Cars, Cars, and American Cars??!!

Well the unthinkable happened this last week, Toyota's Lexus brand was supplanted, and done so badly by the tadem of GM (Buick and Cadillac) and BMW over taking the reigning japanese brand in the area of Customer Satisfaction, which is actually saying alot given the great distain for BMW's I-Drive system. But bigger than that is the recent improvements in quality ratings for two of Detroit's Big Three, GM and Ford. Where as GM of late has seen profitable improvements through cost reduction going so far as to eliminate an entire brand (Oldsmobile) as seen improvements in it's Mechanical quality. This would prove beneficial for GM if they will now match that with quality material and workmanship on the interiors. Even in the Cadillac brands are cheap vinyl plastics found in abundance. Ford in the flip side has still stuggled in reaching a profit while as seeing vast improvements in both material quality and mechanical workmanship seen most dominately in the Focus and 500/Taurus sedans as well as their Lincoln/Mercury clones. That being said, Ford as waited till the 2008 Model year to place a sufficient engine in it's mide sized/full sized sedans. The previous 500, now renamed Taurus will see a nearly 65 HP increase from the '07 to '08 Models years as the Taurus is now presenting a comparable engine option against the Japanese offerings. Of course, this is still behind the trends as Toyota is offering a 270HP+ variant of the 300+HP V-6 found in the Lexus GS and IS models and Honda is rumored to looking at a 300HP V-6 for the newly re-designed Accord line set for launch this Fall (And it looks REALLY sharp too!!) Speaking of Honda, the focus on the new Accord has allowed another redesign (a little bit) to slide under the radar, that being the S2000 CR, a more powerful version of the already nimble S2000 roadster. This car will be fast, and ever more fun than it's base version!!!