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It's also an old money / new money thing. New money goes for bling. Old money is fine with an older Benz e-class wagon, or a Toyota Land Cruiser. But even celebrities often have blend-in cars, basic old Prius or something to go out in under cover.

It looks like they're scraper bots. They don't seem to be doing anything except crawling the whole site.

Ford has seemed to really drop the ball in recent years. trinacriabob's post on Saturday about 20 years on C&G got me thinking, had to look...I joined August 21, 2005 so it's been 20 years this year for me also. That date was coincidentally, my late brother's 56th birthday--an age I'm 7 months from now. Life moves in mysterious ways at times.

If there was no tariff on Chinese cars, I think by 2050 GM and Ford would be done. It would take the Chinese companies 10 years to build factories and dealer network, but once they had that and cars were flowing in, the domestics would be screwed. GM has a few winners at least like the Trax and the Yukon/Suburban that are segment leaders, a decent EV line up. But not offering car play, having some hit or miss quality vehicles, some lackluster stuff like the Equinox and Blazer, etc, there is enough for the Chinese to exploit. Ford would be easy to put away, they rely on fleet and commercial sales, if Chinese come in with low prices, business buyers who care about the bottom line will buy them.

Today - depending on the time zone - marks 20 YEARS that I have been on C&G. It seems to have gone in chapters: First 3 years: Needed a new car, the LaCrosse was being released, and I was weighing the options, including test driving. Some of you will remember one ghastly initial design for the LaCrosse the Bob Lutz threw the book at the design staff for. Next 15 years: Owning the car, reporting on it, and driving other cars while on vacation, not to mention a lot of fighting with ocnblu ... which was hard to avoid! Last 2 years: NO car ... living on 2 continents ... (I would have never imagined this) ... renting cars as needed. There's a lot more to this decision than deciding between a LaCrosse, a Grand Prix, and a Monte Carlo.

Yeah...my impression was that in the past in the UK they were an old money type of car. They were conservatively styled, quietly luxurious..now just another gauche bling toy for vapid overhyped people.

Rolls seem to be bought more by the look at me, look at me crowd now.

Interesting read, seems ford is looking for another cheap way to make money without actually investing in engineering. Ford gave up on beating China on batteries and cut a deal instead Ford clearly is giving up on EVs as it looks to commercial battery packs for storage to make money. They are giving up on being a leader in the Auto sector. Wonder how Henry Ford would have felt about this, also it does rais the question, how long till Ford as an Auto company is dead. Trucks, a few SUVs and falling farther behind in all auto fronts tells me Ford is not a stock work investing in.