A friend went to trade his late model explorer for an echo. He was offered $100 for the trade. SUV's are going for at least $2000 under kelly blue book price now. That's obviously too high, because even at substantial discounts there are no buyers.

We need a new bumper sticker.

Dummies drive SUV's.

You would have to be brain dead to buy most of the cars the big three are offering.

Last week, I was told that my husband's 2002 Ford F150 extended cab truck (with all the bells and whistles and in nice condition) had ZERO value as a trade-in on a new car. The dealer suggested I donate it to charity.

MY bro has a 2000 Suburban that he would like to get rid of! Funny. I told him he can give it to me and i'll use it to haul wood. I'll cut off part of the roof so i can load it from the top. The heated leather seats can dry the wood as we fly down the highway getting 10mpg. He did have a good point, he said its probably worth more as scrap.

You could easily get a couple hundred scrap for a big truck. Take of the caddy converters for some more moolah.

In a less regulated country, there would be great uses for an SUV.

Dodge Durango V8 should be able to carry 1500 pounds and tow 5500.

5 pax in the SUV (consider it first class), and build a trailer with seating for 20.

Even getting 5 miles per gallon with the combo, you'd still be at 125 pax*miles/gallon... more efficient than (diesel-based) railroads have ever been.

It's just that very few people actually tax the resources of their truck.

I have a truck that only gets about 2500 miles a year on it. Fortunately, my driving record is flawless and I'm in a low-risk area, so it's cheap to keep it insured. Expect the insurance companies to start advertising ultra-low-mileage multi-vehicle plans more, as people keep their trucks and SUVs, but drive them less.

So they are being scrapped for scrap value ?

Canadian gov't is working on a plan to pay $1k or so for 1995 and earlier vehicles to scrap them, as long as they are road driveable and licenced and insured for the last year or so. BC provincial gov't already has a plan in place.

That must happen in the US too either through taxes or incentives.

lawnchair-

I totally agree. On the flip side, people drive automobiles that have WAY too much torque/hp then they need. I pull a 16ft boat/motor/trailer that totals around 1000pounds no problem with a car that has a little over 100 hp/same amt of torque. I'm sure i could easily tow 1200 or 1300 pounds if i wanted. This while still getting 20+mpg (roughly 25 or so when pulling the boat).

I would love to see a setup like that. You'd need a big trailer to haul a 100 people. Maybe put tall sides on it and make them stand. Be funny as hell to see in winter.

Great idea, I'd love to see it as well. Kind of a new-age people hauler. I bet cattle'd get a kick out of it: "Gee, it's nice to see them hauling off a load of people to the slaughterhouse for a change".

U.S. stocks fell sharply Thursday with the blue-chip index enduring its worst June so far since 1930, and plunging to its lowest finish since Sept. 11, 2006, after getting slammed hard as crude soared to new highs and Goldman Sachs disparaged U.S. brokers and advised selling General Motors Corp.


"We're going to move in the opposite direction of oil, and General Motors is going to go out of business, at least according to Goldman Sachs," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co.

Hawk-

I agree with you 100%, but if you don't have any money, how are you suppose to pay? A family member (through marriage) works for Chrysler here in WI. I haven't talked to him lately, but next time i'll have to see how things are. I know he was going to take a buyout or something last time i saw him. I know his wife works retail and i doubt has anything for retirement...i'm guessing both are counting on his.

If your an employee with a little common sense, i think the writing has been on the walls for a few years.

The worse part is the upper management clowns that still get paid gobs of money to destroy a company. Nothing new here in the land of the free, home of the brave.

Well, I recall hearing how Chrysler at least had fitured how to bring a vehicle from concption on the "drawing board" - actually a CAD screen - into physical production in like 2.5 - 3 years. I recall Lee Iacocca bragging about that way back int he late 80's. So, what we are seeing today as "new" was conceived about the time of Hurricane Katrina. With all their crackerjack economists and deft executive talent, you say they could not have foreseen peak oil? Hell, I knew about peak oil back in 2002 when the Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine had a long article about it, which I researched and came to see the light. I am just regular engineer, not a multi-million a year executive. So, how could I have seen it, and they did not?

They must have been asleep at the switch or something.

By the way, reading that article was maybe the best hour investment of my time ever. It has given me so much insight into market expectations. It has led me to put my limited investments into the right places and take a modest pool of savings into something to retire on.

Chrysler is an embarrassment right now, and on death's door. Walk into a Chrysler showroom today, and the most efficient vehicle they can show you (a Caliber) gets not a whit better gas mileage than a carbureted 1981 Aries K-Car. Except that the K-Car was actually a pretty roomy 5 passenger car (and was available as a wagon). The Caliber, not so much.

That's not to say they weren't making plans for an oil crunch. Five years ago, DaimlerChrysler expected that by today, every Dodge showroom in Podunk, Middle America would sell and warranty the Daimler Smart car, as well as a lineup of smaller captive imports from China (probably Chery Automotive).

Both those deals fell through, for many reasons, leaving Chrysler to sell the bigger vehicles (that they had planned to keep making in North America), and scrambling to put together some warmed-over crap in the car market. Had both deals succeeded, Chrysler (as a very different company) would be doing better than the rest right now.

The UAW wrecked the American auto companies slowly and steadily. Being in skilled trades i have worked in union shops and non union and i can tell you union guys are lazy,overpaid and have a "I deserve it attitude"

Autoworkers are overpaid and as Jeremiah Wright said "The chickens have come home to roost"

Combine that with the ridiculous laws and restrictions imposed on US companies and its a losing battle.

Deferred Karma payback finally?

1/ Big oil, big tire, and Detroit => conspired in the 1940/50s to destroy streetcar/tram system all across the U.S. There has been court case on this one, it's well documented.

2/ Big oil, CARB, Detroit and the bushevik junta killed the full EVs in the mid 90s - early 2000s. And yes it was ~$40k "luxury" low volume segment but with spillover potential on the entire fleet.

3/ Respiratory diseases, highway-concrete madness, suburbia, oil-spills, funding the ME feudal royal houses, during all those decades etc..

Detroit and oilly pals won't be missed at all..

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The Ford co. is the least evil of this bunch but only by a tiny notch,
so they might stay afloat the longest and/or reinvent themselves in some asian cross-ownership riksha type deal..
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PS to blame this hubris primarily on UAWs is just beyond stupid ridiculous, it's like blaming the two bushevik presidential terms on the voters, yes they have participated and later not mass rioted, but as the exit polls/election irregularity studies have clearly shown, the voters in majority did not vote for this gang..

Ok i will retract and say that the UAW played a huge, but not exclusive role in the demise of the big three.