No help or wrong help for Detroit?

Uh, when you pay cash, no loan is involved. But I have a lot of cars, some
have older loans on them, others don't.

 

Hot wheels, heh heh, good one. Nah, I'm a benz enthusiast. But some of
those older hot wheels are worth a good deal of money now.

 

Geo metro..oh, boy, ed, what a dig. I feel so hurt. How about this--you
keep your childish remarks to yourself, can you do that? Probably
not...we'll see...

 

The problem with Car and Driver, MotorTrend, and others, is that they get
the cars they test from the manufacturer, so the units are gone over
thoroughly by the manufacturer before they are delivered for testing. When
Consumer Reports gets a car, they buy it as you would, from a dealer,
without letting on who they are. They then start their revue of the car
with how good a deal they got from the dealer, then how many sample defects
they noted in the cars, such as loose trim or loose control knobs, missing
parts, that sort of thing. (You can already see how there is a significant
difference between a unit from Car and Driver and Consumer Reports). I
might also add that Consumer Reports actually buys the car, rather than have
it loaned to them as is the case of the other mags, so after driving it for
a period of time, what they call long-term testing, they then sell it and
record the problems and depreciation as well.

I've subscribed to Car and Driver as well and like the mag, but they have a
definite bias built in. They accept advertising, so they have to be careful
of just how critical they are of certain companies. The cars they get are
loaned instead of bought, and are the best examples of that model,
obviously. Consumer Reports also has a fairly new facility that they built,
I forget exactly where, just for testing automobiles. They spent quite a
few millions to build this, and they have the most comprehensive testing for
cars of anyone on the planet. One can visit this site, too. They have
tours. My father went there and was very impressed.

 

It's called random sampling.

 

I think of Capital One as a credit card company, and I fired them years ago,
for unsavory practices. I wouldn't recommend them to anybody.

Again, they have no bias, except to show the best possible product under the
best possible testing. If a product is worse than another, they will point
that out. This is good for the consumer, and if you just think it through
for a moment, you will realize that their whole business is built upon
credibility of absolutely fair testing. They lose that, they would lose
everything. There simply is no bias because there isn't a reason for there
to be. Just think it through.

Here you are wrong. They hire many people from all walks of life and some
of the best statisticians work there. It's what they do. As for their
repair surveys, I just got one in the mail the other day. It's a rather
lengthy questionaire and covers a lot. These are given back to CU and goes
into their records. Are you suggesting that I am biased and would lie on
the survey? For what reason? Why would anyone lie? And if 100,00 people
said that a particular cars transmission failed after 100 miles, would you
go out and buy that car? You really are insulting to the many car drivers
out here. We may not all be mechanics, but we are aware when something
breaks or doesn't work.

The best car on the planet right now is the Lexus. It sounds as though the
only biased person here is you. You don't like what you are hearing, so you
try to argue it. Facts are facts, though, and your whining won't change
them.

 

Why? Lots of valid scientific measurements don't yield exactly the
same result every time. In fact, more than a few cheaters have gotten
caught when people became suspicious because the data was *too* good.
Noise is a fact of life.

It seems like, if the engines were different there might have been a
lot of differences. But if you want to name two (or more) identical
models in a specific year, I can look up the reliability records and
see how similar they are.

Like I said, that is the "bias" which cannot be eliminated by any
survey. The interesting thing to do is look at what effect different
demographics have and think about what that means. For example, look
at brake reliability on the "twins". Civics are much better than
average across the model years. Integra/RSX is only better than
average. Does that mean that Integras had worse brakes than Civics?
No, they were the same or better but the Integra drivers used them
harder.

The differences between Corollas and Novas is even easier to explain.
While all Novas were built at NUMMI, only a fraction of Corollas were.
The rest were built in a different factory with different workers
using different suppliers and/or different supply lines. That said,
look at the records.

If you start from the assumption that all cars are the same and that
the CR survey is only seeing noise. This is our null hypothesis.
Let's look at points of difference between 1988 models for Nova,
Corolla, Civic and Cavalier after five years of use (reported 4/93 in
CR). To refute the null hypothesis we need to show that twins are
more closely related to their biological siblings than their adoptive
parents.


Looking for point by point differences and net score (better = "+",
worse = "-") between the Nova and the others we find:

'88 # net
Car diff diff

Nova 0 0 Standard = 0 by def

Corolla 4 0 So Nova is actually better
so much for anti-US bias

Civic 8 -4 More similar to Nova than
we might expect

Cavalier 16 -16 Ouch.



Comparing now with Corolla as standard:

'88 # net
Car diff diff

Corolla 0 0 Standard

Nova 4 0

Civic 6 -4

Cavalier 16 -16 Ouch.


And now with Civic as standard:

'88 # net
Car diff diff

Civic 0 0 Standard

Corolla 6 +4

Nova 8 +4

Cavalier 16 -12 Ouch.




Conclusions:

1. We would group these cars with Corolla, Nova and possibly Civic in
one group and the Cav in a different group. We would have to conclude
that Nova is mis-classified as Automobilis Americannis Chevius and
more likely belongs to Automobilis Japanus.

2. The CR survey can clearly distinguish late 1980s Japanese
engineering from late 1980s American engineering and seems to be able
to distinguish among the very reliable Japanese cars. It would be
more likely to be able to distinguish among American cars due to
greater numbers of distinguishing defects.

The null hypothesis is refuted. There are differences among cars and
CR can find them.

Could be. All this has to be kept in perspective by the knowledge
that Pontiac reliability is much closer to Buick than it is to Honda
or Toyota.

Explain how that would work? Keep in mind that in some specific
instances, a Japanese model/system is clearly less reliable than the
comparable American item.

 

Another way would be for a corporate officer to hit the stockholder
over the head and take his wallet at he leaves the annual meeting, but
I wouldn't call it a loan.

 

Heeheehee he says this after learning! LOL! LOL lol

 

Ahhh Ha! So you're saying the means/method is determinative?
Nonetheless the effects are similar (e.g., you get to use someone
else's money for a time). LOL!

 

wolf(vicious) puppy (slobber) wrote:
The whinning loon from Sin-City rants and raves as though he/she/it had
something to post. Go run with the German Shepards, or do they abandon
you too?

 

Good, you finally came to realize that selling stock isn't the same
thing as taking out a loan.

Matt

 

Never denied that there are multiple ways for a company to get their
hands on cash. One is selling an equity position in the company,
another is selling bonds, others are to take out more conventional
loans, etc., but each is different and it simply wasn't correct when you
said that stock and loans were the same thing.


Matt

 

Not in the case of a gift, but generally I agree. If what you expect
to get back is the amount of money you gave them plus a specified
amount of interest, then it is called a loan.

Right. What you won't get back is the money you paid plus a defined
amount of interest because then it would be a loan. Words have
meanings. Purchasing stock, whether newly issued or on the secondary
market does not fit the definition of a loan.

And neither one is a loan.

 

Then you would be wrong.

 

But they are accounted for on opposite sides of the balance sheet. The loan
is a capital expense, which when paid off becomes an asset. While the lease
is an operating expense, and when done, you have no asset to show for the
expense. Makes a very big difference come tax time, and facing the
investors.

Saying there's not much difference is how you end up doing time. Well,
taking it comepletely off the books is how you end up doing time like Andy
Fastow.

Doug

 

You're not supposed to eat the card! <G>

Regardless of how you think of them, they make car loans of a type you
said no one was making.

Everyone has bias.