trinacriabob

The Arteon has a "high" price point. They start in the low $40s. They needed to cover the middle ground between Jetta and Arteon, in the high $20s.

Let's not underestimate sedan trunks. One of my friend's brothers would borrow his parents' full-size Pontiac, stuff a few people in the trunk, and drive up to and through the box office booths at the drive-in. Just one person. In a big Pontiac. And, once this big Pontiac was parked, he opened the trunk and let his friends out. It's not too smart to begin with. But wouldn't it also look weird to nearby parked cars that the trunk of this big car pops open and teenagers start climbing out of it?

Too funny! I'm native to that place and I'm nothing like the stereotype ... and never was! Except for maybe the irreverence and sarcasm that people will let fly there. I feel more at home in your city of Montreal. If only it had a mild winter. I will say that what's likeable about L.A. is the setting and the weather ... and that's really about it. The "culture," the value system, and the edgy people are pretty messed up. I'd say more than half of the people I grew up with have left. Many stayed in the state, but went to far less crowded or rural areas of it, including the desert (where they cannot allow their pets to be outside alone on their properties). Others left the state altogether and went to America's second tier cities. Once you've adjusted to a "second tier" metro area (Denver, Portland, Twin Cities, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, etc.), you will have no desire to go back to L.A. Even visiting L.A. is stressful because you are constantly reminded that it has lost its livability.

I call this the "Santa Monica Blvd. song" and it seems to be the song most readily attributed to Sheryl Crow. At about :55, she mentions DATSUNS and Buicks, so this is a little dated! At least she doesn't want to eat Subarus, as per the lyrics from some other song of about that time.

There is really another big issue here. Most of us here have advanced critical thinking skills and a critical eye when it comes to automobiles. (It's almost to an OCD level, if not already there!) There's a fairly big difference with what can be done stylistically with 3 volumes than with 2 volumes. It's a little harder to adhere to corporate branding and make SUVs/CUVs that are easier to differentiate from each other. That said, automotive designers have quite a bit more stylistic leverage with sedans and coupes. One only needs to think about some of the sedans and coupes that C&Gers love so much.

The coupe scenario is in even worse shape. Large coupes were once popular and, for those who didn't need 4 doors, they functioned much like sedans in terms of mechanics, features, ride, reliability, etc. This isn't about pull, but about push. The consumer is not dictating what the market is putting out. The manufacturer is deciding, and then a person is funneled to whatever is available. As for the remaining sedans, the Malibu will be biting the dust. And so will the Charger. The loss of the Charger will be especially sad, since it's such a nice substantial car and an excellent value in base form. The Camry may stick around but its looks need to be cleaned up, modernized, and/or toned down. I believe the Passat is also gone, based on looking at the VW site. I had come to like the Passat. I was fueling my car a few days ago and was talking to the driver of a 5 year old Passat. He really liked his car and said it has been very reliable. VW continues to offer geared automatic transmissions, which is a big plus. He was astonished to learn that the Passat may have come to the end of its journey. Consumers do want sedans. The manufacturers are not making them available to the extent to which there is a market for them. That's how I read it.

Yesterday, without even thinking of this thread, I thought I was "spotting." Instead, I'll use the photo here. Here's the car that is the subject of this thread, shown in an interesting maroon-cinnamon type metallic color. It looks good in this color This car is growing on me. Not only that, it's built in Germany for Buick.

escargot

WASP

More "Texas Excess" - limos where their owners don't seem to worry too much about gas prices ... A stretched Escalade seen in the "Bay Area," which is south of town, about halfway to Galveston, and close to the NASA complex. A stretched Chrysler 300 seen at the '70s looking Bush Intercontinental (could that be intergalactic) Airport (IAH), the main airport.

Seen along Westheimer (yes, Westheimer) just inside the Inner Loop en route to the Galleria. The license plate frame says "NXCESS." That might be a different way of saying "Poverty Sucks."

Within an hour in the Post Oak-Galleria area and the River Oaks section of Houston ... Crown Victoria and Grand Marquis have big Texas written all over them, seen here at one of the entrances to River Oaks, possibly the nicest neighborhood in H-town. TEXAS and TRUCK both have 5 letters; love the palm trees in H-town that you don't get in the "Big D." Here's a REAL classic! And, as a bonus question, why the heck is my car parked next to the Greyhound station? (This one has the nicer alloys.)

I didn't know where to put this. I started looking at the VW site to "build" something. In terms of sedans, there is the Jetta and there is the Arteon. The Passat is now gone. That's sad. That was their best looking sedan. The Arteon's styling is very derivative and it costs too much. One can spend a little more and get something more "prestigious." As for the Jetta, it looks like they pumped it up with "steroids" over the years, looks wise, so they could eliminate the Passat. Now it all makes sense. It was planned. In recent years, I've found them difficult to tell apart. The problem is that the Jetta seems to have gotten a smaller engine over time, now at 1.5 L, but with a turbo. Its saving grace might be that it keeps its geared automatic transmission. I had grown to like the very last rendition of the Passat. It had road manners that were both refined and planted, with better road and tire noise control than the Jetta.

My "random" 10,000th post. (some 16 1/2 years later)

Spotted two days ago, VW's Passat has come a long way and is now a fairly substantial car ... Spotted yesterday around the Houston Galleria, I also saw another Porsche (Panamera 4 door, maybe) in this exact same new color (a lot of enamel paint jobs on expensive cars lately) some 5 minutes earlier ...

I'll say that the Subaru Legacy sedan is sort of acceptable while the Outback is not. As for the two Buick/Opel products you've posted, they are substantially more attractive than the Subaru or any Asian brand econoboxes. This stuff is tricky. Business schools teach that stock price stems from a formula more or less discounting future cash flows going to the stockholder. I'm not so sure I believe in the "theory of efficient markets." One day, HPQ (Hewlett Packard), which had been hovering around $ 35 to $ 37, jumps up to $ 41 or $ 42 because an event like Warren Buffett buying some up made it spike. It came right back down and is back in the range it was in before, even before this latest market tumble.

Spotted on Cinco de Mayo. This Sedan de Ville had less than 100,000 miles on it. And, being a 1977, this car is 45 years old! While I appreciate the car, it's not something I'd want. I didn't even crank the key to hear what the engine might sound like. Almost all of the boulevardiers from this era tend to lose the quiet exhaust notes of when they were new(er), which is too bad. The downsizing from 1976 helped this model, but maybe less so for some of the other full-sizes like those by Pontiac This car sure has a balanced profile. I like how they raised up the rear wheel well without putting a skirt on it. It could have used a piece of chrome on the B-pillar. Looking over these sorts of lines and through a hood ornament is a thing of the past. The padded vinyl roofs looked great on almost all GM full-sizes of this era, and some mid-sizes as well. Fairly nice looking dashboard with a protruding center stack and a cowl ridge at the top of it. Circular gauges would have been nice, but that time hadn't yet arrived. This is a view of the interior of the cabin. Cadillac seemed to have ditched some of the really gaudy cloth interior choices from years before to go with simpler mono-color ones like you see here. Cadillac always paid attention to their interior lighting, like the one you see on the rear sail panel. This is some generous legroom in the rear of the cabin. Bottom line: what a majestic vehicle.

In the first few days of the month, I went to get some strawberries on the cheap and saw this in the parking lot ... ... early '90s Ford Tempo coupe in "LL Bean / Eddie Bauer colors" that were popular for cars in that decade ... plastic manual window cranks ... it was nighttime.

Q: Why are Saturday and Sunday the strongest days? A: Because the rest are week days.

So, yesterday I was near a Subaru dealership in a suburb that is salt of the earth and not uptight. So I went inside. (This is sounding like a joke, but it's not.) I wanted to look at their sedans. They didn't have any ... just wagon-CUV type vehicles. I learned that they do NOT have a sense of humor about the tropes and stereotypes. And this is even when said in a manner that was diplomatic and circuitous.

The uplevel sportier model is the one which I believe had this (^) engine. I've rented about 5 of them across 3 or so years, and my rental cars always had the 2.4 liter 4 cylinder. They put out 180 hp. Acceptable but not fantastic for highway fuel economy for a 4 cyl. They are very quiet and smooth riding cars.

Saw this Buick Verano 2 days ago, in the evening, after walking out of a store. These Veranos are now 10 year old cars, are usually kept up, and their owners seem to like them. In a way, the situation reminds me of how compact Olds Aleros are still seen on the road many (~20) years later. And here I thought I'd be cashing in my GM points on whatever the latest rendition of the Verano might be, albeit on some updated platform. I guess that's not going to happen.

This spotting has somewhat of a "deliberate" aspect about it. And BOTH vehicles look "familiar."

Seen the first weekend of April. This dealership seems to have no shortage of new Chargers. However, most of them feature the higher priced trim packages, and higher MSRP prices. The interesting thing is that they won't tell you whereabouts - vis-a-vis MSRP - they will sell you a new one. The prices for used ones a few years old on the lot were absurd. They weren't interested in discussing the topic of prices unless a person was a "here and now" buyer.

Seen on April Fool's Day: After renting several, I've come to have a soft spot for the little Ford Fiesta. It was probably meant to compete with the Chevy Sonic and Spark. The Chevy have some shared accessories, such as switches, with the upline GM models, so that's a nice aspect about them. However, the Fiesta is more fun to drive than either of the Chevy econoboxes, not to mention having a reasonable amount of rear overhang compared to the small Chevys, which seem sheared off toward the rear.