Frosty

A "hold ma' beer! Watch this !!!" moment? I'll bring the popcorn.

We can still agree to call it patina.

Still no launch. https://www.sciencealert.com/this-flat-earther-has-failed-to-launch-his-rocket-again-and-now-we-re-kinda-sorry-for-him

Anyone, besides me, going ?

True that. Rust is now called patina. So a "patina" car sitting next two non-"patina" cars might as well be invisible or in stealth mode.

Funny story about Mike Rowe. He explains what happens in his own words. What makes this weirder for me is that the twins are related on my wife's side of the family. Now imagine going to the family reunion and having them show up.....<sigh>.

Interesting point Ringo. I grew up in Flint, Michigan in the 60s and 70s. That was the peak of the US auto industry. In those days, as a high school graduate you had a choice. You could go to college, get a degree, and get a salary job at GM. Or you could go to work in the shop, join the UAW, and possibly get into skilled trades and start making really good money right away. Both choices were considered equally acceptable to the community. My how times have changed. After about 1985, getting into the shop was difficult since GM simply was not hiring union workers anymore. There were enough closing factories and "bump" privileges that GM just brought employees in from local plants that were closing. Salaried then became about the only way to get into GM. One celebrity that is campaigning for blue collar jobs and vocational school training to Congress is Mike Rowe, from "Dirty Job".

Wow! It's amazing how much we think alike. It must be because we are "old school", non-millennials, whatever. I applaud Two Lane for bring up the lack of skilled trades these days. Damn few men and women are going into these hardcore technical fields because, as a society, we seemed to have ridiculed or thumbed our collective noses at blue collar work. It's not as glamorous or they shouldn't be paid the same as white collar work. It's dirty work. It requires weekend and evening work, not 9-5. Whatever. Long term, we will pay the price for that lack of vision, for sure. It started with pagers and now it's cell phones. These modern conveniences are still huge source of interruption - as long as we permit them to be. If work rules are made such that personal phones must be on vibrate or turned off during core working hours. Emergency calls must come into the main office, etc. Then modern workers might learn a tad bit of moderation. The workers of today have very little attention span unless it is something they really want to do Two Lane. I've noticed that with my own son. With all the video games, TV shows and movies at his disposal, he'd rather watch YouTube videos. He is easily bored. Outside of playing baseball, he has very little interest in anything else. So the lack of attention seems to be a collective generational thing, not something you are doing wrong. Last Indian, while in spirit I agree with you. GM should have never let the government axe Pontiac. However, car czar Steve Rattner was a financial adviser and a bully for the Obama administration. He was wielding a $82B bailout stick. He made GM and Chrysler jump through hoops to cut costs dramatically, arrange for them to quickly go thru bankruptcy. He also bullied GM and Chrysler's creditors to accepting the bankruptcy deal. SO he played both sides of the fence. They say the sign of a good compromise is when no one is very happy with the deal. I truly believe Bob Lutz had the right vision for Pontiac, turning it into a niche performance brand. The two decades of mismanagement before it, the lack of overall "brand" profitability and then GM's lack of vision and cash to adequately market the models that it had at the time ultimately doomed Pontiac. The one remaining question I would like answered is why wasn't Pontiac put up for sale like Hummer, Saturn, and Saab? There was someone who was interested in buying it but GM never considered it. I'd like to know why. My working theory is Hummer, Saturn, and Saab were not as vertically integrated into GM as Pontiac was. Hummer, Saturn, and Saab were more easily separated from GM than Pontiac and GM didn't want to be bothered with the effort it would take to separate Pontiac from Chevrolet and Buick at each and every platform and assembly plant that was shared. That's my guess anyway. Lastly, I agree with you regarding the learning from history and being "the arsenal for democracy". We have to learn. Our child and grandchildren have to learn too.

I did not forget about Australia. If GM Korea folds, then China and Thailand (Rayong) will be the only Asian factories left. Obviously Mary Barra is willing to sell or cut brands that aren't performing profitably. Something many of her predecessors weren't willing to do, feeling GM (as a global company) needed to have a presence in every market, even it was at a long-term loss. Daewoo, as a brand, could be the next casualty. Opel and Vauhall are gone. Holden, as brand, still exists even though the vehicles are made elsewhere now.

A couple of kudos 31pontiac. 1. I really appreciate the fact that you had to pie cut the doors a tad to make the chop work and make everything fit. Most folks don't think of pie-cutting the doors until they have to do it. It is not something you see photographed or talked about it most of the write-ups. I've seen Gene Winfield do it since he chops the top of a car every year at the Detroit Autorama. 2. Re-purposing a 2-speed chrome shifter to work with a 3-speed tranny. That is what hot rodding is all about. I will have to remember this particular trick.

Interesting article. Now that GM has exited Europe, Russia, South Africa and India, it would appear that South Korean operations, GM Daewoo, need to shape up or else. Should GM exit South Korea, that means the GM will only be operating in North America, South America, and China. South American operations are still crippled thanks largely to Venezuela seizing the plants there and economic downturns in Brazil and Argentina. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-06/gm-puts-korea-on-notice-after-exiting-russia-europe-and-india

Quite a clever idea and it re-purposes an older phone that you would probably try to sell or dispose of otherwise.

Since both the third and second rows fold down in the Traverse (and Enclave), it can be a handy hauler of stuff too. Since I don't own my Avalanche anymore, the Traverse can pack more stuff than my Envoy can. The Envoy is shorter length wise and only has a folding second row.

With all the baseball games we've gone to with Jacob, and all the crap we've needed to haul along with it. along with my in-laws The third row of seating has been truly useful.

I saw the Lincoln Navigator at the NAIAS. Impressive - including the price. Still I might consider it as a luxury SUV. The wife was a courtesy driver at the last Buick Open at Warwick Hills Country Club and drove the original Enclave and she fell in love with it. It's probably why she got the Traverse (we got a helluva deal from our ex-brother-in-law on it and it's the same platform). She still wants the Enclave though at some point.

You are quite right there my friend. Every time I leave my dad's house I hug and kiss him and tell him I love him. He does the same. So I know if he died peacefully in his sleep, I would be at peace with that, knowing that the last thing we said to each other was how much we loved each other.

Yup, exactly. Half the people were walking around wearing surgical / breathing masks too.

I have a couple of ideas. 1. Check your owners manual and find out which fuse controls the radio. Write down all your radio station settings (AM/FM/XM if necessary). Pull the fuse and leave it out for about 30 seconds. Put it back and try ejecting the CD. This for an electrical reset of the radio and it will probably force you to manually re-enter the time and radio stations. 2. Get a clean putty knife and put two-side adhesive tape on it and carefully reach in and stick the tape onto the stuck CD and hit the eject button.\ BTW - if the clock isn't displaying, how do you know the radio has power? If you turn it to the radio, does it show the station or light up at all? If not, checking the fuse may indicate a blow fuse - which would explain a lot of things.

At the time I went, I was working at the Flint V6 Engineering Center. We were sending guys to China left and right because China had a 3.0 liter max. displacement limit on automobiles built or imported into China. So we were designing a de-stroked and de-bored Buick V6 3800 engine for the China market. The 3.0L limit was due, in part, to China's extensive smog problem. If you were in Beijing, you might remember the orange haze sky.

Yeah, I am old enough to remember the AMC Pacer and the VW Thing. Last Indian., I don't disagree with you on points one and three. While I will admit that the Chinese have and always will try to stick it to every foreign investor, Buick is a highly revered automobile name in Chinese society, more than Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz combined. Owning a Buick in China is a sign of social prestige. I visited China in 2000. GM had just started selling the Buick GS over there (a Buick Regal in the States at the time). Most of them were black and chauffeur driven. The first three cars in China were 1912 Buicks. One was given to the Emperor (it still resides in the Forbidden City), one to the Prime Minister, and one to a prominent doctor. Further, back in the 1930s, the U.S. had Marines stationed in China before the outbreak of WWII. These "China" Marines had Buick and Lincoln staff cars for the officers to drive around in. China has a long societal memory, so a car that was good enough for the emperor, the prime minster and these officers,. it must be truly exception vehicles and worth owning. So GM was definitely trying to open a new market for sales and profits in China (the world's largest economy) and Asia as a whole with Buick. Clearly that is what saved Buick when the axe fell on Pontiac in 2008. If GM axed Buick at home, it would have damagex its reputation in China as well. Today, more Buick's are sold in China than in North America. Hard to believe that David Dunbar Buick died nearly penniless too. I find your comment about the rise of the services industry interesting. If manufacturing is so horrible, why does virtually every other country on the planet (except the USA) want it if it is so bad? The answer is it isn't bad, it creates 10 jobs for every 1 manufacturing job. We've been blinded by greed, social activism, environmental activism, automation, bad trade laws, currency manipulation, and unrealistic federal and state mandates that have driven jobs from this country. For some reason, people expect if the US does something (this stupid), others will do the same. Guess what - they didn't. So all that leaves is service jobs. Well guess what? Most service jobs can be leveraged from virtually anywhere on the globe unless there is a citizenship or location mandate on the position. Now you are seeing the rise in global outsourcing to places like India, Singapore, the Philippines, etc. for those remaining service jobs. So what's left? Not much . Construction. Finance (to a point). Government (federal, state, and local levels). Energy (oil, gas, wind, solar). Retail - although it is dying a slow death thanks to the likes of Amazon and e-commerce in general. This is time where new jobs have to be created, either thru the creation of new industries, or resurrection/transformation of old ones. Sadly, I am not seeing much on the foreseeable horizon. I fear that our children and grandchildren will have a lower standard of living that we do.

Why? She should be use to you going around topless by now? Or is she afraid you are going to frighten the hired help again?

Aloha Bob. A friend of mine went through the same thing with his mother. I can't imagine what its like to watch your parents forget virtually everything - even who their own children are. While my father is 90 and does not have this disease, he still has some level of dementia. It is still hard to watch a brilliant man and engineer degenerate before your eyes. A man who has seven patents to his name, was in aviation, rocket science, and automotive engineering, now sits and watch TV all day. There are some days I just want to sit down and cry.

While the angry dumpster on wheels gets a lot of the blame, it was a symptom of Pontiac's demise, not the cause. Decades of mismanagement and bland styling and "brand engineering" are the ultimate cause of Pontiac's demise. The Aztek was a risk Pontiac took (in styling) to help differentiate itself from the pack. It's easy to criticize it but honestly, it worked, people remember it - good or bad. I agree that GM failed to market any of these cars properly. Expecting the GTO to sell well when production was extraordinarily limited to around 13,000-16,000 units a year by the Monaro specialty line is something people often forget. The resurrected GTO died when the Monaro was due for a re-design. Solstice and G8 were the right cars at the wrong time. GM spent virtually no money marketing these cars (as it barely marketed the GTO) since they were nearly out of cash at the time.

You got to love free parts when you can get them.

Thanks for the support bud! Excellent additional points too.