Originally Posted By vbdad55 Yes but let's not expect the Camaro SS to compete with the M3 overall - it won't - sothere should be a price gap. Remember when the Japanese car makers came here to capture amarket-they value priced cars like the 240Z -- they did the same thing when they introduced luxury brands like Lexus. Detroit expects us to come back out of sheer loyalty - ain't gonna happen. And the flagwaving, buy US won't work, as many of the competitions cars are built here now also and provide US jobs as well
Originally Posted By vbdad55 The GTO had 400+ horsepower - how did that go ? Already gone...was overpriced for what one got... the local Dodge dealer has 11 top of the line Challengers sitting on the lot -- most have been there since the weather was good. Now starting to discount ( they wanted full boat @ $40K ) - -- problem- they are in automobile dealer row on the street they are on. To the south of thema Mercedes dealer/ caddy corner BMW - and to the north Jaguar - all of whom offer cars in that price range while the aura of Al Bundy's Dodge hovers.Perception becomes reality except our manufacturers have a hard time with reality
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<RT, did you as a "Y2K" guy think that Y2K WOULD be a problem if the various fixes and patches so many companies (including mine) paid for were not made? Were you not sure? Or did you really think people were suckers for buying into it? I don't mean in retrospect, I mean in 1999.>> Yes, I believe the consultants and contract guys brought in to "save the world" exaggerated the problem to increase their income. I was not one of those, but my salary rose a substantial amount just because all of the Y2K work drove up salaries industry wide. I think it was probably a case of not being sure and overselling the potential downside. Sure, you had to change year fields to 4 digits. But a lot of the really bizarre things being talked about were based primarily on conjecture, not facts. The Informix database that was behind our primary application even came out with a century setting. You could choose how you wanted two digit years evaluated according to a couple of different algorithms. That alone would have probably handled our problem, although we went ahead and changed all year fields anyway just to be safe. How many things went wrong on 1/1/2000? Darned few, right? How many times have you seen bug fixes fail the first time they are in production, even if they have been extensively tested? Probably a good 10%, right? The fact that there were so few problems is more an indication that the problem was not that significant to begin with than an indication that the genius computer folk saved the world.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Hey Dabob how's the economy in 'Welcome Back Kotter' land?> Well, the financial sector is obviously hard hit, and a lot of people have lost their jobs there. And the country-wide problems haven't passed us up, either. My company did fine in '08, for instance, but no one got a raise for '09 because of fears about how we'll do THIS year, based on the national economy. But by and large, NYC seems to be doing better than a lot of places, with some notable exceptions like the financial sector. Part of it is that real estate has not tanked here. In fact, our co-op is worth as much or more as it ever was, and that's typical. The thing is, NYC had no large tracts of open land, so overbuilding those ridiculous McMansion developments simply couldn't happen here (talking about NYC, not the suburbs). The only thing you could do was build new, ever-higher buildings, and those can take a while because of all the clearances you need to get. So NYC never got overstocked with housing, nor was there the rampant speculation you saw elsewhere. There was some, but not to the same extent. The worst was probably in ultra-luxury buildings, where some people did try to make a killing, and some got burned, but they could sort of afford it. Middle class housing is so precious here that if you have one, you probably just stay there; you don't try to keep "trading up" and flipping and all that - you just stay put.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<The GTO had 400+ horsepower - how did that go ?>> You yourself said that it was a boring looking car, which I agree with. The Camaro has the looks. Most sold will have the 300 hp V6 and will be more affordable.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<Perception becomes reality except our manufacturers have a hard time with reality>> I agree that at 40K those hemis are out of the range of their target demographic, especially now that the housing bubble has popped. FWIW, the kraut cars aren't selling all that well either. I recall reading an article recently about the port of Long Beach and how there is a 6 month supply of Benzes and other imported luxury brands parked there with no takers. Maybe they too are "having a hard time with reality".
