We love our cars !

See attached article from the Wall St Journal , this group is living proof of the comments made therein .

Alan.
=============================================FrFre e Wheeling
Despite all the environmental talk, Americans still love their cars.

BY THOMAS J. BRAY
Tuesday, August 20, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
In recent days came fresh evidence, if any were needed, that the American love affair with the automobile is far from over.
Here in Michigan, it was the weekend of the "Woodward Dream Cruise," which began as a grassroots phenomenon and now attracts more than a million spectators. For two full days, Woodward Avenue, which cuts through Detroit's northwest suburbs, was choked with vintage cars driven mostly by aging baby-boomers reliving their days of chrome and roses. Whole towns along the route became display areas where owners could park their '55 Chevy Bel-Aires, '48 Studebakers, '66 Cobras and '38 Lincolns, pop the hoods, swap gearhead fantasies and otherwise pay unabashed homage to the car.

You might expect as much in Detroit, of course. But as The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Americans keep buying cars at a record pace and polling data shows high satisfaction with automobiles--the love affair remains strong nearly everywhere. The National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan Business School has just completed the auto portion of its annual survey of 65,000 consumers of products from 190 companies and 39 government agencies, which account for 30-40% of the gross domestic product. And despite what you hear about recalls, poor fit-and-finish and global warming, the consuming public actually appears happier with their cars than most other major products.
Autos scored 80 out of 100 on the survey's index of satisfaction, compared with 71 for personal computers and 68 for Internet portals. Nor is satisfaction with the auto just a passing phenomenon. The ranking for autos hasn't budged from its high level since the survey, based on methodology imported from a similar survey in Sweden, began in 1994. Moreover, the gap in satisfaction between American and foreign cars has all but vanished. Buick and Cadillac rank right up there with the Mercedes (and the venerable Hershey's bar) at 86 on the index.
That may come as a surprise to those who love to denigrate the American car as a mastodon put together by demoralized coke-heads in poorly managed American factories. In fact, American manufacturers have been steadily chipping away at the quality gap as well--even as the overall quality bar keeps rising at a robust pace of 6% a year. Of course, one of the things customers may like best about cars--their increasing affordability, thanks to both cutthroat competition and declining finance costs--is making it tougher than ever for auto companies to make a buck. But the findings on both car quality and customer satisfaction do demonstrate the point that competition works. Once it became clear to American autoworkers and managers that they wouldn't be allowed to hide behind tariffs, quotas and monetary protectionism, they went back to work and started producing products that people actually wanted. Even amidst talk of a double-dip recession, sales are running at a record pace of 18 million cars a year.

Oddly, many auto executives are persuaded that they are in the doghouse with the average American. William Clay Ford Jr., chairman and chief executive of Ford, is one of the leading pessimists. He told a recent conference of industry managers that his industry has fallen out of favor in America, as reflected in pressure from Washington and elsewhere for regulations that the industry views as irrational and unduly costly.
"The love affair with the auto industry has grown stale," said Mr. Ford. "In California, people used to write songs about T-birds and Corvettes. Today they write regulations."
But far from fighting back, Mr. Ford counsels accommodation--including a willingness "to discuss issues like global warming." He added: "The internal combustion engine is not going away, but there are legitimate alternatives we can spend money on, like hybrids and fuel cell technology. These kinds of technology could rejuvenate the love affair with the auto industry."
Well, maybe a sexy little hybrid that can go from zero to 60 in less than 10 seconds might eventually supplant the T-bird in the hearts of average Americans, but you might not want to stand on one foot waiting for it to happen. That's because the love affair with the automobile has never been as much about technology or even sex appeal as about freedom--the fact that the automobile liberated generations of Americans to travel where they wanted, when they wanted, at a price most could afford. A car tethered to a battery with a range of 80 miles and costing more than a struggling family wants to pay isn't the stuff on which dream cruises are built.
Auto companies should accept that they will never be able to out-Sierra the Sierra Club. But if they would take more notice of what's happening under their very noses at events like the Woodward Dream Cruise--as well as in surveys showing they continue to have high credibility with actual consumers, as opposed to environmental radicals, media elites and wool-gathering politicians--they might not feel so down in the dumps.
And by the way, Americans aren't likely to buy the notion that government bureaucrats should get into the business of designing cars. The National Quality Research Center shows that the index of "customer satisfaction" with federal agencies runs 10 points behind the auto industry--even after Sept. 11.

Mr. Bray is a staff columnist at the Detroit News. His OpinionJournal.com column appears Tuesdays.

[Mr. Pockets]

I saw some footage of that event over the weekend. Let me tell you this: Hundreds of old people sitting perfectly still, watching a stage re-enactment of the Ed Sullivan show, is one of the saddest sights ever. The impersonator was giving his character as much character as you can give Ed Sullivan. You know, really trying to play it up to build some sort of enthusiasm. But all these people are just sitting there staring like two year olds watching the Teletubbies. Just staring. It was creepy and bad and wrong.

[Aredubjay]

Originally posted by Mr. Pockets
I saw some footage of that event over the weekend. Let me tell you this: Hundreds of old people sitting perfectly still, watching a stage re-enactment of the Ed Sullivan show, is one of the saddest sights ever. The impersonator was giving his character as much character as you can give Ed Sullivan. You know, really trying to play it up to build some sort of enthusiasm. But all these people are just sitting there staring like two year olds watching the Teletubbies. Just staring. It was creepy and bad and wrong.

Is this what we'll be doing at Reading XXI?