Nemo is shopping for a new car

At the request of some of the folks who participate in the MyMac.com mail list, here’s a transcript of a recent email thread. It all started with this very innocuous email subject line: [MyMac.com] [OT] Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe, Subaru Legacy Wagon, Subaru Forester

JN: Hi. VERY off topic. My wife says we “need” a new car. Models above are tentative first round picks. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email me off list. Goals: decent gas mileage, not too long a body, more roomy than our Beetle (not difficult!), good safety, comfortable, good construction, low repair history.

LG: I’ve got a Toyota RAV4 and am reasonably happy with it, other than the gas mileage. EPA says 30 MPG. The best highway mileage I can get is about 25. I had a VW Jetta Diesel wagon (loved that car) that got 38 MPG (EPA highway mileage rating was 45). Problem is, no new VW diesels until this fall at the earliest. Other problem is that current VWs tend to be “hangar queens”. Mine sure was, mainly related to its rather cranky exhaust emissions control systems. The rest was fine in about 100k miles.

The Matrix and the Vibe are identical cars, built on the same production line, so if that’s your choice, it should be down to price and features. You may get a better deal at your Pontiac dealer. They’re a little hungrier for business. I go to the Miami Beach Auto Show every year, and have found the Subarus, in general, don’t have a whole lot of driver’s legroom. The Legacy and Forester were all new I think last year, and may be roomier. I think the Matrix/Vibe is also new this year and may not be quite as cramped as previous versions.

JN: Thanks! Isn’t it past your bedtime, Larry?

TS: Why not a Nissan Altima, or Sentra? If I were buying a car (I bought a Nissan Xterra) it would have been a Nissan Altima. I’ve never owned a Nissan before, and I can definitely say this is by far the best vehicle I’ve ever owned.

JF: already replied at length off list to Nemo. This is a can’t-miss OT marathon unless we kill it now, but of course I have to spout off, because we just bought a new 2007 Pontiac Vibe. Here are some blog posts about it if you’re curious.

Car Palaver [now w/photo]
• More Vibe Impressions
• Zero %, No Money Down, God Bless America
• Even More Car Blather

RB: we have a nissan altima (now 10 years old) and a fairly new ford focus wagon world car. we love both of them. the nissan is rock-solid reliable and all we have ever done is replace the oil every 3000 miles. but to us the focus wagon is the winner. it is fast, and living out in the desert, we take only the focus wagon on any long trips. mileage for either of them is very decent. and getting service for either is easy, but there are more ford dealers around than nissan dealers. the only wobble for either car is the fact that the gas cap on
the focus is on the passenger side. i would buy another focus wagon in a heartbeat. especially if i could get a new diesel version.

i guess the main reason we have never bought a GM product is the paradigm i mentioned. the few times we have rented a car, we got some variant GM model, and the way they worked was just too quirky for us – sort of like trying to use a PC when you are used to a Mac. It was dumb things, like not being able to open the boot unless the key was out of the ignition and your foot was on the brake. or the fact that the horn would blow and the lights would flash whenever you took the key out of the ignition, which was great when you pull into a motel parking space at 2 in the morning. the controls always seemed to be in the wrong places too, and some features were not wanted, such as being able to leave your keys in the ignition when you lock the doors from the outside. oh well.

i guess all in all, it is all the little things on the focus that we love the best. everything falls to hand when you sit inside, and it all works intuitively. plus it is the fastest car we have ever owned. how it gets such good mileage on top of that, i do not know. there is gobs of room in the wagon, compared to the sedan, especially for headroom, and the metallic gray color seems to hold up better out here in the desert much better than the color of the nissan too.

i should probably mention that we bought both cars used from their dealer when they were one year old, which saved us a bundle of money too.

RL: I bought a Nissan Murano 3 months ago. Very nice, gets about 24 MPG…goood for carrying stuff…

RH: I loved (and still miss) my old Subaru Brat I had it for 11 years (200,000+ miles) and it never had any major repairs. Just brakes, oil and tires. I would have never of sold it if my wife didn’t twist my arm. I don’t know if Subaru are still made like they use to be. As far as Toyota goes I’ve never owned one my self but I don’t think you can go wrong there. Toyota’s are always rated very high in consumer reports. My Father is a Toyota guy. His cars seem to work well. I can’t comment on the Pontiac other then I’ll never buy another one.

RH: Yeah Nissan makes a great car too. I had a NX2000 (135mph weeeeee) and an Altima. Both car lasted $150,000 miles. I like my new Honda Accord and Hate my Ford Windstar.

RL: Was reading in Consumer reports about the recent quality problems with Toyotas.

Apparently, their quality has been suffering as of late. Previously, they were highly rated….

RH: That doesn’t surprise me. It’s just like profit taking. Once you get on top use crappy parts to maximize profits.

OR: What is wrong with a Hybrd Camary or Prius? My Prius gets 44 to 50 MPG (more in the city) and EASILY seats 4 to 5, with lots of room in the back as well, and the car is not too long, it fits my 1920’s garage! So far after two years, it has needed NO service.

I paid $700 for ALL maintenance through 60,000 miles, and the electrics and batteries are warranted to 100,000 or 10 years. And it is a fun car to drive.

RB: you know, this topic has gotten me to thinking about what cars we americans have access to. if you frequent jalopnik and autoblog.com, or any of the car mag sites, it becomes apparent that we do not have free access to the better vehicles that are offered in the rest of the world.

there are world cars, where every country has free access to buying or leasing them. then there are the cars that are only offered within a particular country or countries.

the big three of world cars are toyotas, nissans and volkswagens. general motors has world cars too, but they are not generally allowed in the united states.

the neat thing about world cars is that they are much better vehicles to own and operate. their repairs are cheaper and less frequent. the perform better and the logic of how they work and how you interact with them are on a much higher level than locally built models.

i know customer loyalty is a very strong thing, but if you ever encounter one of these world cars, you can really see the difference.

even the factories of these world cars and the paradigm of how they are assembled is quite different. take volkswagen, for instance. their factory is transparent, and their floors are hard wood, like you would find in an expensive house. their assembly line is mostly robotic, but even when someone is involved, it is all white-glove. this is not detroit we are talking about here.

even the way you go about dealing with a salesman and the dealership is different for a world car, compared to what you usually find in a local store.

ford has a world car too. or perhaps more than one model. no, they are not part of the big three, but they are light-years ahead of GM, who does not allow their world cars on our market. (i know they say that is not true, but if you compare their european models to ours, you will see that we are locked out from the good stuff, here in america.

i guess all of this is part of the reason we ended up with a ford focus wagon. we were not looking for a world car at all. we were just impressed with the car we bought. but afterward, in reading about this subject, i found out why we were blown away by that model. it is sort of the reason that we all prefer mac to the generic and lesser-grade personal computers.

someone ought to blog this, you know? especially if they do not live in the U.S.A.

LG: With Swiss-national and former US Marine fighter pilot Bob Lutz in charge of the product side of things at GM, we are starting to get some more interesting cars over here. The new Saturn Aura sedan and the new Chevy Malibu (and the Pontiac G6, I think) are based upon the German Opel Vectra. The difference over previous attempts by US automakers bringing European product over here is that these cars, aside from sheet metal differences, are almost identical to the versions sold in Europe and elsewhere. This includes chassis tuning, interior appointments, and powertrains. Because current European exhaust emission standards are just about as tight as the US standards, it’s easy (and cheaper) to get the European powertrains homologated for US use. The Pontiac GTO is a similar thing. The GTO is based upon the Australian Holden product, and aside from sheet metal and moving the steering wheel to the left side of the car, it is ever close to the Aussie version. Unfortunately the GTO wasn’t a sales success, probably due to the increasing fuel prices as much as anything, and has been cancelled. The upcoming G8 brings much of the fun of the GTO with similar powertrain options.

This is unlike what automakers have done in the past. Ford has had a longstanding habit of “improving” European product for the US market. As evidence, I bring you the Mercury Merkur of the mid-1980s. This was the German/British Ford Sierra, a very competent family sedan with sporting pretensions, but tarted up with every conceivable (and maybe some inconceivable) option to drive the price up to near BMW levels. It didn’t deserve that treatment. Then there was the Ford Contour and the Mercury “badge engineered” equivalent. This was actually the German/British Ford Mondeo. Suspension was softened, the interior was cheapened, and the whole thing transformed from a spirited and sporty European sedan to an anonymous lump of a car with an asthmatic engine and lousy back seat legroom. The current Ford Focus has gone through similar “improvements” with predictable results, though the new 2008 line shows some promise. One of the few cars Ford didn’t mess with was the German/British Fiesta, back in the last 70s. Unfortunately, the Fiesta was not really appropriate for the US market, and was marketed as a product for people who couldn’t even afford a Pinto.

The marketing folks usually override engineering in product configuration decisions, and the lead marketing folks are mainly stuffy old farts living in Grosse Point, Michigan, associating with others of their kind at “the club”, the grocery stores, the liquor stores, etc., who all drive the same kinds of cars, so that’s what they think “real” Americans want. Brock Yates wrote an excellent article back in the 70s for Car and Driver magazine titled “Grosse Pointe Myopia,” and sadly much of what that story described is the same today. They are so afraid of anything that isn’t bland (read that: mass market), they are unwilling to leave the suspension tuning and interior appointments alone (add another cupholder…), thereby alienating a growing number of enthusiasts who would be willing to buy American if they just had the product.

There are some bright notes, though. Look at what’s happened to Cadillac over the last few years. They went from an old man’s car (average buyers age was something like 68) with soft, flabby suspension to the hot new CTS with the optional Corvette powertrain and a six-speed manual transmission. Even the venerable DTS (formerly DeVille) has improved tremendously. I rented one last summer and drove it from Palm Beach, Florida all the way to Cleveland, Ohio and back in supreme comfort, well-tuned suspension (no more jiggles), a big honkin’ Northstar V-8 (with the most aggressive and lovely exhaust note heard from a Caddy in a long time), and amazing gas mileage (27 MPG on the trip–three better than my average in my Toyota RAV4!). Pontiac has some fairly exciting new products, as does Buick. The stuff in the product pipeline looks even better. GM is really starting to “get it”, and is offering the most interesting product lineup from an American manufacturer in years, and Bob Lutz has been behind most of it.

Chrysler? Well, unfortunately the marriage between them and Daimler-Benz ended in a bitter divorce, with virtually no breakaway products co-developed between the guys in Auburn Hills and Stuttgart, so Chrysler never really experienced the synergy such a marriage should have provided. Instead, nearly every new product introduction from Chrysler over the last two or three years has been universally panned by the motoring press, mainly because they were cost-reduced from the start, and sent out to dealers before product development was really complete. Only the 300, the new Dodge/Chrysler minivan, and the just introduced Charger have any traction with the buying public. The next year or two will tell us if Chrysler has a future at all.

RB: larry! now i recognize you!

i cannot decide if your pseudonym is broke yates or david e. davis over at car and driver. but i recognize the take-no-hostiages journalistic style. who knew we had such a talent among us here at mymac!

you get to write this blog, bro. awesome!

=)

LG: Roger, I am neither, but maybe I’m channeling them… I began reading Car and Driver years before I could even drive, and immediately began to recognize, even in my early teens, the excellence and like you said, take-no-hostages writing style of not only Davis (remember his essay on the BMW 2002? A masterpiece), but also Brock “The Assassin” Yates. Jean Shepherd had an occasional column, and P. J. O’Rourke was a feature writer for several years (his essay on driving an Aston Martin convertible around Palm Beach was priceless–especially the part about how small the back seat was–that you needed to either be an amputee or a thalidomide baby to sit back there–that’s gonzo writing, and boy did he get letters!). L.J.K. Setright, editor at Britain’s CAR magazine, did a falling on the floor hysterical takeoff of James Joyce in one of his back page columns. He replaced Warren Weith, C and D’s tweed with suede leather elbow patches writer who enjoyed writing tales about his stable of Volvos. Yeah, I guess I’ve got some history with them. I mourned Davis’s departure, but immediately realized Davis had trained Jean Lindamood/Jennings well. He later hired her to run Automobile Magazine before he departed again for new projects.

Road & Track was always too stuffy for me–especially in comparison to the anarchy that went on at 2002 Hogback Road in Ann Arbor, MI.

RB: wowser, larry! yeah, me too, with C&D since puberty or thereabouts. o’rourke was always a fav of mine too, since he began before there was american access to monty python. i frequently screamed out his last name during cross country flights, into an airsickness bag. he thought that was funny too. a very self-effacing guy. jean is not bad, actually. reminds me a bit of both beth and carmel. i did like R&T for their cyclops cartoon. ever notice how the new car of india looks so much like it? gad, we need to speak more of this, off this thread, and blog about it. everyone loves cars, and there really are mac-like cars out there, as well as a bunch that remind me of windows (cough, GM, cough).