balthazar
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Everything posted by balthazar
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Your suggestions for General Motors are always way out in the weeds. 'GMC should have gone 100% commercial' (and cut sales by a half million) 'or 100% Denali' (and cut sales by 70% by eliminating the non-Denali buyers). Wacked. GMC is doing EXCELLENT at 'differentiating themselves from Chevrolet' according to your #1 metric: SALES. Imagine if MB created another brand called 'Daimler', which was some different panels, grilles, trimwork, a couple different models, and earned another 550,000 sales at higher ATPs than the Mercedes line. That's what GMC is doing!
- 67 replies
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- luxury cars
- suvs
- trucks
- features
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• Cadillac is a luxury brand, not a full-line manufacturer. Still, they have more model lines today than they had in the 1970s. And the brand has never "cloned" BMW, they've progressed, along with BMW, to where sporty luxury vehicles are today in answer to market trends. So they weren't there first- who cares. By the same token, BMW & MB "cloned" Cadillac's level of tech, amenities and luxury in their interiors since the 1980s. But we've been over that before. • GMC, like Ammann said above, is minting money, the margins on pure commercial vehicles is not comparable. Chevy sold 8,348 commercial trucks and 69,164 Express vans, for a total of 77,507 units as pure commercial trucks. It'd take a special kind of idiocy to contemplate dropping GMC's highly profitable and huge volume (560K in 2017) to sell only low-margin commercial trucks of 80K units. GMC doesn't WANT to "turn back". And Cadillac is adding more SUVs just like every other luxury brand over the last 5 years is doing.
- 67 replies
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- luxury cars
- suvs
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- features
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'66-67 Riviera, navy blue, worn but still presentable, rollin'.Lincoln sketch proposal done in '68 (for '70?) ~ [Yikes those blades look sharp!]
Most everything in this tier (and others) 'drives good', but couldn't Honda have made it pleasant to look at, too? Hondas for the most part have been innocuous & contemporary, but this... I would like to know what the stew pot this came out of was labeled. - - - - - Camry & Accord were only 700 units apart in Jan of '17, but this January the camry is up 16% and the accord is down 13%; they are now separated by 7000 units! Has anyone read about any backlash towards the accord?Dear God- what the hell is that?? If this is the OEM accord, I certainly have not seen a single one yet by me. Looks like it's channeling a Dodge Charger in that front clip. Very bizarre & unfortunate collection of cues & surfacing - look at the reflection pinch point in the middle upper of the rear door. Oof- and I thought the civic was 'off'.WOnder if GM has maintained it's trademark on "X-11".Only reason it's possibly capable of 1500 lbs is because it's so absurdly light @ 1500 lbs itself. But you know the F-150 would easily haul another 1000 lbs with zero issues, meanwhile be an imminently safer vehicle on all counts. It must totally blow chunks to drive a Jeeto loaded. It's got almost 30 lbs/hp MORE than my '40 loaded to haul around (188 vs. 160), and the '40 has 4 MORE forward speeds to move out.MKZ for sure, was in one last year. Couldn't say about other model Lincs tho. - - - - - Here's Merc in '58 :
• '80s ferrari's are a poor benchmark- they were, in general; slow. '60s Corvettes were quicker. • You can get way more HP/TRQ from a modified older engine than from a factory modern engine. • Cars needing more (or less) gears in total depends on the engine's power curve. Top Fuel dragsters have NO gears. Generally speaking, more gears are beneficial to engines with sharper-peaked power curves; keeps the engine in a desired RPM range during acceleration (as much as possible). In theory, a shiftless gearbox would provide zero lag between gears and give a near infinite number of ratios. CVTs haven't worked out so well tho, and nobody ever seriously raced the Buick DynaFlow.- 25 replies
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- geneva
- geneva motor show
- 2019
- mercedes-amg
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• Yes- pretty positive there was a provision that prevented an 'at-speed' going into R or P on the original MoPar push-buttons. Merc and Edsel also flirted with push-button trans, tho GM did not then. Ironically, it was the Feds that squashed the push-button, one of ChryCo's signature features, but years later 'no problem'. • The modern car with a push-button trans is Lincoln.'67 Dart 2-dr hardtop, excellent body, 17" Torque Thrusts, duals, 340 hood, Hurst badge, icy green, rollin' & grumblin'.Only if optionally equipped and not at the same time. 1. I'd never put my kids in that rear-facing seat. 2. If I was transporting 7 people, it'd wouldn't be in a sedan. With 7 aboard, you only have 5 CF of cargo space. - - - - - Red GLS above looks quite cheap as shown. Giant black plastic mesh areas need something to break up the 'holes'. Fog lights would be a good start.Typical modern SUV is in the .35-45 .cd range. A 1959 Impala 4-dr hardtop was tested at .44 .cd, so the below car should be in the same ballpark. Yet it did 145 MPH with a 3-speed automatic. The number of gears below the top gear are immaterial in a top speed run, IE: you could have the exact same top speed in the same vehicle with a 4-spd as you would with a 10-spd if the top gear is the same. But what's really surprising is the number of people above, on a car enthusiast site, who never considered that dfelt's vehicle was modified. I would bet these same folk would be really shocked if they took a V6 Camry and went out & found a '69 GTO to race, and LOST.
- 25 replies
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- geneva
- geneva motor show
- 2019
- mercedes-amg
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• Budget is a good question, of course. I don't know the budget yet. • In my defense, the Multipla knows it's an uncool ostrich egg, the Ecosport thinks it's 'thporty' and good-looking. • Funny, was just talking with the wife the other day, suggesting she get another Mustang- she really liked the one she had before. It's possible.
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