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Townsend, DE Car Consumer Discussions

Re: New Fit in Alabama [danielbrian142]

by cassadcj on Thu Jun 18 21:38:16 PDT 2009

I bought from Townsend Honda in Tuscaloosa, AL.

2009 Honda CRV EX-L FWD (No Navigation)

by twestbrook on Sun Apr 19 20:26:43 PDT 2009

On April 18, 2009, I purchased a 2009 Honda CRV EX-L FWD without Navigation. Since my purchase experience was aided by posts within this forum, I decided to take time to record my buying experience for the benefit of others who may visit this forum. I live in Jackson, MS and obtained email and telephone quotes from 11 dealers within 200 miles of Jackson - Wolfchase Honda in Memphis, Covington Honda outside New Orleans, Treadwell Honda in Mobile, Tameron Honda in Birmingham, Townsend Honda in Tuscaloosa, Richards Honda in Baton Rouge plus 5 MS dealerships. Covington Honda and Treadwell Honda had the best initial prices, quoting 23,997 and 24,000 respectively, which included the vehicle, destination and doc/dealer fees. Ultimately, a local Jackson dealership quoted me 23,951 including dealer installed wheel locks and F/R mud guards. The only other added costs were MS sales tax of 5% + 5 title fee and 5 inspection sticker. The dealer still made a little money, based on what I believe to be the underlying costs: Edmunds Dealer Cost of 24,899 minus 500 Honda Marketing Assistance minus 521 Dealer Holdback (2% of MSRP w/o destination) = 23,878 real cost versus 23,951 paid. The suggestion elsewhere in this forum to contact multiple dealers is a good idea. Ony two of the 11 dealers initially quoted "skinny deals" as they apparently call them in the car trade. Good luck on your purchase!

Car&Driver editorial

by vcheng on Fri Mar 13 06:31:34 PDT 2009

Here is a recent editorial from the April 2009 Car And Driver by Patrick Bedard: from: http://www.escortradar.com/recent-articles/CandD-Apr-2009-P_Bedard.pdf GIVE US THE DOUGH, AND NOBODY GETS HURT Question: Photo enforcement of traffic laws is about (choose one): A) spreading Kodak moments across the land; B) making highways safer; or C) the money? The correct answer is C, and all the arguments for B were knocked into the arroyo by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano last winter when the spendy Democrat discovered a $90 million gap in her new budget. Question: To close the gap, did she: A) sell a load of the state's distinctive, arms-up saguaro cactuses to California landscapers; B) pass the hat to wintering Canadians who were freeloading on Sonora Desert sunshine; or C) crank up a program to bolt down 60 robot speed traps along state highways and pour in another 40 radar vans to work as mobile ambushes? Again, the correct answer Is C. Back in Arizona's analog days of sweaty horses and dusty trails, men with guns would hide behind rocks, and when the stagecoach came along, they jumped out and demanded money. This was called highway robbery. Now the state installs robots with radar guns along roads. In this digital era, no horses are abused and no men jump out. The demand for $165 plus costs comes in the mail. And It's no longer called highway robbery. Now it's "balancing the budget". The pretense of safety here was never more than a thin veneer. In fact, the photo-enforcement package passed the Arizona legislature as part of a $9.9 billion budget bill. Napolitano's $90 million deficit zoomed to $165 million as 2008 progressed, and she zoomed the ticket program up to match. Harvest time in the field of robot revenue-raising started last autumn. In the first two months of operation, 40,401 tickets were mailed out, enough to bring in $6.7 million If everybody pays up. They won't, of course, but not because the cash-strapped legislators neglected to grease up the money machine. Item No. 1 of the grease job: no points on your license. Just hand over the dough, and nobody gets hurt. This gambit was promoted by American Traffic Solutions, one of the private"scamera" contractors, on the notion that it might improve the program's odds of political survival. The voters might not kick up a fuss if one check made the problem go away forever. However, a huge groan went up from insurance companies and their toadies in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. They've been plumping for phototickets for years and, according to press reports, spending millions in advocacy, expecting that the points would give them an excuse to jack up premiums. Grease-job item No. 2: Instead of being a criminal citation, photo tickets were downgraded to civil offenses. That tweak conveniently side steps the legal requirement in criminal cases to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. For a civil case, the state need only show that guilt was "likely". This is a great productivity enhancer because the vendor can eliminate the second camera, the one used to show the driver's face. It's likely be the vehicle owner who was driving, so he gets the ticket. Eliminating the messy due-process guarantees baked into criminal citations was expected to jack up the take by 40 percent for both the camera vendor and the state. Grease-job Item No. 3: The law dictating the attachment and display of license plates was amended to ban any frame or detail that obscures the name of the state at the top of the plate. It applies to Arizona registrations only, with fines ranging from $110to $200, and it is a primary-enforcement offense, which means that it's grounds for a bust. You don't suppose that has anything to do with easing plate recognition in photos, do you? The natives are growing restless. "At least a half-dozen speed cameras have been temporarily taken out of service by ordinary citizens using nothing more than Post-It notes and Silly String," reports theNewspaper.com. It doesn't take much to obscure the lens. This protest is wryly described as "Sticking It to the Man" by a grassroots opposition group calling itself CameraFRAUD.com. A huffy Lt. James Warriner of the Arizona Department of Public Safety says the culprits could be nailed for obstruction of government operations, criminal damage, or Interfering with official traffic-control devices, Incurring penalties up to six months in the slammer and/or $2500 in fines. No Silly String for Travis Munroe Townsend, 26, of Glendale, Arizona. Early in December, a sickle cop hiding under a Loop101 overpass at about midnight heard a loud clanking noise. "The officer then observed a man wielding a large pickax" at a traffic-camera Installation. "Any type of tampering with a photo-enforcement site can result in extremely serious, life-changing charges being filed against a person," said DPS director Roger Vanderpool. Townsend was booked on a Class 4 felony and could face three years In the big house, plus a fine as high as$150,000. More likely to bring the cameras down is the lawsuit by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, which contends that the camera program is unconstitutional because it didn't pass the legislature by the two-thirds majority required for all tax increases. Meantime, spendy Governor Napolitano is ducking out of her budget woesand heading to Washington as the president's new chief of Homeland Security. That's Washington, D.C., where a two-thirds majority has never been required to spray taxpayer money around.

Re: dino [marsha7]

by dallasdude1 on Sat Feb 21 19:52:15 PST 2009

Employees knew that Hastings Manufacturing Co., a family-owned auto-parts supplier 30 miles south of Grand Rapids, Mich., was in deep water. Facing financial pressure, 375 employees--two-thirds of whom were in the United Auto Workers' (UAW) bargaining unit-conceded $1 million in benefits to save their company, relinquishing newly negotiated pay raises and agreeing to cover part of their own health care costs. But according to UAW Local 138 Chief Steward Kim Townsend, who testified before the House Commercial and Administrative Law subcommittee in September, when Hastings' management declared bankruptcy and was taken over by the private equity firm Anderson Group in December 2005, the slicing didn't stop there. Sick days were cut in half, an existing two-tier wage system with a top rate of $13.49 an hour was maintained and the allotment for bargaining time was limited to two hours a month on company time. For retirees, the consequences were more dire, with pensions and health care coverage all but severed. To market analysts, Hastings appears more profitable today. But its value stems not from innovation but from breaking obligations to the company's employees and retirees. "We make the same products," Townsend said at the hearing, "in the same building, with the same equipment, for the same customers as we did before the asset sale." And as if the plethora of these kind of stories are not bad enough, a tax loophole, one that both Democrats and Republicans alike appear loathe to do anything about, allows these fund managers to declare their profits from these takeovers as capital gains. This means their income is taxed at the 15% capital gains rate instead of the 35% rate appropriate for this kind of obsene economic gain. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you're paying more in taxes than a hedge fund manager who made a cool billion last year. Big name firms such as Cerberus Capital Management, The Carlysle Group, The Blackstone Group and Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR) take advantage of this loophole with stunning success. How's that for fair? So what are the economic consequences of this kind of behavior for our nation? Well, it's that we start to resemble the very Developing World dictatorships we often sanctimoniously decry in the press. Here is a nice helping of this hypocrisy for you: According to Executive Excess 2007, a study released in August by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the 20 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $657.5 million last year--22,255 times the average annual U.S. salary of $29,500. This is not only an immoral way to treat the middle class and working Americans on whose backs this country's economy was built. It also provides an atmosphere ripe for the kind of Abramoffian political corruption with which we have all sadly become accustomed over the past seven years. Furthermore, this increasing subjugation of everone except those at the very top of the income ladder is dangerous for a democracy, as any historian can tell you. Which reminds me. Gordon Gekko had another piece of sage advice in the movie Wall Street. At one point in the film he turns to his new protege, stock broker Bud Fox, and offers this prescient observation with practiced nonchalance, "now you're not naïve enough to think that we're living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It's the free market, and you're part of it." Yes, indeed we are.

Let's see what the court decides.

by vcheng on Fri Feb 13 10:06:17 PST 2009

larsb: "England is doing it very well." Well, let's see: from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5383726.stm Europe to rule on speed cameras The motorists claim existing laws affect the right to a fair trial Judges at the European Court of Human Rights are considering a test case after two UK drivers challenged a ruling over speed cameras. Currently, the owners of vehicles caught speeding on camera are obliged to declare who was driving at the time. The drivers say this breaches their right to silence. Following a hearing, judges are considering a ruling that could impact on millions of UK drivers. Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman said he believed the government would win. Motoring campaigners are divided over the case but ministers have said they would "vigorously" defend current laws. Idris Francis was issued with a penalty notice after his car was caught on camera breaking a speed limit in June 2001. The 66-year-old from Hampshire refused to reveal who was at the wheel at the time, so was fined for failing to sign a speeding notice. In April 2000, a car belonging to Gerard O'Halloran, 72, from London, was caught by a speed camera. He initially admitted the offence but later tried to withdraw his admission, claiming he signed the statement only because he feared he would be punished if he did not. The pair appealed to British courts but were turned down. They eventually decided to take their cases to the European courts. This offends against a very important principle - namely that you should not have to incriminate yourself Mr Ladyman, told BBC News he was confident the government would win the case. "It is not a form of duress," he added. "If you were speeding you can pay a small penalty and have three points on your licence as an alternative to going through the hassle of going to court and potentially a much bigger fine and a much bigger penalty," he said. "The fact the alternative of going to a court is there means there are no human rights being undermined here, there are no long-standing liberties being undermined." Evidence collection Liberty's legal director James Welch said vehicle owners had two choices when presented with a speeding notice - to name the driver, or to refuse to provide information - both of which carried similar penalties. Idris Francis was "disappointed" after UK courts rejected his appeal "This offends against a very important principle - namely that you should not have to incriminate yourself," he said. "You should not be made subject to a criminal penalty in order to make you provide information that then forms part of the prosecution case against you." Mr Welch said the issue was less important in cases involving more serious charges - such as death by dangerous driving - because speed camera evidence would rarely be used. He said that, if the case was successful, the government would have to find new ways of collecting evidence in speeding cases. 'Devastating effect' The Department for Transport said the case concerned "the requirement for vehicle keepers to identify the driver of a vehicle identified on a speed camera". "The applicants claim this requirement breaches the right against self-incrimination and thereby their right to a fair trial under the European Convention on Human Rights. "The UK government does not accept this claim." The case renews the debate about speed cameras, with campaigners on either side joining the argument over the case. Paul Smith from Safe Speed, who believes cameras divert motorists' attention away from the roads, said British justice had been "undermined for the sake of nothing more than needless mass prosecutions". Jools Townsend from the Brake charity, who supports speed cameras, said if the pair won their case it would have a "devastating effect" on road safety in the country. The court's ruling on section 172 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 is not expected for several months.

Re: honda pilot ex [lxpaddy]

by eddie on Sat Dec 13 07:59:51 PST 2008

QUOTE WAS GIVEN TO ME BY TOWNSEND HONDA IN TUSCALOOSA,ALABAMA. I SHOULD MENTION THAT COME TO FIND OUT MY WIFE WORKS WITH THE WIFE OF THE FINANCE MANAGER AT TOWNSEND HONDA. HOWEVER IF HE COULD DO THAT FOR ME HE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THAT FOR ANYONE.