balthazar

Including retro-fitting electric cars with gas engines?

I don't think it's xenophobia as much as it's a love for the history and the product as conceived. Looked at your link- wonder if the guy ever finished his silent, front wheel drive '46 truck. Wonder if he put a driveshaft into it, hung in a carrier bearing under the cab so it looks like the rear wheels are being powered? Wonder how long he's been going to AA?

I subscribed to this magazine when this cover/article hit in '96. That's a '60 Toyota with a ZZ3 SBC with a crossram EFI unit. The uproar nearly derailed the magazine. Subscribers mailed the torn up cover back to the offices. It wasn't the specs, wasn't even that it was a dumpy 4-dr with American-cribbed cues, it was simply an ideal out of step with it's market. Gotta know your market.

• Maybe someone will put an EV motor in a 2 million dollar Duesenberg Model SJ - toss that archaic supercharged inline 8 on the scrap heap. • The very term 'restoration' precludes an electric motor retro-fit. Even a otherwise correct but non-numbers matching engine in a collectible reduces it's value, a downgrade to a weaker/smaller IC engine is even worse. An electric motor in a -say- '69 Z/28 would be automotive murder and a tremendous financial loss. Electric motors need to stick to present & future vehicles, leave the past ones alone. 'Hot rodding' or modifying is another mindset- there pretty much anything goes... just don't expect huge levels of admiration, if that's what you're after. • GM crate engine pricing was due to come down as volume rises, just like many retail commodities. Look, for example at Buick- the last BBB 455 was built in 1976, yet there are 2 aftermarket blocks available today. There are numerous heads; Buick only offered Stage 1 and Stage 2 thru the factory, but the leading aftermarket BBB company is now developing a Stage 6 head, in addition to repro-ing the factory heads, and there are still other companies out there. • People need to keep the numbers in mind. EVs haven't remotely achieved what fidget spinners have yet (and those are already on the way out). Marketing & consumer trends moves much slower than people think.

Seen on the internet, not in person, but these threads need more pics :

'Becoming a hit'? It's the Subaru Baja all over again : dreadfully over wrought and covered in blistered cladding, with no actual usable cargo space. Baja lasted barely 4 years- this is the same exact formula.

Grungy but rust free '62 Pontiac full-size fender, for sale on the internet for $5,000. Rust free because it's one of GM's past examples of aluminum body panels; this is an NOS Super Duty fender.

Except that didn't work then, when pickups were far far far simpler.

I had clicked on this shot, guess it depends on the angle:

Concept had a definite RWD profile, but the camo'd version looks to be FWD-based. Other than that- nothing exciting in the shape, but how could there be?

I don't think that's a significant volume of consumers. Immaterial- there's no 'floaters' left. Still sold 17.1 million vehicles last year.

MB 38,000,000SEL

Oops- yeah: '46-64. In that it's January, I calculated thusly : 2017-1964 = 53 yrs old, or the AVERAGE new car buyer. Last car my grandfather bought, he was 90.

Baby boomers, loosely defined, are currently between 53 and 63 years old. Know what the average vehicle buyer age is? Know how many vehicles sold in the U.S. last year? And unless the average lifespan dropped by some 20 years, I'd hope they're not all 'winding down into the grave' all of a sudden. That would SLAUGHTER vehicle sales if it were true.

Apparently; gone are the days when taxpayer-funded vehicular purchases were mandated to be from domestic companies. The i3 isn't even built in one of BMW's US plants. And, as usual, Gov't employees have zero sense of who they work for or worry about losing their jobs for misappropriation. So it was a waste of taxpayer money to buy them, a waste of TM in the non-usage of them, and a waste of TM in the USE of them. The trifecta of Gov't; Waste, cubed.

Not seeing it either.

The German twins have long employed cut-rate lease numbers to net the value luxury shopper, as Cadillac's lease rates have frequently been called 'uncompetitive'. Will be interesting to see if this moves the needle.

I answered that on the 3rd post of this page. I don't think MB buyers are cross-shopping the GLA or GLC or GLE (I assume these are all actual models) with the G550. Shouldn't those who spend the most, at a staggering margin, be rewarded with the best the brand can offer?

Corvette Impala & Silverado aren't using the same body as they did in 1979 tho, do they?

Then you're still missing my point. It's way out of line with the face/message of the rest of the brand. It's like a weird adopted cousin with a wandering eye or something. I'd be OK with it if it were priced under the GLS. Which, BTW, as the 'G' version of the 'S', should be the flagship SUV. It's just out of whack when Daimler recently realigned everything to "make more sense", and I find myself highly confoosled, as no doubt many others are also. Highly. And smk has stressed it's the s-class that's the flagship, meanwhile ignoring the maybach and that the g-vagun is priced higher than the S-sedan, both highly significant factoids to our hardcore MB fanboi. I'm sure he knows best- just as he does for all GM's doings. I just don't happen to agree with him on this one.

The "all new" part that's missing is the part where it LOOKS remotely 'all new'. Wrangler isn't an uber-expensive brand flagship and doesn't pretend to be, yet is still has some features more modern than the G-vagun. G-vagun should represent the pinnacle of brand product development, yet it represents the absolute antithesis of that. Imagine if the Escalade was "all new" yet looked basically indistinguishable from the '99 in 2018. Because.

But you get the sentiment being expressed here, yes? That the G desperately needs a redesign to bring it into the current century? Designs can be scaled easily- not a major hurdle.

^ That's a pretty blatant attempt to coin a phrase. I could get behind the narrative tho, but the author instills way too much of the spoon-fed hype on the Model 3 to be taken objectively.

Commonly called 'Mansfield Bars'- as they were developed because of this accident.