The last Buick rental I drove gave me a wicked backache - and I don't even have a bad back. I guess I should have stuck with Hertz and a Grand Marquis or Town Car.

 

W/O reading the links, are they pre-building a bunch of '04 Cavaliers to be shipped/sold/labeled/certified as '05s? Because the Cobalt is to be built in the same plant that currently builds the Cavalier/Sunfire (Lordstown OH). Yes?

guionM, I clicked on your link, and it was no longer available on the GM Media site.

 

I figured they'd pull it, but I just copied the 2005 GTO info.

In short, it was a media release that described the 2005 Cavalier, the changes it would have over the 2004, and a few press paragraphs about it.

It didn't sound like any pre-building anything. The way it was written, Cavalier is going to be a full time 2005 car.

Built on the same line or a different part of the same plant, perhaps?

 

Cavalier will be built in '05 for fleet sales.....that means rental and company fleets. (has nothing to do with any production problems with Cobalt....and there aren't any, by the way.....)

It won't be the only GM nameplate put in fleets....we will put our new products in there as well......however, as one reader pointed out, there is a drop in resale value when the rental market is flooded with cars.

That's one reason the 'old' Blazer 4-door has been kept in production for fleets......also, the Lumina was built for fleets for a year after Impala production started..........

A drop in resale value not only hurts you as our customer, it also hurts us when we're calculating Retail Leases.......because of the anticipated residual value at the end of a lease.

The Cavalier is a good car for rental fleets because it is inexpensive and allows for attractive rental rates at the lower end of the spectrum.

 

Since I live real close to Lordstown Assembly... this has me interested a little.

Will the 2005 Cavaliers be imported from another plant now since Cobalt/Pursuit will be built at Lordstown? Or was the Delta line built seperate and independant of the J-Car line and now both lines are at Lordstown?

I am almost positive there was an agreement that all J-Cars sold in the U.S. had to be built at Lordstown...

 

I know Sunfire is being built in Mexico. Maybe since Cobalt is being built in Lordstown the Cavie can be built elsewhere.

 

I like how you said "flooded". That really goes to the root of the problem-- GM trying to sell more cars than what the market wishes to purchase. Many people have suggested that GM's true market share is around 25% or less, but because of excessive incentives and fleet sales, you prop it up to 27% or so. The cost of those extra couple of points of market share is that all of your customers suffer decreased residual values. So you apply a short-term band-aid: use older cars to flood the market instead. (Of course, this passes the burden on to the current owners of those unloved cars, but who cares, they're already on a payment plan.)

Except that it's a piece of crap. In my job I travel a lot, and meet people who travel a lot. I always ask them what kind of rental car they got and see what their impressions are. If they were unfortunate enough to get a Cavalier, or a Century, or a Malibu, or any other second-rate GM car, they'll usually screw up their face and proceed to tell me what crappy cars GM still makes. In most cases these are somewhat successful folks who have Mercs and Lexuses in their driveway and probably haven't owned a GM vehicle in their life. And if all they ever see of GM are these sad-sack rental cars, then nothing's going to change.

Wouldn't it be better if they rented a Cobalt instead of a Cavalier, then proceeded to be impressed with how good GM can make small cars nowadays? Then when little Ashleigh or Dakota needs a car to drive to junior high, they might actually consider stepping inside a GM showroom.

 

Few things I see wrong with Reds scenario (and I'll admit I'm not paid big bucks to come up with these things, so I may be using flawed logic):

1. This only temporarily and artificially boosts the resale & residual value of the new model. The new model WILL replace the old version in fleet sales when the old one is discontinued, in Lumina-Impala's case just 1 year.

2. The only benificiaries of this is GM leasing. The higher residual means GM looses less money when the cars are turned back in, an GM car resell the car at a higher price.

So instead of creating any real value to newer replacement models, it's a temporary value that will favor the leasing department.

GM's not the only one using this. Ford is bringing out the Five Hundred and soon after, the car formerly known as the Futura, both cars are replacing the Taurus. However, Ford is planning to continue production of the Taurus for a few years afterwards, primarily for fleet sales and the odd sale to customers (much like the current Crown Victoria). Where GM & Ford differ in this example is that Ford is designating a specific car for fleet sales while GM aparently is doing this only temporarily during model changeovers.

Chrysler is going to rename the Neon replacement, so there is at least the possibility that Chrysler may do the same thing.

 

The Cavalier is old, old, old, that's for sure and it certainly doesn't meet current standards for fit and finish or NVH, but I had a 2000 Z24 and never had a single problem with it. Not one in 3 years and 43,000 miles. My wife had a 2001 Malibu LS that, likewise, was completely trouble free and which has now been sold to my parents and is continuing, at least until today, to be 100% reliable. I don't think that either of these cars are poster children for stunning design, either inside or out, but reliablity is certainly important.

Those "crappy" Malibus don't spend near as much time in the shop as Mercedes do, according to quality surveys. Electrical gremlins, anyone? Mercedes actually announced this week they'll be decontenting the electrical doodads on their cars to improve a flagging reliability reputation. Buick Century, last time I checked, was also very high on the quality reports and ratings.

"Perceived" quality and "actual" quality are two different things. A beautiful, wood trimmed dash with quality grained plastics and a rich feel to all *****, controls, etc. is great, but if your Mercedes is sitting in the shop getting its electrical gremlins investigated, you're not enjoying it. I'd rather be staring at a black plastic, gray plastic Malibu dash driving down the road, personally.

You can't really fault Lexus on quality, that's for sure, but I should hope that a 60K plus LS400 is significantly better than a Malibu that was less than a third of the price. And I don't think it's really fair to judge the whole of GM by a rental Cavalier or Malibu (if you drive a Lexus you don't spring for the Caddy upgrade at the rental counter?), either. I doubt if someone rented a Toyota Echo in Orlando it would make them say "wow, this thing rules! I should really look into buying a Lexus!"

 

that new corvette is pretty damn bad ***... i think it has time for me to do some modding....