Disney may lose GM sponsorship for Test Track

I suppose it's possible that Disney has significantly raised the rate, but even if it were double, it still doesn't seem terrible.

john peck said:
Honda has ASMO (a robot) at Disneyland. It would be neat if they could become the sponsor, but frankly, I just don't think they will.

By the way, My Accord has 208,500 miles on it now! *Grin*

I had 2 Pontiac Grand Prix (what is the plural of Prix anyway?). The '91 I sold with 210K on it. The '98 had 218K on it, and I've actually seen that one still running. I recognize it because of a crease in the right front door some guy gave me in the office parking lot that I never bothered to fix. Although I'm driving a Fusion now which I love, I'll shed a tear if/when GM decides to eliminate the Pontiac line.

Yeah, I had my '97 Pontianc Grand Am for 10 years and it had over 100K miles when I moved on to something new. It was working fine, but I was ready for something new. It really did serve me well, though.

I had a 2001 Focus that I totaled out last year, it had 203,000 miles on it.

I drive a 1996 Oldsmobile Acheiva to work everyday and it has 187,000 miles on it.

On the other hand I have a friend that has an 07 Civic that is an absolute POS with 40k on it.

My '07 Civic has 40K on it, and it's not a POS. :)

PS: I have also driven in, in spring time when no heat or AC was necessary, for 466 miles on 10 gallons of gas. I'll let everyone do the math.

No one told me this site required Math.. Great...

RatherGoodBear said:

john peck said:
Honda has ASMO (a robot) at Disneyland. It would be neat if they could become the sponsor, but frankly, I just don't think they will.

By the way, My Accord has 208,500 miles on it now! *Grin*

I had 2 Pontiac Grand Prix (what is the plural of Prix anyway?). The '91 I sold with 210K on it. The '98 had 218K on it, and I've actually seen that one still running. I recognize it because of a crease in the right front door some guy gave me in the office parking lot that I never bothered to fix. Although I'm driving a Fusion now which I love, I'll shed a tear if/when GM decides to eliminate the Pontiac line.

I have an '04 Grand Prix with 101k miles and the transmission is beginning to go and the car is falling apart. :/

On the rebranding angle can share an interesting experience. I worked in Tomorrowland at WDW in the summer that the old Delta Dreamflight got debranded and turned into Take Flight. I know it was a much, much smaller attraction. But the loss of sponsorship was mentioned in passing from management so wasn't really sure what was going to happen. The did it all in one night and it was seamless.

One day came in and the sign had totally changed. all the Delta stuff was gone. The creepy part was the song we heard endlessly had been changed. What sounded like the same voices that sang "blah blah blah on a dreeeamflight!" were now singing "Come come along when you taaaaake flight!" It was exactly the same song and sounded like the same people but with a couple of words different. Possibly they recorded an alternate version in case sponsorship was pulled on the ride, no one could explain..but it was just sort amazing and creepy at the same time. Obviously tons more would need to be done on Test Track but it was impressive how that was pulled off.

You guys did much better than I. I scrapped a '97 Subaru Impreza last year with only 168K on it. There was a brake fluid leak in the ABS system, and it would have been a couple grand for even the shade-tree mechanic in town to fix.

Raven-Phile said:
I'll let everyone do the math.

Wow! You got 0.0224 gallons per mile!?

^ Thats 46.6 miles per gallon! Crazy!

If you guys want to talk about good GM products, i'm gonna use my '91 Oldsmobile Shiloette as an example.

Our family bought it used in '95 when it had about 50K on the odo. I sold it after the shock towers rusted out when it had 230k. In that time frame, The thing survived (among other things):

- my sister and myself learning to drive in it,

- a year of pizza delivery,

- 100 miles on the highway with a busted water pump (temp never got above 220!),

- pulling my dad's fully-loaded p/u truck a 1/2 mile beucause he ran out of fuel,

- many moving days (from friends needing my help)

- my summer working at CP (They said I was nuts for driving a van with over 220k on the clock w/ no cruise or CD player 700 miles from NH. Called me "ballsy" It was apeciated on the nights we got off so the shuttle would not be an issue)

- hitting 108 mph on the NY thruway coming back from CP

I loved that thing. It IS proof that GM CAN manke good cars and good engines. (The 3.1 V6 never needed anything more than routein oil changes & tune-ups). Of course, the thing did look like a dusbuster, but that's life.

Back on topic, what agbout another car company stepping in? Maybe Porsche, Subaru, Honda, or Lotus might like to step in. You might have to change the skins on the cars a bit, but that would be minor.

Their awesome products must be why they're in such trouble now.

No. GM's in trouble now because it's been mismaged and had too many overlapping models. The UAW didn't exacly help either.

I think you forgot to add "too many crappy overlapping models" - Jen's got an '07 Cobalt, and that thing has had so many little parts, switches, covers, bezels, and other little parts replaced on it. It has so many leaky seals that it ices over on the inside during winter frosts, and it gets stuck in 3" of snow.

It's Gaaaahbage.

Yeah. You need to be a rocket scientist (or Brain Noble :) ) to figure out how to change the old or find the stinking spark plugs.

On the overlapping models, a perfect example was the Shilouette/Lumina APV/ Trans Sport triplets. The ONLY thinfs seperating them were cosmetics such as wheels, badging, and interior trim. 99.9% of the parts were intercangeable.

The problems with the domestic auto industry aren't linked solely to quality, or rather, perception of quality. Union issues and especially significant trade deficits in various markets have played as big of a role (if not bigger) in their troubles.

Take China, for example. They're the second largest auto market in the World, and until relatively recently, they imposed a 225% duty on imports. That is now down to 25%, but think about how expensive your Toyota or Honda would be with a $50,000 tax tacked on top. Would you still buy it? Would there still be a perceived value at that price? Think of how many customers the US automakers don't have right now because they weren't able to sell their products in one of the World's biggest markets. That's huge.

And of course, there's Japan. In 2007, the US suffered from a trade deficit of almost $60 billion in the automotive industry. What if it were the other way around? That deficit itself nearly pays for the bailout.

Now, I'm not suggesting protectionism - but you can't simply ignore that many of the other major players aren't playing by the same rules as we are. And I'm not suggesting that the quality level between domestics and imports has always been equal. But the fact remains that quality issues have been relegated to little more than a function of production capacity. The more units you produce, the more likely you are to encounter defects.

And something most people seem to not know (or ignore) is that the major auto companies share everything. And I don't mean that figuratively. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single component in any vehicle, foreign or domestic, that isn't found in at least one other vehicle. And this component/technology sharing is done amongst all the players.

Put simply, the domestic auto industry isn't failing simply because of their quality (which is, by and large, equal to that of their foreign counterparts). In fact its sort of analogous to Financial Meltdown Bonanza 2008, in that there are several causes, all aligning rather perfectly.

I also don't think the problem has been straight up quality of the vehicles. But the foreign auto makers have been far more advanced in delivering features in a standard way that you would have to purchase packages for in the domestic market. That's not a great selling point.

But yeah, my brother works for a major manufacturer of components for the auto industry and he says there are no vehicles on the road today that his company doesn't supply some components for. It's just a question of which components.

When you talk about a trade deficit with Japan, you make it sounds like the cause is the deficit itself. How about it being the symptom of making crappy cars?

I'm sorry, but the quality issue is not perceived, it's real, especially at the lower end where they should be selling massive quantities. You can see it in resale value especially, where a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic will score 25% more than a Ford Focus of the same year (and I'd love to see the percentage of fleet for each that remains in use).

No, the uneven trade policies of the 90's are the cause of the deficit in Japan. If people in Japan can't buy US vehicles in the 90's, then those brands really never gain any traction in what was arguably the formative years of the modern automotive industry. And by the time Japan decided to open its doors, it was far too late over there. Often times, when people start with a certain brand, they stick with it.

And resale value is not simply a result of quality. Resale value is a function of what people perceive to be the value of the vehicle, based on a number of factors, quality being only one. Another major component of resale value is how many units are sold as fleet vehicles (that is, to rental companies, as company cars, etc.). The more fleet vehicles a particular model has, the lower its resale value.