranny maintenance is the most overlooked thing IMO, and it causes a lot of early trans deaths. If it were an older truck, I'd also say do it yourself for $50, but I'd probably be taking a truck that new to a dealer for that type of service, too. Shame that the auto trans spin-on filter and drain plug didn't catch on. Saturn S-Series auto trannies are just as easy to do fluid/filter change on as the engine oil/filter.

I love companies with a sense of humor.

Oh, I don't know... maybe because that's the same thing that GM gets ragged on for constantly already? I agree the car looks great, and if it'd started out as a Chevy, it wouldn't need any changes other than the badge, but if it's going to change brands, it ought to be differentiated a little bit. Plus, the car has been out for a few years - a mid-cycle enhancement doesn't seem out of place anyway, and this would be the perfect time & reason to do it.

Yup - if I were GM, I would certainly be having a few optional "packages" available, that might include offering the sale of a factory or two like you state. Buyers may or may not be interested. I'm only saying that since Spring Hill no longer has real ties to Saturn, the consideration of Spring Hill for sale along with Saturn is no different than the consideration of any other GM factory that GM could clear out & make ready for sale.

Hasn't there been talk of Kappa getting killed for a while now? If they do make it a Chevy, it'd be nice if they at least did a minor change of the look, though that would kill the synergy of the shared styling with Opel/Daewoo.

Saturn has no product to build at Spring Hill - all designs belong to GM, and are unlikely to be sold along with Saturn. A spun-off Saturn would have no capital to design a car to build at Spring Hill. Spring Hill has absolutely nothing to do with Saturn anymore, so there's no reason to think it would "probably" go with it. It's just a factory. If a potential Saturn buyer wants US factory space, GM could just as easily sell them any other plant that they can clear production out of.

Looks classy, not exciting.

most stupidest?

Screams Civic knock-off to me, too.

Hmm... not bad... def. better with the black seats, carpet & stuff you have now. 2nd pic above is better, IMO.

A really well done 2-tone interior is sweet. Maybe something to throw together in photoshop?

If you leave out the cost of ownership, the real significant difference here is luxury. The BMW drips with it, the Cobalt skimps on it. I would honestly like to see a comparison of the performance of the two cars, because I suspect that the Cobalt may whoop on the BMW in just about every way. All that luxury comes at the cost of additional weight, and the chassis is trying to appeal to both performance and comfort, while the Cobalt has been pretty much set up with just performance in mind. The Cobalt is faster 0-60 and quarter mile, and I'd bet money that given equal drivers the Cobalt would dominate in autocross. Of course some of you are hung up on RWD vs FWD, and are thus blind to the performance numbers. The Cobalt outperforms in pretty much every motorsports type of way (oh noes! you can't drift it!). The BMW is still impressive performance-wise, though, and has so much more luxury to it compared to the Cobalt that if you care about luxury, it's not even a comparison, but it is that way at a price. Personally, I don't really give a crap about luxury, and refuse to own a car that's going to gouge my wallet like a BMW will, so I would without a doubt prefer the Cobalt SS.

There's a couple people that will be seeing if using an adhesion promoter might toughen up the plastidip for the more high-friction surfaces, but for now I would advise using it only for lower friction surfaces. It generally will stick very very well, so it's not going to just fall off of something without some regular wear & tear, though.

Lookin good. For interior parts that won't see a lot of constant friction, spray on Plastidip works well for turning interior trim black. It looks OEM (actually a little better), and feels nice too. I picked up a black interior for my car, but the trim above the beltline was never done in black, so I redid those parts in plastidip (as well as redid the headliner in black). Still need to redo the visors and dye a few parts that see more friction, though. The interior used to be all tan. Here's a plastidip part closeup:

I don't mind the size or general proportions, but the styling is pretty lousy, as usual for Toyota lately (and before lousy their styling was boring, I'm not sure which is worse.)

I'd buy the Chevy. I would expect a much lower cost of ownership with it, and I've watched stock SS/TC's tear up autox courses with ease.

Looks good. I see a hint of BMW in the tails.

I have a better idea. Extend it by 1.5 feet, add a small trunk, and a third wheel. Then you could carry something with you, and wouldn't be wasting a bunch of energy balancing, just use energy for driving.

...and now I somehow have "running with the devil" stuck in my head... lol

I want to round off the wheel arches and lower corners of the facia just a bit, and then I think it would be fine. As-is, it looks "chunky".

Ah, another of the usual "we could've just used that money to buy/build X, Y, or Z" comments. Nevermind that the bailout money was LOANED.

Of course there is always that question as to how deep/real philosophies promoted by such PR pieces really are. Toyota has long made a big deal about their lean manufacturing focus, yet there have been many evidences that they are not as guided by lean as they like to claim, including quality and overproduction issues in the last 5-10 years - an issue likely caused by their desire to become the largest manufacturer. Greed usurped quality.

Quality vid, and some good thoughts. Makes me wish Honda was a US make.

Eh, I think competition is good for business, and such aggressive protection of the home industry would likely promote laziness on the part of the domestic automakers. What I DO support is a fair trade policy. Apply the same trade tariffs to cars coming to our country as are applied to our vehicles going to theirs. This would nail the Japanese pretty good, as they make it pretty non-viable to sell American cars in Japan. It gets a bit sticky when you consider the foreign-owned domestic factories, though.