Z-06

And the Lambdas.

Agreed, but their components are shipped from Japan!

Cheesecake

Although there's a lot that looks familiar under the new car, there's a lot that's brand new, and, crucially, expensive. The short/long-arm front suspension features lots of lightweight aluminum and is bolted to an all-new aluminum front cradle. A large aluminum brace across the engine compartment ties the top mounts together. The steering gear is a premium ZF Servotronic II system, with the rack mounted forward of the front-axle centerline to improve precision. Yet it weighs 2-ton? GM come one give your vehicles some diet pills. Even the 5 series competitor, the 535 which you are trying to attack weighs about 350 lb less than this car.

Ching Chong

Call it a Tiger it will eat, call it a Big Cat it will eat. AKA, three years ago when Detroit was dumping vehicles in fleet the media was berserk about their strategy, now when Detroit atrophies the fleet vehicles, they are to blame again!! See media the importance of having Detroit motor vehicles?? You would not be paying off the ying-yang if you stop Detroit bashing.

Cialis

Granite

Is it what they will sell when they make a comeback after pulling out of US market?

HOLDEN ALL THE WAY.

I think that is what the S (sport) model is. Have they been out? I thought the 2008 Equinoxes did not come out till late August.

What??? Sky gave away to Yaris and Crapry??? If I remember correctly Sky was in the top 3 of the LGBT list for for most favorite cars of 2006.

Guys, first of all thanks for your help and understanding. I am sorry that I was not able to respond earlier as I was swamped in some work. ZL-1 and Bob, if I may ask, what firm do you each work for? Do you happen to know anybody in McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or Kearney, or as a matter working for any consulting firm who can guide me to the path I am seeking (other than you of course!)? If you have time will you see my resume and provide some insight with it? I am comfortable working with personal questions, and I can handle that part well. And as I said earlier communication is not a problem. One thing which is like a hurdle is the "CASE-Interview" side, which I am not good at, at least now. Can you give me some guidelines about how to attack it? Bob, I do have good understanding about languages. I am fluent in a few languages and have a general understanding in a couple. I think I may take some Spanish classes while I am here in Florida. Like you I am in numbers too. I once amazed my Prof at Purdue when I told me the square root of 0.162 correctly up to three decimal places without using a Calculator. (Enough of my Bragging) Thanks PCS. I do not mind you asking me about my origins at all. As far as my origin goes, let the guess work begin.

Sub-nuclear

Build it JEEP.

Submarine

I would rather have Snoop Dogg F***ing my Guitar Package.

I own them both. 2.4 V-TEC MPFI as well as the 350 LS6. And I love them for their own personalities. One thing is for sure, no matter how much the foreign car makers clamor about their advancement in the fuel injection, a 350 cu in motor generating 405hp and getting 26 mpg in the city is priceless!!

Good one 68. It may be a small field, but manual transmission market is still there and it is non existent for GM. One of the MIT professors whom I work with (82 years old) went with a Passat after being a hardcore GM fan, why? Because the Aura did not have a manual transmission. Now don't call him a sheepling, because he certainly knows what to buy. Here Jilly was telling everybody, well we offer manumatic in the Aura. I was like what an ignorant CEO.

300 (Chrysler)

ZL-1 thanks for your comments. Honestly the things which are driving me are: 1. Motivation and determination, and 2. Desire to achieve something higher and something which I know I am capable of doing. On a personal note ZL-1, I was in a car accident almost three years ago on my 25th birthday and it has given me some disability in my left arm (it helps to be ambidextrous). That said the good things which came out of the it was that it made me more determined, calm and patient under stress and helped me gain better focus to my life. I am coming to a point where I think that I am stagnating in Civil Engineering. I do not want to stagnate. I will not mind to go to B-school, but if I can get my experience and my education to work for these firms without going to B-school, why not try this route? I know it is going to be difficult, but hey at least I am moving to achieve something. Will I be successful? I do not know, but I will certainly give it a more than 100% try. And as regards to my inclination to Non-Profits, there are two main reasons: 1. My foster mom passed away on Dec 31, 2006. She was one of my main influences in shaping me, especially when I came to United States. Her brother and I started a fund to help the special education kids in her school for their extra and co-curricular activities. He and I are the trustees, and I want that fund to grow and be a national fund and to shoot the moon an international fund. For that it would be better to understand how Non-Profits work, and rather than going in one Non-Profit organization and studying it, why not see a lot more with different backgrounds? The only way that will help is joining a Consulting firm which caters those firms. Like I said earlier, that is where McKinsey got more brownie points, as it was one of the few who had detailed section about Non-Profits. 2. I was very influenced by the writings of Peter Drucker and his ideas of Non-Profits, and how corporate management can benefit by following Non-profit model of management. Although I love finance, my inclination is more towards strategic, and organizational-operational forms of management consulting. I play chess, and strategy always fascinates me, and I think I am reasonably good at it. The is one thing I have been learning over the past few weeks, to help me in strategic management consulting is the GAME THEORY. It is really a fascinating subject. I think I am emotionally quite strong to handle the fast paced, demanding consulting life. I have no burdens or holding backs to not to do consulting. Besides off the record, is it not cool to offer two cents to a CEO? :AH-HA_wink: and get paid for it. ( )

The point I was trying to make was it is not difficult or too costly to put a manual transmission in an Epsilon, as they have been already having them in the European Epsilon cars.

Wall Street Journal -- Ford vs. Honda Ford, Honda Cross Paths On Sales of SUVs CR-V Passes the Once-Dominant Explorer July 23, 2007 Deb Nison is a data warehouse developer in Portland, Ore., who likes to go snowboarding on nearby Mt. Hood. Once upon a time, she drove a Chevy TrailBlazer, and later a Subaru Forester. Today, she owns a 2007 Honda CR-V. "I like the way it handles," she says. She appreciates feeling "ridiculously safe" in a vehicle with standard head protecting airbags. And for an SUV, she says, it gets "decent mileage" -- about 23 miles per gallon so far around town. Ms. Nison is just one reason why the Honda CR-V is, as of June 30, America's best-selling sport-utility vehicle. The CR-V's rise, and the parallel collapse in demand for "real" SUVs like the TrailBlazer and the one-time King of SUVs, the Ford Explorer, reveal a lot about why the American auto industry is in the shape it's in right now. Just 10 years ago -- a mere two product generations in auto industry terms -- America was SUV Nation. SUV meant a tough looking box perched on a heavy steel ladder frame borrowed from a pickup truck. No vehicle did a better job capturing the appeal of this formula than the Ford Explorer. In 1997, Ford Motor Co. sold more than 383,000 Explorers. Three years later, Ford sold more than 445,000 Explorers. It's not a coincidence that Ford earned record profits during this period. The Explorer was a perfect automotive money-making machine: A high volume model that sold at premium prices. If Henry Ford or Alfred P. Sloan, the architect of General Motors Corp.'s rise to power, had been alive in 1997, they would have understood the Explorer's business model immediately -- and approved. Of course, it helped -- a lot -- that the late 1990s were an era of ultra cheap gas. Today's V-6-powered Explorer is rated at 15 miles per gallon in the city, and 20 mpg highway. Not bad for a truck that weighs more than 4,600 pounds, perhaps, but not good in any absolute way. But at $1 or so a gallon during the heady days of the dot-com boom, a lot of American families could afford to take a "What Me Worry?" attitude toward gasoline prices. The Explorer's combination of a tall-in-the-saddle ride, "go anywhere" four-wheel-drive capability and rugged looks became a suburban status symbol. But even as the Explorer was enjoying its peak years, Honda Motor Co. began offering something new. The Honda CR-V, launched in 1997, looked like an SUV that had taken a wrong turn on to the set of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." It had the boxy profile of an SUV, and the rear cargo space, and all wheel drive. But it was more than 1,000 pounds lighter than an Explorer, and smaller in every dimension. Underneath, the CR-V was built like a compact, front-wheel drive Honda Civic. There was no heavy duty ladder frame, which among other things meant it couldn't tow very much. The industry struggled with what to call vehicles like the CR-V -- cute utes, car-truck hybrids -- before settling on "crossover." In the late 1990s, the CR-V sold modestly compared to the mighty Explorer. In 1997, Honda sold just shy of 67,000. By 2000, sales had risen to just over 118,000. In other words, barely half of one Explorer assembly plant's annual production. Ford's Explorer has seen sales slide as Honda's CR-V crossover has become the top seller for the segment. The Explorer, and the even larger SUVs such as the Hummer H2 that built on its success, were the T-Rexes of the American road. The Honda CR-V was the furtive mammal, scurrying to stay out of harm's way. Did somebody say, asteroid? When it comes to the auto industry, dinosaur metaphors are irresistible. The Great SUV Die-off of the last three to four years is the most dramatic example of how vulnerable the auto industry and its long product design cycles are to short-term shocks since the oil embargoes of the 1970s. From the peak of more than 445,000 Explorers sold in 2000, Explorer sales have fallen by nearly 60% through the end of 2006. By the end of 2007, Ford may be lucky to sell much more than 150,000 Explorers -- the capacity of just one shift of production at one assembly plant. GM's rival mid-size, traditional SUVs are in the same downward spiral. Within a few years, it's probable that neither Ford nor GM will even sell a body-on-frame mid-sized SUV. There's more to this than just $3 a gallon gasoline. Consider how the CR-V has redefined success. It's the best-selling SUV in America, but through the first half of this year, Honda has sold only about 104,000. By the end of the year, CR-V sales might top 200,000, but probably not by much. In other words, No. 1 in the SUV segment today means selling fewer than half as many vehicles as Ford did when the Explorer was No. 1 a decade ago. That market fragmentation is one reason why Detroit auto makers, including Ford, are having such trouble. It's harder and harder to sell a full assembly plant's worth of one type of vehicle just in the U.S. Honda's strategy for realizing economies of scale with the CR-V doesn't depend on that. The company sells the CR-V around the world, builds it using some of the engineering and manufacturing tools used for the higher volume Honda Civic. Beyond that, the CR-V represents a better solution to the challenge from customers such as Ms. Nison. As is often the case when Japanese auto makers attack a segment invented by Detroit, it has taken Honda three generations to really get it right. The first generation CR-V was too small for many. The second generation model was too drab -- by Honda's own admission. Generation III, launched in 2007, combines an efficient interior package, five-star front and side crash-test ratings, AND styling that is sportier on the outside, and clever and uncluttered on the inside. One other wise choice Honda made was to keep the CR-V a four-cylinder model, with highway fuel economy rated at 30 mpg for two-wheel-drive models, 28 for the all-wheel drive. On the road, the CR-V is quiet, and at just over 3,500 pounds, it is less ponderous and easier to maneuver than a standard SUV. It also does better on the government rollover test, scoring four stars to an Explorer's three. What's the lesson for Detroit? The Detroit auto makers already know. . The demise of the Explorer doesn't mean Americans don't want to drive vehicles with all wheel drive, lots of cargo space and a tall driver's seating position. A large segment of the car buying public wants all that -- just with better handling, more safety technology and better fuel economy. That's why even as the Explorer fades away, Ford (and GM and Chrysler) are rushing out more vehicles to compete with the CR-V and its larger brother, the Honda Pilot, and enjoying success. Ford's total "crossover" sales are up 83% in June, even as overall Ford sales fell 8%. An internal Ford tally finds that Ford -- including its European luxury brands -- is now the leading seller of crossover vehicles in the U.S., with GM close behind. Ford, in fact, has a shot at wrestling back the No. 1 SUV in America title from the CR-V if it can continue to boost demand for its recently redesigned Escape (See related article). • Send comments about Eyes on the Road to [email protected].

I will disagree with you here Fly. Given a right publicity and keeping them (at least one) on the lot and asking the customer to drive one, will improve the chances of selling them. If that was a reasonable justification why did GM offer 6-speed in the G-6 GT and why did they discontinue it? It just sends the signal that they want to be sporty and yet they do not want to be. I am not trying to be sassy, but most does not mean all, which means there is at least some market. Now when it comes to R&D of manual transmissions and spending extra dollars I would have understood, but Epsilons in Europe offer DECENT manual, how much R&D is it to offer in Malibu or Aura or G-6? The truth is financially GM does not want manual transmissions because they do not make money as the automatics do. If I want a manual, I know what I want, then why can't you put me on a waiting list and then get the car that I need, rather than offering me the dough from the parking lot. Chances are I will make more money for GM than a customer who comes for an automatic and haggles one off the lot. That is because when I go to GM for the car I want not what GM wants to sell, I will have less power in haggling a better deal, since the car will be specifically made for me. But if I go and browse the lot, I will certainly haggle and GM will end up having less money from me. If the market did not like manuals in the mid-sizers why did Honda give up its 19-year hiatus and offer a 6-speed in their V-6 and plan to keep it for the 2008? If the market is not there why are Nissan X-Terra, Frontier offered in their 4th model year with manual transmissions? Despite of how everybody knows how Toy is why are they still offering 6-speed Tacoma with V-6? If I am a GM fan and I want a 6-speed 3.7l Colorado, guess what? F*** You customer, because we at GM do not think there is a market for it.

Hey Bob, Thanks for your insight. Like I said I am already in consulting (though Civil Engineering) and have lived in my suitcase in the remotest parts of Mississippi and Louisiana in a hunkered down bed. I understand this challenge of working at a place where you will be a stranger. But, like I said I enjoy doing that, at least for a while. How many years I do not know, but I can say about 5 years till my fiance is done with her residency. The reason why I was looking at those firms is because, almost all of them accept candidates with a Masters degree, good school is preferred and reasonable experience in industry to be an Associate. I have a Masters in Civil and have four years of experience in Civil consulting, which I think is more than enough. Besides that I have some hands on experience in Economics, Finance and Management. That said I think I am capable enough to get in these firms. I will be honest that of all of these firms, I find McKinsey interesting. I am trying to establish some contacts with some folks there and I will prefer their Charlotte office. Ask me questions like these, that will help me clear my thoughts and get a better understanding of who I am and where I wanna go.