Robert Hall

Speaking of Infiniti interiors, I sat in an M45 at a car show a couple weeks ago..loved the interior design, and the wood was great...low gloss, looked very realistic.

I wonder if they will call it the Saturn Astra..the name fits in nicely with the Aura..

I've read DH is a huge mega pop star in Germany.

I wonder if they will decide to do something on the cheap and put out another Cobalt rebadge ala Pursuit/G4/G5...

Seems absurd that ABS and side airbags are options when so many cars today have them as standard features...

I've driven one of the first gen ones... I went out to lunch with a coworker of mine that has a new one, I was surprised how comfortable it was with 5 people in it...a lot more spacious than it may look on the outside... I was giving him a hard time about it, though, since he is a conservative, Christian Republican and the Prius has an image about 180 degrees from that...(my view of right wingers is that they tend to gravitate towards Dodge Rams, Ford F350 Crew Cabs, and other macho vehicles..)

Ok..so Lambda is an all-new platform? Haven't read much about it..I assume it's FWD w/ AWD optional? Not a rehash of an older GM FWD platform?

Also, remember hybrids are also considerably cleaner than regular cars..(aren't some of them classified as ULEVs?). People focus on the gas mileage but forget about the cleanliness aspect... How about all the filthy diesel buses and big trucks? They probably produce more way more particulate emissions than cars..

So is the Enclave/Outlook/Acadia platform all-new? Or just a revised U-body, W-body or G-body or something?

BS... there are a lot of other engines of the US economy than the auto industry..

I don't care for the grille or fascia, but the interior is nice, esp. the black one.

Nah, a BMW or SUV is for that.. (speaking from experience of living in a loft downtown but working & shopping in the 'burbs..)

Probably because the Liberty is called the Cherokee outside the US, and they wanted a name they could use across all markets.. Cherokee would have been a good name for the Patriot, it looks like a modern version of the old XJ...

The FJ Cruiser is a 4dr (has the reverse-opening rear doors like the Element, Ion, RX-..it's a lot bigger than the Wrangler (at least it looks such in person), and has a fixed roof..the Wrangler (2dr or 4dr) is really in a class by itself...

A 2dr w/ the diesel would be very cool... those are the 2 things lacking in the US SUV market today---2drs and diesels.

The base engine and transmission was the thing that I found the most frustrating about the Aura production details.... a pushrod V6 and 4spd auto would be competitive in the midsize sedan market, what 10 years ago or more?? Not now..

If you say the Aura and G6 are not rebadges, but the Camry and ES are not, then you don't grasp what rebadges are...none of these examples are rebadges--they are platform/component sharing. A rebadge is what GM did in the late '90s with the Malibu and Cutlass--exact same car with different badges and minor trim changes (grille, etc).

True...Saturn has had a semi-autonomous image separate from GM during most of it's life, and doesn't have same stigma of mediocrity in people's minds the way the old GM brands do..

If you trim down the excessive overhangs on the current LaCrosse (or any W-body), it would close to the Epsilon size, I think..and Epsilon II is going to be bigger than the current Epsilon..

Lexus RX according to her book 'The End of Detroit'

ocean

Yes, it's a good platform sharing effort...probably the only exterior parts in common are the windshields, front door windows, and the roof.. the hidden inner panels (firewall, door jambs, floorpan, etc) are probably common.. So the Acacia is the going to be the last one? (i.e. no Chevy, Pontiac, Isuzu, Saab, Holden, Opel, Vauxhall variants...)

Depends on geographically where you are at and the particular market sector (telecom, healthcare, financials, a pure technology company, etc) and the technology. VB or COBOL programmers aren't going to be in as high demand as new technologies like Java or Ruby.. I'm a software engineer/architect and the jobs I'm seeing around here (Denver) for sr. J2EE developers are often north of $80k... in my company, $85k is probably about the average for our FTE development staff (we don't have many people under 30), with most of my 30-something peers (10+ years in the game) in the $85-105k range, with the architects going up to about 125k or so... Of course, the big money in software is in contracting..it's dicey and you can't always expect to be billing all the time, but it's still possible around here with a good skill set to bill $50/hr-75/hr for 6-12 month contracts.. The numbers I see here in Denver are probably higher than some areas, but most likely lower than more-expensive places like the Bay Area, LA, NYC, or Boston)... Even after all the dot.bomb bubble burst, the outsourcing trend, and H1b influx of the last 5 or so years, I'm finding there are still good paying jobs to be found, but you have to keep current and keep growing your skills...

Summer 1985. Got my learner's permit around my 15th birthday. First car I ever took out on a road was w/ my dad in his '84 Lincoln Town Car. Followed by his '84 Ford Escort diesel (first manual I drove, the car I did my driving test in, and later became my first car), then his '79 Dodge Power Wagon 4x4 pickup (my main vehicle for practice on the Ohio backroads--an awful thing to drive--numb power steering, tended to stall on left turns, bouncy suspension), and occasionally mom's '82 Mustang GT (fun car). then occasionally I got to drive my folks vintage cars--a '69 Mustang Mach 1 (351W, auto), '67 Mercury Cougar (289, 3spd manual), '68 Mercury Cougar (302, 3spd manual), and '68 Mercury Cougar XR-7 (390, auto)...

I can definitely understand that..I was young and single when I left Michigan in '97...sunny, booming Colorado seemed like a world apart from gray, dying Michigan. Ann Arbor was a great town to live in when I was in grad school, but the overall area just wasn't happening for me.