Well I dont either. I guess I was trying to convey how emotional people get about GM and their vehicles. Now its pickup trucks.
I think you need to spend some more time with common every day people. I’ve spent a few years in various factories and most of the folks there are simply hard working. They want the same thing for their kids as the rest of us and I don’t know many living in trailers unless just as a stepping stone. You’ll find a lot of them down at the VFW or Legion and at church on Sunday unless they have to work overtime. Just be a little careful what you say to them because working hard gives them pretty good muscles.
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I judge people by how well they write, which includes understanding the difference between a plural and possessive noun, proper use of capitalization and the role of the apostrophe in contractions.
You don’t impress me very much.
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I agree with what you’re saying even though I can’t stand Grammar Nazis. I am sorry that my writing is not up to your standards I had to type this out on a phone with one hand cuz the other hand is in a cast right now. Between spell check and voice to text sometimes it things don’t show up as they should.
Some of us work hard for a living and it puts a beating on our bodies
… and I can’t stand people who put grammarians in the same category as a group that murdered a minimum of 6 million people. When you use the term “Grammar Nazi”, you automatically minimize the butchery that was perpetrated by the REAL NAZIS.
Can’t we simply use a term such as “strict grammarians” for those who prefer to see correct language usage? And, just for the record, there is no such word as “Nazi”. Instead, we have an acronym for the German word, “Nationalsozialist”, and that acronym is “NAZI”–all upper case letters.
Our World History and English classes are dismissed for the day.
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Driver, before I leave class, just curious, what does the acronym “REAL”(–all upper case letters) represent?
I will respond–even though I know full-well that you know the answer already.
I capitalized “real” for emphasis, and it is not an acronym–unlike the almost universally-misused term, “NAZI”.
Rifling engaged at loading.
I normally don’t point out minor grammar errors, but when a poster gets on his high horse and calls us ignorant mouth breathing simpletons based solely on the vehicles we prefer, it would help the poster’s case if he used grammar that demonstrates that he’s smarter than a fifth grader.
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Aw, give him a break. It gets boring sitting around the trailer park unemployed month after month.
No disrespect to those who live in trailers. It was a comment on the poster, not on any particular socioeconomic group. Besides, I’ve seen trailers that are nicer than my first house!
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I have met and known a lot of pickup truck owners and for the most part, they live in the opposite of substandard housing. Most of them have college degrees and send their sons and daughters to college. I used to own a small four cylinder pickup truck and I have to admit, there are times when I miss that little truck’s utility.
Most truck owners enjoy or need the utility of trucks, you think you are going to pull your motorboat or travel trailer with a Celica or Prius?
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The GM cars of the 1960’s were good cars for the same reason that Harley Davidson motorcycles of the 1960’s were good motorcycles, nobody made anything better to compete against them.
My current Toyota Yaris is approaching the 200,000 mile mark. It still burns no oil and still has the original factory brake pads. A 1968 Volkswagon Beetle would be on its third engine and still wouldn’t match the Yaris fuel economy.
My 2013 Kawasaki Ninja 300 has 40,000 miles on it and still burns no oil. A 1965 Harley Davidson Sportster would have already needed an overhaul by then.
These are the good old days.
Yes indeed! GM just had to be eualy or a little bit better than their competition. Ford, Chrysler and AMC. One the Japanese got their quality right - and that took a while! - they re-set that bar higher. Even the worst cars sold today are pretty good compared to the cars of 50 years ago.
Without question!
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Whenever people talk about “The Good Old Days”, they almost always have very selective memories. Their old cars that were… supposedly… better than the ones being produced today had brakes that could only be described as pathetic, handling that was usually similar to a barge wallowing in an ocean swell, and non-existent (or barely effective) rust-proofing.
And, then we had engines that usually needed the classic “valve & ring job” shortly after reaching 50k miles, and carburetors and automatic chokes that made for long warm-up times and poor performance in cold weather.
One question that I have asked people who fondly recall their cars from the '50s is:
If that car was so good, why did it have such a short-duration warranty?
(I recently found out that Kaisers/Frazers/Henry Js came with a 90 day/4,000 mile warranty, and I suspect that this was not unique at the time.)
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Most in my neighborhood don’t need them, but they like them. And it is, after all, their money.
Personally, I miss my old Toyota pickups but would not want the oversized pickups being sold today. I like something compact. On many of the modern ones the bed is too high to load or unload readily, and climbing into the cab is like climbing into a Peterbuilt. My old Toyota pickups were easy entry and egress and the beds were low and easy to access. I consider the size of most new pickups to be totally unnecessary, but apparently that’s what most buyers want. So be it.
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Good thing I worked @ a Volkswagen dealer when I had my first bug. All those oil changes, valve adjustments, heater cable free-ups, mufflers, king and link pins w/bushings, oil bath air cleaner cleanings, speedometer cables, voltage regulators, and generator brushes, to name a few high maintenance (by today’s standards), were tolerable only because I had access to the VW shop and VW parts. (And I haven’t even mentioned clutch cables and clutch discs or brake shoes and wheel/master cylinders or those dreaded fuel pumps and accelerator pump tubes and valve train push rod tube seals.)
I loved those little cars, but they’d be a PITA compared with other cars of the modern era.
CSA 
And that is why many people my age (mid 60’s) and older are now driving a Toyota or Nissan or Honda. The Big-4 were complacent in their engineering and manufacturing. They got their butts handed to them by Asian vehicles. I was a HUGE GM fan in the 60’s. Since the 70’s GM has been playing catch-up to the Asian market.
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We haven’t seen you in a while, @Rick_Rugerson. Hope you’ve been well. You haven’t lost your flair for provoking a discussion. Please try not to insult groups of people, though.
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@VDCdriver The 90 day 4000 mile warranty was a standard back in the 1940s and 1950s. Chrysler really started the longer warranty with its 1963 models by providing a five year 50,000 mile warranty on the power train.
Now this five year 50,000 mile warranty was really not all that costly to Chrysler corporation. By 1963, most engines would go 75,000 to 100,000 miles with no problems. Failures in a new device follow a statistical distribution known as the negative exponential distribution. Most failures due to manufacturing defects occur soon after a machine is put in service. The failures then taper off rapidly for the service life of the machine. If the transmission in a new Plymouth were to fail, it would most likely occur within the first 90 days or 4000 miles. After that point, failures are much less likely to occur. Many devices from radios and television sets to alarm clocks and watches came with a 90 day warranty back then.
Keep in mind that the Chrysler warranty back in 1963 was for the engine and drive train. A door could fall off its hinges after a year and it wasn’t covered.
I wondered where Rick Rugerson got his attitude then discovered that he used to be ’ Wheres Rick ’ the drum brake guy.
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