Baseball..Hot Dogs..Apple Pie and Chevrolet

[jimbo1]

GM stock fell under $2.00 a share today.



Anybody remember when guys would get a 57 Chevy and fix it up? They would drag race with 'em on Saturday night. You could crawl in the engine compartment and work on them yourself.


We have screwed ourselves. We are witness to the passing of a genuine cultural icon.

Can we please do something about all this?

[Juxta5]

Yes, we need to raise our kids, nephews, nieces, grandchildren and the kid next door to care about things. American's have spoiled their kids to the point of obscene.

We will buy our kids some great new thing, the kids abuse it, it breaks and we turn around and buy them the next shiny new thing. That's bull$%#@ in my book. I couldn't care less about the Jones', I believe in oldfashioned standards. Spoiled kids never learn how to grow up.

When my daughter crashed her first car (it was used and she had to help buy it), my husband and I made her help us fix it. We decided to not make an insurance claim because her insurance was expensive enough. She purchased a replacement hood, bumper and radiator and she had to help us take the old one apart, hammer the body back into shape and install the parts. It didn't look too bad and it got her through three more years until she purchased her next car by herself. Needless to say, she really takes care of her car now.

I also refuse to purchase a cell phone for my youngest daughter. It makes me sick to see grade school aged kids with their own cell phone. To be fair, I guess it would not bother me so much if they had a small job that helped them pay for it. But lately I've seen adults doing the jobs that kids used to do, i.e. paper routes, baggers at grocery stores, dishwashers.

[Baphomet]

Well the days of drag racing on the streets without going to jail are gone. When I was a teenager I rebuild a few motors in my front yard. I didn't have an engine hoist, so I rigged some pulleys on the tree in the front yard and use it for a hoist. My last rebuild was a '68 Pontiac 350 block put into a '65 GTO. Full racing cam, high compression springs, milled heads (I didn't mill them myself), forged oversized piston, high rise manifold, cyclone headers, holly 750 double pumper carb, velocity stacks, 60 pound clutch, and the list goes on and on. The 350 was one of the lest desirable of the Pontiac engines, but I was able to sqeeze about 540 hp out of it and when all was said and done it would turn respectable 11s in a quarter.

These days I don't even change my own oil, and I drive all Jap cars. I lost interest in the automotive industry years ago (I'm in my 50's) and it does not bother me to see GM in trouble. Driving went from being a statement of freedom to being a statment of regulations and governmental control. It sucks.

As for kids these days, it is the parents who need the thrashing. My kids turned out better than I did. My youngest is only 17, has already graduated HS, has had a job since he was 16, is going to college, drives a brand new car which he pays for himself (though I had to take the loan out in my name because he's just 17), and is very responsible. He's got the best parents in the world.

[TonerMunkeh]

Troubled Chrysler and GM are to axe 50,000 jobs as they ask the government for more bail-out cash....

[fixthecopier]

My American hot rod was a 67 Super Sport Chevelle with a 396 block, 454 heads and crank, holley 780 double pump,ect, ect. I also drive only Honda. That is because I worked for the auto industry for almost 20 years so I can say with first hand knowledge that the big 3 taking a nose dive is thier own fault and the fault of the workers. Honda has standards that far excede everyone else.
The first time GKN automotive sent a shipment of "Ford Q1" parts to Toyota, they sent them back, calling them scrap compared to thier standards. Funny thing is, the entire quality system that made the Japanese auto industry what it is, was created by an American named Edward Demming. He tried to give it to the Americans, but was turned down, being told that they did not need it, they were the kings and ruled the auto world. That arogance led to them playing catch up for the last 3 decades and never getting caught up. It is sad for someone to be out of work, I guess they should have saved some of those big union wages. I think with benifits the average auto worker makes about $35 to $50 per hour. Good luck to them. I was non union and made less than half of that.
Oh yeah, The GKN plant I worked at had 2 plants and peaked at 1200 employees... It now has 1 plant and a little over 125 employees with the rest of the jobs gone to Mexico.

[jimbo1]

We shoot ourselves in the butt with all the over regulation.

That's why I'm such a blowhard here about getting the lawyers out of the government. You get lobbyists who get this stuff into legislation and then your stuck cause the courts ain't gonna strike down what they should but what they shouldn't.