Spinoff of item 4: what experiences have people had with area dealers?  Are
there any you would recommend or warn about?

43 responses total.

Reread item #4, and never buy a car from Varsity Ford.

NEVER GO TO ANN ARBOR TOYOTA MAZDA VOLVO!!!!!!!!!

re #2, why's that?

because you should buy  American !
Buy a Ford, even if the quality is not the greatest.

AA Toyota Mazda Volvo is absolutely horrible.  Every single dealing
I've had with them has been extremely stressful, unprofessional, etc.

We have had nothing but courteous, helpful dealings with AATMV.  We even just
had warranty work done on a 9 year old Tercel (with 217,000 miles on it).  We
will go there again.

Josh and my sister have had rotten dealings with Rampy Nissan.

The problem with AATMV is with the sharks in used car sales.  I will say,
though, they've taught me a lot about buying a car and how to stand up to
salesmen.  Bought two cars there, only because of their biannual $1000
drag-it-in trade in sale.  (And I bought chryslers both times)

Only real problems I remember with AATMV is with getting appointments;
at one point they were running pretty far behind on things.  Haven't been
back in a while, but they improved to almost reasonable scheduling-wise.

        Never ever go to AATMV they will screw you on price.
        ie.: They would charge as a base price for the new MX-3 GS
        $14,585 when it is clearly shown in Autoweek on two different
        occasions to be a base price of only $13,800.

        Data comes from Autoweek Februrary 10, 1992 page 17 "1992 New Car
        Prices"
        Also they have annoyed me at home with pestering phone calls
        saying "Are you going to buy our car this week, UH UH UH"
        
        Their almost as bad as the army for my age group.

"UH UH UH"? Sounds like an obscene phone call. :)

I was able to get a very competetive price on a '92 Camry at AATMV.

I was going to say that, the same friend of mine with the v6, got it that
way.  (#4) Toyota Camry is American made!

Even if the quality is not the greatest?  Argh!!  You driven a Ford lately?
They are just as good if not better than any riceburner you can drum up,
short of a lexus.

I've heard this line for many years now.  Not to long ago my dad bought
a Ford LTD with extended coverage.  It had received very high marks from
Consume Reports.  The car was a disapointment.  It was always in the shop
for engine related problems.  The idle had to be set so high, to keep it
from stalling, that it took significant presssure on the brake to keep it
from rolling at a stop.  He got so fed up with service from Ford that he
took it to a private auto shop for service.  After $630 of parts and labor,
the car ran fine. The last straw for him was when the water pump went out
, a month later, at 32,000 miles.  He went out and bought a Toyota Cressida
which has not been in the shop to date except for oil changes and the like.
Every car he's ever owned was American built and he swore by them.  Now
he swears by his Toyota.  The LTD was a brand new '88 and the Toyota a '90.
He's 68.

re #13 - Great. if the quality's there, buy the damned thing. But let
people judge for themselves, without shoving the company line up their 
asses so many times that they either think you need to sell so hard 
because the cars suck, or just go straight to the competition since 
they're tired of the posturing.
"riceburners"...sheesh...
Have a nice day. :)

I'm not at all advocating the old Buy American theme, I'm just saying that
American cars have changed alot in the last few years and they are now worthy
of serious consideration, not because they are domestic, but because they are
good cars.  I just get a little steamed when people judge japanese cars as
good solely because they are not american cars and american cars as junk
just because of their past reputation.  Nissans and Mazdas are junkier than
anything produced in Detroit -- car magazines have started noticing the dip
in quality.  

Ehm,  that sounds very patriotic.  Nothing wrong with being patriotic,
but it should not detach yourself from reality.

I'm perfectly happy with my Saturn which, unlike the Honda I used to drive,
is not going to turn into a hunk of tin the size of a breadbox if I get
into an accident.

I bought my Dodge 600SE for that reason.  Then I had an accident with a 78
Mustang, and my car was almost totalled. The Mustang had just a little
bump in front of the hood.  I wouldn't bet that Saturn would do any different
than Dodge.  Depends on what you hit.

I have another accident story of a friend of mine who drove a Honda Accord.
Somehow when he was passing a truck at about 60 mph, the truck suddenly
changed lanes, turning his car sideways (still on wheels) and pushing it
sideways at about 60 mph on I-75.  The truckdriver didn't notice a thing,
and it seemed that they were driven an eternity like that.  Someone warned
the truckdriver of the situation, and he stopped.  The car was beyond repair,
since the frame had bent, but no other damage than a bump at the door was
to see.  Not even the tires blew.  Don't try this at home :)

Are the "American" cars really getting better or are the real loosers
being replaced with inports with "American" skins and name plates.

With fuel economy being more and more of a concern as well as safety,
I would expect more and more cars to be totaled in a crash situation.
The idea is not to save the car but the people inside!  If a given car
suffered little damage in a crash, either that energy went into the other
car or into the passengers of the cars.  Look at the Indy, etc. races of
today.  10 years ago it was common for drivers to get hurt badly or killed
in a 200 mhp crash into the wall.  Today the cars break apart and only the
cage, with the driver inside, remain one.  All the parts, that once were
firmly attached to the cars, now go bouncing down the track: Less kinetic
energy to injure the driver!  Energy that went into bending a piece of
sheet metal is energy that didn't go towards injuring the people inside!

Well, Saturns are made in Tennessee.
  
There's a difference between your car "crumpling" so as to absorb damage
and getting totalled.  The Honda CRX I was driving buckled in completely
on the left side, barely missing the gas tank.  There were plastic
and metal chips all over the passenger compartment.  The doors popped open.
The seat latch snapped, throwing me forward into the seatbelt and giving
me a nasty whiplash.  Not what I would call absorbing kinetic energy.

My father is a Ford employee, and my brother works for EDS, i.e. GM.
So, many of us own Ford and GM cars.  We are almost universally happy
with our Fords.  We are less happy with our GMs.  The only family
member who is really happ with her GM is my sister who owns a Saturn.

Now, it is true we get pretty good deals on these cars, but for me,
the savings would not be worth it if the car was junk.

GM is another reality-free zone.  The elusive Dr. Lopez is just the latest
example.

I agree that a certain amount of crumpling is good to absorb the energy of
a hit, but for insurance purposes, you don't want the car to get totalled
if someone taps you in the rear at 10-15 mph either.  I've been hit 4 times
in back like that at speeds from 5 to 20 mph (of the car in back), and have
had no damage to my car other than scratched paint.  I had to reset my
fuel pump shutoff switch once, but that's it.  I own an Escort, FYI.  I think
this performance is reasonable.  I know people with Honda CRX's who hit poles
while backing out of parking spaces and they break their rear bumper in half.
I don't think that's as strong as my Escort.  Clearly, the Escort reaches a
better balance of survivability and low insurance costs.  That's not patriotic,
or Japan bashing, but just common sense.

Common sense tells that hitting a pole is not the same as hitting a car.
For one thing the pole usually does not move away, making the impact harder.
Another things is that the pole touches the bumper only in the middle,
putting a load that can break it in two.  If you hit another bumper, it is a
load that runs parallel to the ground, so it cannot break it into two parts,
unless you hit a corner.  And the other bumper has usually some bounce to it
too.

The CRX also has a plastic sheet covering the real bumper.  I suspect
your Escort does not.  The new (inport!) ones do as I recall.

Most people do not use their seat belts properly to minimize injury during
an impact.  The lap belt sould be very snug around the hips, not the soft
stomach.  The sholder harness should also be snug.  The seats should be as
far forward as possible.  In an accident you want little space between
you and a fixed object such as a seat belt or dash (firewall).  The more
space there is, the more ones body will accelerate before being stopped
by the fixed object.  For the same reason, extra cussions should be avoided.

What happened with my seatbelt was that the seat latch snapped from the force
of the accident, throwing me forward.  The seatbelt was there to catch me,
of course, but the seat was not rigid and threw me forward.
  
The body panels on my Saturn seem to hold up very well under impact; somebody
backed into the front quarterpanel hard enough to pop it in, and it popped
right back out.

That's the purpose of the seatbelt.  Having the seat stay put would not have
changed things much.  The seat didn't throw you forward!  It added to the 
force the seatbelt had to restrain, but it was the simple fact that you have
mass and that mass was moving at some velocity.  If you had 0 mass, then you
would have been correct in your statement above.

I hope you're not trying to tell me that a seat latch that snaps under
pressure isn't a design problem.  The seat did indeed add to the pressure
on the seatbelt.

When the frame gets bent, most seats would snap out.  They are attached to
the frame.  Also, it might be a safety feature, as when the cabin gets
crushed, you don't want to get trapped by the seat squeezing you into a
corner.  This gives you more space in case of a bad crash.

The popping panel seems to be a nice feature.  I wonder what it looks like
on the other side (inside), any cracks to allow rust settling in?
Maybe the panels are all composite and not metal.  Don't know how well
composites perform these days, they were a disaster in the past.

The Saturn's body is all polycarbonate material.

re: #26:  My Escort is an '88 1/2  and it, like 1988.5-1991 models have
bumpers that are steel underneath with a plastic covering.  The plastic is
also impact resistant, providing the bumper with more absorbing capacity.
The bumpers are identical to the Taurus/Sable and Aerostar bumpers made in
Milan.

r.e. #29.  Had the seatbelt snapped, then there would have been a design
problem.  I suspect it didn't.  Having the seat follow you may have even
reduced injury since it may have had a head rest adjusted to the proper
height, keeping you for getting or reducing whip-lash.

There's another item people, espec. tall people, don't adjust properly.
The head rest should be located so that it supports the back of your head
when you lean back.

Plastic on cars is nice.  The thing I don't like about  it is that it
can hide damage caused by an accident or rust.

Although they don't, themselves, rust.
  
I doubt that having the seat snap forward would have "reduced" injury at
all.  The head rest is still there, no matter where the seat is.

From a seller's point of view, though, plastic parts make sense.  With 4 hits
in the fanny, you can only tell because there's blue paint smeared on top of
my charcoal colored bumper paint.  (my car is tan, the others were blue,
black, white and red).  With 141,132 and going strong, this is a BIG plus!

ALthough it is annoying when people want to know if they can come up and
kick the body panels of my car "like in the commercial"...

How about strangers just doing it when it's parked somewhere?

They die.

I've been dreaming up a way to keep people away from my car with
high SPL in the supersonic bandwidth - it's probably too harmful to
try, but it makes for good mindflexing.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss