Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Reno, Nevada

wow one car has problems and now lets blai it on the whole brand and line

I Purchased a New Subaru 2011 2.5x Ltd yesterday 5/5. MSRP-$28,013 Invoice-$26,160 Paid Invoice less $1300 or $24,860. Camelback Subaru in Phoenix delivered it to me (115 Miles) in Tucson. Lithia Subaru in Reno was also very Competitive with their Quote. Very few Foresters are available in Ca,NV,AZ.

Reno espace?

Suzuki's deep dive •The credit crunch of 2008 blew up the subprime market, the heart of Suzuki's business. •Poor vehicle quality squelched return business and created toxic word of mouth. •Dubious practices by some stores, such as "no payments for life" promotions, akin to real estate balloon mortgages, led to lawsuits and bad publicity. And the go-go marketing philosophy of stair-step incentives was hamstrung by a no-go auto market. A suit by a former high-volume dealer alleges that Suzuki pressured him to file phony sales reports to keep the bonus merry-go-round turning. •In a rush to add dealers, Suzuki added some used-car sellers who wanted the cachet of a new-car franchise to boost used-car sales but didn't work to build the Suzuki brand. •Suzuki's U.S. sales plunged to fewer than 24,000 units in 2010 -- a drop of more than three-quarters from 2007, when the brand sold 101,884 units here. •By the start of this year, Suzuki had 278 U.S. franchises -- down from 537 in 2007. Of Suzuki's 50 highest-volume stores in 2007, at least 35 are no longer in business. The fallout of high-volume stores is most telling. Most of Suzuki's growth had been fueled by a small group of dealers who owned most of the high-volume stores. Reliance on subprime financing and stair-step factory incentives ultimately forced nearly all of the brand's biggest dealerships to close. "What you're seeing is a brand that couldn't get market momentum, tried to get it and did everything that everybody else did -- but did it at the wrong time," Johnson says. Ties to GM Suzuki's expertise as a manufacturer of well-built small cars had made it a powerhouse in Japan and emerging markets, including India. But it lacked the larger cars preferred by U.S. customers. That made Suzuki's 30-year ties to General Motors central to increasing U.S. sales. In 2002, GM, Suzuki and Chinese automaker SAIC bought the assets of Korean automaker Daewoo out of bankruptcy. That seemed to give Suzuki what it needed for the United States: a source of larger cars. Suzuki launched the Forenza compact and Verona mid-sized car in 2003, followed by the Reno wagon in 2004. The cars immediately boosted Suzuki's volume. They accounted for about half of Suzuki's sales in 2004, 60 percent in 2005 and 2006 and 42 percent in 2007, according to the Automotive News Data Center. But the quality and reliability of the cars were subpar. Suzuki's 2004 models were ranked as the second-worst in the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Vehicle Dependability Study. Suzuki vehicles had 324 problems per 100 vehicles compared with the industry average of 216 problems. Akin acknowledges the "problematic" quality of the GM Daewoo-sourced Forenza, Reno and Verona. He adds that during his tenure Suzuki had all but phased out the vehicles. Jerry Goldstein, president of Five Star Suzuki in Altoona, Pa., and a former chairman of Suzuki's dealer council, says the GM Daewoo-sourced Suzukis generated an "unbelievable" number of warranty claims. Some came back with engine or transmission failures within a year. (From one former dealer): "If you could imagine the worst-managed company in the world, it would have had to have been Suzuki." "They OK'd the rebadging of inferior Korea-built products. They knew they were junk from day one. They were so set on getting to 200,000 units that people signed off on it." Koichi Suzuki denies that the brand promoted a subprime-focused business model. But dealers couldn't resist the prospect of big paydays from hitting stair-step targets. "More profits, more business ... it's tough to stay away from that," Koichi Suzuki says. Suzuki is at a turning point in the United States, by far the automaker's smallest major market. Its North American unit has posted operating losses for three straight years, and Suzuki Motor Corp. executives in Japan sound far from bullish. In a Feb. 7 conference call, Takao Hirosawa, senior operating officer of Suzuki Motor Corp., said: "Regarding the timing of return to the black in North America, we are making efforts to erase the minus, and in that sense, our vehicle business is getting considerably better. "The minus is disappearing. But we are not setting a clear target timing of when we will return to the black." http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110321/RETAIL07/303219964/1- - 117 Read the whole thing - it's even worse than those excerpts point out. It affirms what everyone has been saying, including me: what brought down the reliability ratings to put Suzuki in the CR cellar a few years back was the garbage coming out of GM/Daewoo with a Suzuki badge on it. That was the stupidest decision ever made by an auto exec anywhere, and there really should be a price to pay for it beyond the dumping of those executives. 2 years left, maybe 3, for Suzuki in North America?

Hi Fintail, I'm still alive and kicking, just have been busy. Yeah this Benz was running rough but driveable. Do you still have your E55? I picked up an 07 328i for my wife just recently. Never had a BMW before and it's pretty nice sports sedan. Love the handling in it. Btw, are you gonna come out to see the Auto sHow here? They moved in to our new convention centre this year because of renos at BC Place. Let me know!