Off Thread Topic- Still In seeing I was raised in/near Flint Michigan I have seen the car/truck sales directly impact over 500,000 jobs that mostly were outsourced to smaller companies over seas. It devastated that city, and it's got a ghetto now that is said to now be worse than any part of Detroit.
Well everyone, including myself, said and expected G.M.'s car sales, if not car sales over all, to drop like a rock right after Cash for Clunkers ended. Nope, that is NOT the case for G.M. On network news today (CBS maybe?) they reported on a pretty hefty increase in sales for GM, many dealerships are asking for more cars and trucks from GM than they had ever planed on building in the first place. In one case for a particular crossover, the car's demand was up over ten times what GM had estimated. If this trend continues GM should be able to repay their debit back to the American Government/Taxpayers with interest in the not too distant future, and it already is resulting in many thousands of Americans being called back to their jobs despite all of the negative talk from the media by car annalists (They have no more experts than we are on here about cars).
As the President of G.M. said, the fastest way of putting G.M. right back fully in the private market is to buy their cars. GM is currently beating all expectations right now because everyone assumed the sales would drop like a rock after the Clunker's deal was exhausted. Instead they are doing much better and nobody can agree as to why this is. Many dealerships are selling their GM cars as soon as they get them and GM is forced to call more back in to work to keep up with the greatly increased demand. - Man, I had two years of business classes and this is just one of the many things in our economy that defies logic in some ways. However, being an American I hold out hope that GM pays off their complete debt and becomes a total private car company and once again can finally REALLY compete in the real world. These changes should of came about in the 1970s, not 2009. The UAW really gave back a lot, I have their agreement printed up and read it. The days of endless security and going home early with full pay are now in the past. Never before has this country seen so many high quality cars and trucks competing for our $$. It's a safe bet that the American market is now saturated. Most future sales will have to come from countries such as China, in my humble opinion. We now have a real fist fight going on everyday with all of the advertising $$ trying to talk us into buying their brands of cars and trucks. It's a win for the new car consumers, AND we have workers being called back to work. This was not supposed to be happening now the Cash for Clunkers deal is over. Even I am surprised.
The most inexpensive gasoline is $2.33 /9 for 87 octane near me. Maybe in the big city of Lexington they might have cheaper gas, but the further one travels east towards West Va the higher it seems to get- despite the fact we have a large oil refinery in Ashland Ky.
About cars and miles etc.. My parents are fairly well to do. Dad has owned many new Caddilacs and large full size 4x4 pickup trucks. He sold many of his used Cadilacs at around 200,000 miles and swears everything worked as good as new and that he would not hesitate to take either car to California and back packing on many more thousand miles on the cars. He is big in maintenance for cars and some drivers forget to change their oil, check for lube, tire pressure, rotating tires, and all of that stuff. If a car is well taking care of I believe most current models sold will make it to 200,000 miles without major mechanical breakdowns happening (unless one hits a deer etc).There is a reason places will sale you extended warranties for cars up to 15 years old with less than 200,000 miles on it. The mileage is in essence the life zapper of many cars. Buying a brand new car only gives you that many more miles to drive it until a major mechanical problem could be expected. I think the best deals are on late model cars that have less than 20-30K miles. But these cars are a hot item here, and they do not stay for sale very long unless the seller is trying to get back his new car price. Also, rust is a thing of the past with many new car brands.
My eye is pegged on the oil prices. If they go up more than 2 bucks tomorrow I will start looking for gasoline to go back UP in a few weeks.