<VV>GM cars and gas mileage- little Corvair

[Padgett]

>I bought an '04 Cavalier almost
>2 years ago.  Since Katrina and the gas price jump, I've slowed down on my
>drive to work and am getting over 34 mpg for combined city and (mostly)
>highway driving.  It is a LOT bigger car than the Aveo, which I might have
>considered had it been available (or I had known about it).  Can't imagine
>the Cobalt gets worse mileage.

This is the size creep I was talking about. The original metro had a 3 
cyl  1.0 liter (61.5 cid) engine. Most wore out in 30,000 miles which is 
why they are not seen often. Like the Aveo, Pontiac had a Canada-only 
version called the Firefly.
Later cars replaced the 3 cyl Suzuki with a 1.3 liter 4 cyl which I believe 
was from Toyota. Today the smallest GM engine sold in the USA is the 1.6 
liter Daewoo in the Aveo. Today GM has *nothing* competitive in the submini 
class. Even Saturns are now big.

>  The automotive section of the local paper
>wrote up the Aveo yesterday and gave it good marks.

They know who pays for the ads.

>In order to get all the bells & whistles, like CD player,  power locks & 
>windows, etc you have to
>buy the high-end LT.

And depreciation is based on the MSRP of the loss leader. While they bill 
the Aveo as $9995, by the time you get to the LT and even as a year old 
model that sat on a lot for 8 months, they want $14k "employee price" which 
means a bunch of depreciation the minute you drive off the lot.  OTOH a 
2006 Scion XA fully equipped  with 1.5 l engine that gets over 30 mpg both 
city and highway is less than a grand more if you know what to say and 
depreciates very little. What is wrong with this picture ?

If Chrysler could bring the Smart Car in today, they would sell a ton. But 
they won't.

Padgett