Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
110% agreement. The Cobalt XFE tweaks were design-delivered in about 6-months, but long after the gas-price increase had damaged GM sales. With a little foresight it could have been a "niche bragging point" for the last 5 years if they had funded it in the salad days of SUV sales.
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CarloSW2
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Well, there's the answer that I hadn't thought about. Develop a car everybody wants (civic-like generic small car features) with a cheap, stripped down model with a tiny engine that gets kick-butt mileage (underpowered in the eyes of the US consumer today), then when the price of gas tops $4/gallon, you can keep your assembly line flowing, just ramp up production of the stripper/high mpg model and you have a winner waiting in the wings. In the meantime, us ecofreaks will have an option we can hunt down or special order.
In 02 I had every intention of buying a Civic HX, but there wasn't a single one in the Denver Metro area with a 5-speed (all were CVT (transmission that still doesn't feel/sound right to me)). I kinda wish I would have ordered one in hindsight, but then again, the car I ended up with was totalled within three years anyway. Such is life.