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Dude came in a couple of days ago with his comical sidekick. He had an accident, and wanted to talk to me about a couple of things so I could start off on the right foot with his repair. His car was to be towed in to our shop later that day. "I need you to know, my car is a High Bird, it's a special car..." "Yes, I see here on the paperwork, you mean it is a Camry Hybrid, right?" "Yeah, it's a High Bird" I had to keep a straight face through this ordeal.

Pic I took a few years ago; Caddo ~

Packard Custom 8 -

At least he didn’t give you the bird...

A new SUV called the SubTraxx.

Those late 40s-early 50s frumpy humpies are pretty wild.. I kind of like the '50 Buick look.

I think part of ditching the Cruze is, I bet the next trax will sell in way higher volumes and be imported

I think BMW used the term leatherette. (Leatherette...cowhide from a female cow. Leather...cowhide from a male bull...) Now its SensaTec. Hogwash marketing terms. M-B Tex, SensaTec Mercedes Benz Textile and Sensible? Technology? ITS PHOQUING VINYL... More of that fakeness that BMW and Mercedes Benz want to peddle... Durability of a car seat? When a car gets driven daily,. Nicks and dents and paint chips and rust and wear and tear and high mileage and possibly accidented...but hey! The seats look good. They're M-B Tex!!!! GTFO!!!

Haha... right! Seemed a little frumpy to me, that is why I was assigning it to those other makes... was being snobbish toward Nash (Packard was stuffy and dull during this time, imo), which I always liked, BTW. Nash 600 -

MB-Tex is a high quality seat material, and has been in use for many decades, no getting around it. A lot of vehicles are offering leatherette these days. Several years ago I had a lady come in for an estimate, she called in an insurance claim because she spilled fingernail polish on her BMW seats and she was panicked over it. I told her I could clean it up in a few minutes for her with some paint thinner, no charge, and she informed me that she did not want paint thinner used on her leather seats. I had to break it to her... they were vinyl (I do not remember BMW's term for it), and the thinner would not harm the material. She was very angry with me for telling her her BMW seats were not leather. I told her her seats were more durable than leather, and easier to clean... she was still mad at me. See what I get for trying to be nice to ppl? I have a suspicion that salespeople do not try to set customers straight when they are selling a car (luxury brand or not) with high quality vinyl seats... people are not reading the window sticker or have a clue... they believe they are getting cowhide, and they are proud sumbitches...

Since the launch of the XT4 with the rather anemic (if more refined) LSY engine, many (including myself) had questioned why GM does not offer the Tripower 310 bhp / 348 lb-ft (L3B) 2.7T 4-cylinder in the XT4 (at least) as an option. To a lesser extent some have also questioned why the LSY is putting out a mere 237bhp / 258 lb-ft whereas the outgoing LTG engine is good for 265~272 bhp / 295 lb-ft. Is it just so that it can have 258 lb-ft arrive @ 1,500 rpm? Now, we have the answer... It's the 9-speed Automatics. Adopting the 9-speed automatics is deemed a priority for refinement and fuel economy. The new GM-Ford 9TXX transmissions, jointly developed with Ford promises better fuel economy and better shift quality. There are currently two versions of this transmission:- 9T50 -- 258 lb-ft 9T65 -- 280 lb-ft The need to pack 9-speeds into a very slim transmission case meant that they have to use an ovoid cross section torque converter, a tension chain coupling and abandon the high torque capability of the previous generation top dog 6T80 (369 lb-ft) transmissions used in the 410 hp / 368 lb-ft 3.6L Twin-Turbo (LF3) powered Cadillac XTS. The lack of torque capability is also in part why Ford abandoned the use of the GM-Ford 9TXX transmissions, choosing instead to develop an 8-speed evolution of the decade old 6T80 for use in their high torque applications like the Ford Edge ST (2.7L Ecoboost V6 with 335 hp / 380 lb-ft). Ford also asserts that the new 9-speed autos did not yield any fuel economy improvement when tested with their engines and the refinement improvements alone did not justify the costs and weight increases. View full article

I don't know about that. Snap-On does a roaring business with ridiculous, top tier pricing even though there are scads of cheap, reconstituted-crap Chinese tools on the market. Yeah- they sell too obviously, but quality can and does trump price in many instances.

I HATE that there's no mainsteam, volume American TV maker, phone maker, computer maker. There! But wait- how do we quantify this?? Apple is an American company, builds their phones in China. Does that make the phones Chinese?? Toyota is a japanese company that builds some of their raggedy vehicles in the US, does that make the raggedy vehicle American? Are South Carolina mercedes' now American vehicles? How come that never seems to be the case?

'47 Buick Sedanette. Had to search a bit myself to ID it, and it did catch my eye as I posted it. - - - - -

Yeah, I really wanted to try it. I'm told that the flights to get there are cheap, but everything else like food and hotel is expensive.

Let me put it another way that is easy for everyone to understand... Driving your car with a DIRTY FILTER is like driving your car in DENVER instead driving it in SAN DIEGO -- or some place at sea level. Your car will be less powerful and you'll need more throttle to accelerate or maintain any given speed. But, at any given rate of acceleration or cruising speed your fuel consumption is exactly the same. The air filter causes a drop in pressure after the air passes through it. The throttle causes a further drop in pressure. The sum of the two drops is what the engine ingests. Whether this is from a small throttle opening and no air filter, or a restrictive air filter and a big throttle opening makes no difference. Fuel is metered based on mass of air molecues the engine ingests per unit time, not what causes the restriction in airflow. If this isn't the case, then your engine will be running too rich or too lean. It'll fail SMOG, stumble or stall.

Then why ever change them at all?

Englishtown Raceway Park (Englishtown NJ) abruptly cancelled all drag racing activities last year. The track was scheduled, as usual, to be the host for the NHRA SummerNationals, too. Reportedly, they leased the strip & one side of the parking area to Copart, the auto auction entity. Since then a number of stories & theories have swirled around, including the possibility that the strip might reopen. Last week these pics surfaced- the ripping out of the guard barriers that line the strip. Note the steel I-beams that were driven 3-ft into the ground to secure the barriers. Not a good sign drag racing is coming back anytime soon.

You sound like all the other entitled brats out there, Mary at least knows how to run a business for profit, not losses and self destruction. At least she is making a profit unlike some leaders that only made their money by bankrupt after bankrupt and stole it from hard working folks. No one is entitled to a job, no one is entitled to anything, you work hard, save, and earn the privilege to own something, have the service, etc. Face the facts that we are a global economy and I have yet to see you or anyone else bitch about no American TV set maker, phone maker, computer maker, etc. America is past the economy days of manufacturing. We are now a service and intellect provider. We all have choices, you can choose to go to college and have a college degree job, go to trade school and have a trade school job or bounce from job to job with a high school or no school education. One gets out of life what they put into it. Welcome to the Multi-Cultural all encompassing society of products built from around the world with various languages, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Enjoy the Rainbow! ?