Import owners are to blame for the recession

At least one of them has - Ford! The Ford Fusion/Milan/MKZ is superior in
quality to the corresponding Toyota product. The Taurus is performing at
Toyota quality level. Even Consumer Reports has taken notice of the
changes.

A friend of mine traded-in his unreliable 1998 Toyota Camry for a 2008
Taurus, and he's says it's the best car he's ever owned. It's only one that
didn't have to go back to the dealer right away to have something fixed!

Derek

 

Bullshit! 2009 Taurus pricing runs from $24,125 - $31,275. 2009 Avalon
pricing runs from $27,845 - $35,185. Not even close in pricing...

http://www.edmunds.com/ford/taurus/2009/index.html

http://www.edmunds.com/toyota/avalon/2009/index.html

Derek

 

Not close? Base price is within what, 11%? Fully loaded within less
than 15%.

Now go content to content, and they are even closer.

 

Yes... reuse the model name from a car that has serious electrical
issues and trannys that all died at 72K miles. Brilliant marketing
move... they're appealing to the "I want a car with a suck reputation"
segment.

 

Show me a used car lot with cars that have 300K miles on them and I
will go take a look.

 

The Camry's aren't that bad...

 

At least this time Mike didn't boast, in his usual third person, of
course, of being too busy and more important than the other person to
search for the information. He's sort of like this guy:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/Foghorn_Leghorn.png

You know -- "Ah say, ah say, don't bother me with the facts, boy!"

 

I never understood why GM paid Tiger Woods to sell Buicks because
Tiger Woods fans never heard of Buick, and Buick fans never heard of
Tiger Woods.

 

But GM guaranteed that Saturn would always be a money pit because GM
didn't understand the good thing they had and let it lapse -- look at
how long Saturn kept chugging out essentially the same SLx models
while Honda completely revamped the Civic a couple of times and not
only attracted new customers but also lowered production costs.

A lot of people like that -- their attitude is similar to that of
billionaires on Southwest Airlnes who don't mind flying coach so long
as everybody has to fly coach and nobody can fly first class.

I almost bought a Saturn in 1993 but ended up with a Ford Escort
instead because I thought the Escort was based on the Mazda Protege,
and Saturn didn't make a hatchback.

Yes, but I've heard it's common for them to get around it by haggling
over trade-ins.

 

It's not 1972 any more.

 

Well I owned two of those cars (one Sable, one Taurus). Neither had
electrical problems and neither had transmission problems. I sold the
Sable to a friend when it had 1400k miles. He drove it for another 60K
miles and only got rid of it when it was totaled in an accident.

"Taurus" has a lot of name recognition. There are millions of happy
Taurus owners out there. I don't think I would have reused the name on
the Five Hundred, but I suspect Ford researched this decision a lot
better than I could and decided it was a good thing to do. Most of the
people who say bad things about a Taurus, never actually owned one....

Ed

 

Check actual out the door pricing, and it won't even be close, the
Taurus will be much less expensive.

Interestingly a friend I see Thursdays after work is negotiating to
buy an Avalon right now. Last night he was complaining that none of
the dealers will come down to what Edmunds claims is the "True Market
Value" for an Avalon in this area. And he grumbled that the dealers
are lying about the invoice price for the Avalon. The dealer with the
lowest price so far is claiming Edmunds is showing an invoice price
that is lower than actual. He just want the base model with as few
options as possible, and can't get it under $30k.

We have discussed why he even wants an Avalon. Seems like a loser car
to me. It has the lower middle class appeal of a Toyota, at a much
higher price than a Camry. If I was going to buy a Toyota for that
much money, I'd go for the Lexus ES350 instead. If I was willing to be
lumped in with Toyota buyers, I'd go for the lower cost Camry. The
parts that matter are pretty much the same. The only advantage for the
Avalon is a bigger back seat, and my friend admits that the back seat
will never get much use. Best I can tell, it basically it comes down
to his wife not wanting to be seen in a Camry. In the past she has
always driven Buicks. So, in some ways I guess that explains it. I've
always thought the Avalon was the Toyota for Buick owners. But it is
still a stupid car (but then I guess Buicks are too). When I asked him
why he didn't get a new Buick, he said it was because of the
depreciation. Buicks lose too much value too fast. I then pointed out
that he kept his last Buick for 12 years, so why does he even
care......no answer. He is older and said he figured this would be the
last new car he would buy. So I again asked, why did he care about
depreciation....again no real answer. So I asked him if his last Buick
was a bad car. He said it was actually a very good car. So at this
point I was really confused. He was happy with his Buick. He drives
his cars into the ground. He is basically cheap. An Avalon has no real
advantage for him over the cheaper Camry. He doesn't plan to sell the
car until it is almost ready for the scrap years. He doesn't think
Toyotas are more reliable than Buicks. He thinks the Toyota dealers
are lying to him / trying to screw him on the price, BUT he is buying
an Avalon....I am so confused.

Ed

 

Did you have to study to be that dense. Mike is talking about car
owners not keeping their cars for more than 100K miles. You asked for
stats to back that up. I gave you locations to check to back up
Mike's claim.

If you didn't get the conversation, you won't get this explanation.

Jack j

 

He is either a fucking idiot, p'whipped or both. A Camry is better than the
majority of vehicles on the road today.

 

Sounds like the Toyota PR machine got to him.

 

He is definitely not an idiot. I think it has a lot to do with his
wife. It will mostly be "her" car. A couple of weeks back I thought I
had convinced him to go for the Camry, but I think his wife changed
his mind back to the Avalon. He won't take her to test drive a
Lexus.....

He doesn't actually like cars. "His"car is a 10 year old Civic. It is
a POS and he admits it, but doesn't care at all.

Ed

 

Thus spake :

C&D had a test of the Ford 500 a few years back. They liked the drive
train (of course, it was a Volvo S60), but commented that the interior
was "Ford fit and finish".
--
- dillon I am not invalid

When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams come true.
Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which
will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no
matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.

 

When they called it a FiveHundred they couldn't GIVE it away.

 

They thought that they could capitalize on the Galaxy 500, but it didn't
work out that way.

 

Rather a strange comparison in any case. The Avalon is a luxury car, the
Taurus is not. The Avalon will likely last 15-20 years, the Taurus
7-10 years.

A fair price for the base Taurus would be around $17K, which actually is
what the dealers around my area are asking ($7000 off MSRP). I'm
surprised that the base price MSRP is so high as that could scare buyers
away.

The Avalon isn't discounted nearly as much, around $4000 right now. So
the street price of the Avalon is quite a bit higher. For someone not
caring about long term dependability, the Taurus is a pretty good deal now.

Let's compare some mid-size cars on Carsdirect.com:

Ford Taurus midsize car Base MSRP: $24,125 - $31,275
Toyota Avalon midsize car Base MSRP: $27,325 - $35,185
Toyota Camry midsize car Base MSRP: $19,145 - $29,895
Honda Accord midsize car Base MSRP: $20,755 - $31,005