Buying A Car Sucks

The last time I bought a car, it was surprisingly painless. eBaymotors was the tool I used and never once had to enter the dealership, not even for final signature MFERS (that mfers is directed at the dealers, not you, the reader).

Today, there are plenty of 2.0 car purchase sites that make the process just that much easier (DriverSide, RepairPal, and Motherproof to a name a few). The latest player in the car purchase space of tomorrow…MotorMouths.com. Now a catchy name does not a winner make, but the model is intriguing. They aggregate reviews from sources like AOL Cars, Car and Driver and Motor Trend among others, to deliver a simple composite score for the vehicle you might be interested in buying. Much like the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.

Simple, no? YES. This is one small step for mankind, finding accurate reviews is time consuming, with MotorMouths.com some of that triangulation is done for you…

AND, anything that is related to, or similar to Rotten Tomatoes is just awesome. [Source: Mashable]

GM, A Damaged Brand(s)…Forevers

GM is bankrupt, and President Obama is telling you to buy their product and not to lose confidence in a company that neglected its product, its workers and gave leadership get out of jail free cards for decades.  Add it up and you get a long ass bankruptcy, if they are out of this in 90 days, I will buy a GM product.

GM has a lackluster product portfolio pipeline (even the Volt is off target) and will need to rebuild its brand and image from an atomic level upward. Not an easy thing to do when the product life cycle of getting new cars on the road is over 18months. I really hope they can do it.

Focus grasshopper, and get rid of Buick.

Saturns Last Orbit

General Motors plans to build the last Saturn vehicles this year, two years earlier than first envisioned, as it speeds up efforts to shed dealerships and divisions, CEO Fritz Henderson said today. AutomotiveNews 04.27.09

I have said before General Motors  has no relevant brands, and they do not, BUT, if there were a GM brand that was close to having any cred…it was Saturn. The latest redesigns were fantastic, however, came during the storm of our great recession and their most recent mediocre repositioning didn’t help either.  The brand portfolio to keep GM relevant should look something like so: Saturn, Chevy, Cadillac. It will be sad to see big blue fail in the next few years, but they will.