re: Buick and GMC to make Onstar mandatory service you must pay for

quote:

---

Odd just a couple weeks ago a good friend was telling me that at some point new vehicles would have tracking devices mandatory installed similar to the way 18 wheelers are tracked. I thought he was being paranoid.

---

It will not come from the manufacturers, it will become mandatory will all car insurances. Right now they offer the tracker that can see your driving habits and give you discounts. They will turn it into forced on all policies and penalties for speeding, etc.

quote:

---

I think Buick was seen as a nice brand, one notch below Cadillac, that appealed to old people. The internal competitor for Buick was Oldsmobile.

Pontiac’s internal competitor was Chevrolet. And the Chevrolet nameplate will never go away.

---

Correct. And there is still a gulf between the mission and focus of Buick and Cadillac, while there are huge overlaps between Chevrolet and Pontiac.

And Buick buyers tend to also be pretty well off (likely because they are older), very loyal, often pay cash, and enlist Buick service departments to take care of their cars. Buick is stodgy and stuffy as a brand, but they have a history of acing their reliability, safety, and customer satisfaction scores. They are noted in the "Millionaire Next Door" book that I like to recommend to young people because a lot of Buick owners are low key rich.

Pontiac buyers, by contrast, were basically the type of people who buy Nissans today. They have a different philosophy on maintenance - if it's done at all, it's not done at a dealership. They tend to be driven harder and bought by far less affluent people with much more risky financing. And keep in mind that the 2008-2012 recession was fueled by credit markets being nearly frozen.

Ditching Pontiac makes sense given the condition of that brand at the time. What doesn't make sense to me was keeping Buick only to mismanage the brand entirely since then - or ditching Saturn despite the brand attracting an audience that American car companies have struggled to sell cars to.

It's for your own good.

quote:

---

How did Buick survive when Pontiac didn't?

---

GM makes a ton of money in China selling Buicks. It is considered an aspirational brand over there.

In terms of Pontiac --- GM very much wanted to keep the Pontiac brand alive coming out of bankruptcy, so that when the market rebounded it would still be around to push mid-market volume. The government's auto task force, led by Steven Rattner, shut that idea down, and Pontiac became the final casualty before GM emerged out of bankruptcy.

As far as mandatory Onstar goes -- everyone is benchmarking Tesla right now, as it is considered the darling of the auto industry. Subscription based revenue produces a nice steady stream of cash for Tesla, and I think you will see other automakers looking for ways to do the same. Plus, with demand far exceeding supply, automakers are able to get away with almost anything right now. We will see how long that lasts.

Apropos of nothing, I like your sig pic a whole lot.
Have you heard of the similar "clear them out" strategy by best-selling author Neema Parvini?

quote:

---

sirius radio.

---

Here's a clue. I live in a state where there are parts so remote that there isn't radio reception much less cell coverage. In thosr caes,I could care less about compression.

I know it's a hard concept for those that live east of the Mississippi to grasp, but it's true.

quote:

---

Onstar

---

quote:

---

between $905 and $1,675

---

My arse

quote:

---

OnStar is still around? … and people use it?

---

When I’m in California I would keep a subscription, I would head up in the mountains to Lake Tahoe when I had the chance, especially on days it was snowing. I would see wrecks most every time so just a press of a button to report it and get them help.

quote:

---

Odd just a couple weeks ago a good friend was telling me that at some point new vehicles would have tracking devices mandatory installed similar to the way 18 wheelers are tracked. I thought he was being paranoid.

---

Many cars made now ALREADY have it. The word you're looking for on the sticker is "telematics".

quote:

---

Last Friday we get an email stating they were excited to participate in an energy saving program and all of our houses would now only cool down to 72 degrees at the lowest. They didn’t need to come in our houses to update, they could do it from street side sending a signal to our snazzy new thermostats.

---

Well, you just need to go to the thermostat and wrap it up real good with a heating pad or get yourself a heat trace cable you can set to 75 or 80 and wrap it around the thermostat. Defeat that shite and if it gets too cold, open a window. That, or swap out the thermostat with your own, though they'll know about that because the thermostat won't respond when they drive by