Leaderboard

Would be really cool to get an old dealer/service building like this and tinker all day. Letter up the outside with defunct brand names; something like "Balthazar Pontiac-DeSoto".

Family sedan big comparison from Motor Trend. No domestic manufacturer left in the segment. Family-Sedan Comparison Test: 2021 Honda Accord vs. Camry, K5, Sonata, Altima, Legacy, and Mazda 6 (motortrend.com) 7th Place: Nissan Altima We've seen what the new Nissan can do with the Sentra and Rogue. We hope the next Altima follows that path. 6th Place: Toyota Camry In a segment known for blandness, the Camry conspicuously fails to bring anything spicier than a value proposition. 5th Place: Mazda 6 Once king of the segment, now resting on its laurels. The 6 continues to be the driver's car, but Mazda's failure to update it has kicked it off the podium. 4th Place: Hyundai Sonata Hyundai continues its march of success, and the Sonata is proof of that. If its engineering can catch up to its looks, the Sonata will be sitting in the front row. 3rd Place: Subaru Legacy It might be the shy kid in the class, but once you sit in the driver's seat, the Legacy will show its charm. A well-deserved podium finisher. 2nd Place: Kia K5 Once again, Kia has shown us what it's capable of. The K5 is the most recent example of what the Korean brand can accomplish. 1st Place: Honda Accord The Accord raises the bar. Spacious, refined, roomy, elegant—it's the one we'd all buy. By unanimous decision, Honda took home the gold medal.

Truck is getting a workout. The smaller log I got out by putting black iron pipes under it and rolling it out....the larger log I am going to have to cut down paritally in the bed. I may need to get an hoist if I keep working with large logs. I could also see building some sort of shop made gantry crane...

@oldshurst442 I think you make a good argument comparing X4 and Mach E. IMPO the difference is that X4 is luxury crossover from premium brand and Mach E supposed to be auto for the masses. The fact is that they are priced similarly shows that at least this point all EVs are more of a luxury vehicles, than mass market ones, even though majority of them don't have the "luxury" feel. I do have to say, when I was at local Ford dealership last week, they had couple Mach E. I couldn't sit inside but from outside the interior looked nice, definitely better than Tesla Y. I am not sure I would call it luxurious though.

This does reinforce that electrification will happen and faster than many realize. As such, imagine the market share Honda/Kawasaki/Suzuki/Yamaha will take with a battery swap program in the US. Buy the bike you like and know that you can stop at any of these dealers for a battery swap or any other batter swap location as your making your Bike road trip. Such a nice concept, be interesting to see how they actually implement it.

This video put a HUGE smile on my face regardless if Im not a Porsche guy to the fullest and Im not really into manual transmissions and Im embracing an all EV future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvnJr82oULk

The link https://www.gogoro.com/ is both related to the battery swapping consortium plan of Honda/Suzuki/Yamaha/Suzuki for future EV Japanese motorcycles that I just posted above this post and to the conversation we had about India and how India will be electrified. Gogoro is a Taiwanese scooter company doing exactly that. Battery swapping and the like. Click on the link to see how they are actually doing since 2015 and another solution on how the planet, especially in countries where mopeds, scooters, bicycles are THE transportation mode, a solution on how the planet will become fully electric by 2035. Dont want to cause any hurt feelings, but some of us North Americans really do whine a lot and really do nothing else. We dont really innovate anymore. Taiwan has a working system out already with EV battery swaps for scooters... Guys...we've been so comfortable in our smug, shytty ways and so phoquing blinded by our shyte politicians with their corrupt lobbyists pulling our wool over our eyes that we havent noticed that former 3rd world countries are kicking our ass...

https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/26/honda-kawasaki-suzuki-yamaha-motorcycle-batteries/

I had to look it up myself. This is what I found. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/chevrolet-malibu-sales-figures/

Some very cool 1968 sketches on the GM instagram thread today. https://www.instagram.com/p/CM2xA1YJGZt/ Hungarian-American designer Geza Loczi created these beautifully expressive sketches in 1968. Mr. Loczi worked at GM, VW and is currently a Design director at Volvo. A graduate of ArtCenter College, he taught Transportation Design from 1986-1996. From the GM Design Archive & Special Collections.⁠⠀ The very first sketch is right up @balthazar alley! Course being that the sketches are all Olds auto's very much right up @oldshurst442 Alley for sure!

It was a segment leader in 1972....

...as the GT-R 13 years ago. It's been left on the clothes line to dry for a bit too long now. 200k and vehicles that sold 200-300k each have been dropped from the segment(Fusion & Malibu). 200k looks pretty bad when you realize that, imo.

Go back to 2014 and it was 388K. That's nearly a 50% drop. At this rate by 2027 it'll be down to 100K accords. Meanwhile the CR-V is holding pretty steady in the mid-300K range in the same period. On a side note, I guess I didn't realize Honda pulled the plug on the Element 10 years ago now.

A couple of sexy, well dressed men in their twilight of their years, singing the macarena joined by a couple of young, sexy well dressed men.

It's still an amazing car. But one could rationalize a lot of other purhcase decisions. Norway: 57 Roadmaster.

Honda sold 200k Accords last year. So the numbers are far from insignificant. However, they do decline, in 2017 the sold like 320k of them.

Astonishingly creative and beautiful, Jacques Veserey made this in one of my online woodworking groops. Cool... The bottom...

It really makes no sense any longer to segregate sedans & CUVs from each other- they are 90% interchangable. Especially with sedan sales falling off a cliff and CUVs replacing them.

Lovely!

^ There’s my baby! (the GP)

Classic Nissan, LAST.

That is all I ask of that post, is for us to discuss the various angles to which we hold judgement on what is of value. Of what is something worth. Technology? Lux interiors? Speed and performance? Ive only seen 2 Mach Es so far. The Ford dealership near my house where I bought my wife's Fusion, they had one outside. And on the road. I have not gotten the opportunity to sit inside one myself. I saw the interior much like yourself and I deduced that its an interior like a Titanium trimmed Edge. Ive not sat in a recent BMW therefore I could not comment on how upscale BMW's have got since a decade ago, but a titanium trimmed Ford is on par with BMWs of a decade ago. But on the flipside, that 50 000 dollar BMW X4 also has a 4 cylinder engine. My internal struggle went deep. I was thinking about how GM and Ford kept on whining on how they can NOT build small cars in North America as its too expensive for them and they can NOT make money on them. With THAT thought in mind, I internally made the connection that EVs too, the tech behind them, OEMs can NOT make money on them on the lower priced scale as the tech and batteries are too expensive for them to make any money... Yes...I know. Not quite the same thing. But its an angle that I wanted to tackle just the same. There is more. Speed and performance. While Im NOT doubting that the regular X4 may not be a slouch despite its 4 cylinder, the Mach E DOES spank it in performance. Both performance models start at the same price at 60 000 dollars but the X4M shoots up in price THAT much faster. All for an inline 6. I believe no V8 is offered. With THAT in mind, we are now seeing a RETRACTION of cylinders with the internal combustion engine for high end products. THAT would be another angle I wanna talk about. We are seeing that the V8 that was all too common not too long ago, as the decades have come by since the 1970s, the common V8 is now an aristocrat's engine. A little less lux interior versus state of the art powertrain for lesser 4 cylinder and 6 cylinder ICE, to which the electric powertrain will trounce the ICE counterpart in speed and performance... FoMoCo could have gone to sell this product as a Lincoln, price bump could have been made...a nicer Lincoln interior to rival a Mercedes or BMW etc... They went with a Ford. A Mustang name plate. marketing reasons. They figured they could make money on an EV that starts in the 40 thousands... With a controversial nameplate. Keeps a buzz about the product... Seeing average transaction prices are at 40 000, the Mach E is just there at that price point...the point of my exercise was to show that EVs are not really THAT far off with price parity with ICE. I had some logic to it. If one has an open mind about it, much like yourself, THANK-YOU, one could have a different take on this whole EV/ICE thing and to how we will get there by 2035. Couple that with crude Chinese EVs that are 4000 dollars which are not as far off in concept and execution and price corrected from a 1920s Ford Model T... Yes...yes...we have come a loooong way from a Model T and our vehicular expectations... THAT is NOT the point of my angle here... There is a middle ground here to where affordable EVs NEED NOT be crude 4000 dollar death traps and NEED NOT be high priced (like a Tesla Model S) or toys like the Mach E either. There will be an EV that WILL be sold in the mid $20 thousands to $30 thousands that will be the equivalent to a Ford Escape. Its not now, but by 2035? Maybe...

Hippie Chicks

Very sad. I just learned from the homepage that Jessica Walter died yesterday. There weren't many carbon copies of her, like there are with some run of the mill movie stars, and this is what she looked like if you don't remember her or the name. RIP Jessica Walter She played the obsessed fan-listener in "Play Misty for Me" who stalked a DJ in Monterey-Carmel, CA played by Clint Eastwood, and repeatedly called in the following song - the Errol Garner version as opposed to the later Johnny Mathis and Ray Stevens versions. She hit a home run with that one. Also, there is incredible footage of the Central California coast at Monterey, Carmel, and Big Sur in that movie. Also, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack was in this movie, and in the scene that probably got it its R rating. We know @oldshurst442 likes that song a lot, as do many people with good taste.

I had an internal struggle regarding the price argument. Yes, an ICE version of the SAME model that also has an EV version, will be CONSIDERABLY LESS. No buts, ifs or ands. But we CONTINUE to bang that drum all across the EV board. And its kinda false. We seem to always make this argument and to justify our point we will take a LESSER ICE vehicle and compare it DIRECTLY to a more advanced EV model... Example from last week: We took a 26 000 dollar base Escape and compared it to a 50 000 dollar Mach E. Wrong in 2 ways: 1. base model family CUV 2. FAMILY CUV We then proceeded to compare the Mach E to its other brother. The Escape's bigger brother. The Edge. While the Edge is closer in spirit to the Mach E, THIS is where my internal struggle begins. While in those two scenarios, the Mach E and EVs in general, seem to lose the value argument on fuel savings and we equate that being more expensive than their ICE counterparts. BUT... after reading and listening to many other opinions on how ICE vehicles average transaction prices are going up and up and up...I started looking at another angle that EVERYBODY seems to miss. More or less on the Mach E rather than another EV. I done a quick research and found that a BMW X4 is actually about the same price as a Mach E... The exterior and interior dimensions are 99.9% identical. https://www.cars.com/research/compare/?acodes=USD10FOS392B0,USD10BMS261A0 In this case of a Mach E and a BMW X4, I wanna know why are we tooting that EVs are inherently pricier? Both are lifestyle, sporty coupey CUVs trying to sell to the same lifestyle, sporty coupey CUV buyer which is a more affluent buyer. And BOTH the Bimmer and the Ford are marketing to. The Escape is just a pedestrian, family haulin', CUV for the Average Joe. Doesnt seem logical to me to try and tell me EVs are pricier than when we do comparisons like that. When you look at the EV that is the Mach E and we compare it to a VERY comparable and SIMILAR ICE CUV in EVERY way INCLUDING to what market niche they BOTH belong to...then in THIS case I'll have to argue that: NO! EVs are not NECESSARILY more pricier than their ICE counterparts. At least in THIS case, they are actually the SAME price. I see progress to which EVs are starting to get price parity as their ICE counterparts ESPECIALLY when ICE average transaction prices are going higher. And when we choose to say that EVs are just 2% of the market place, its NOT the EVs that are making the average transaction price go up. Its ICE vehicles themselves. I dont want to confuse the situation and you folk will think that Im saying that EVs have price parity...Ive said in the beginning of this thought that turned into a long post that they do not. Its just that in the coming year or two, when many EV models will be available to the US consumer from GM, VW and others, many scenarios like this one will be replicated. And eventually, cheaper MSRP EV models will be introduced. When will that be? I do not know. But in the 40 000-60 000 dollar range, EVs will CERTAINLY be on par with their ICE counterparts offering same interior and exterior dimensions, luxury and options and even LONGER drive ranges than fuel tanks...

1821-2021

Plus a clean circa ‘64 Chevy DeLixe trim truck and a yellow-green ‘73-74 Charger.

Just as I was going to bed...Im very sleepy you know...you just HAD to start the boogie. Now I cant. Good night people!

Can't get enough of this sh!t. Music used to have much more passion that went into it. The lead singer here is really into it and can hold some of those difficult notes. Some say this is the quintessential disco song. I've read that some musical experts think that "More, More, More" is. Either way, those that approximate the Top 10 of this genre make for one incredible anthology.

Power been off a few hours from a storm. Ugh

Swapping batteries, sounds oh so slightly more of a pain in the @ss than filling up at a gas station on a road trip.