balthazar

Hope to hell anything in the sub-compact 'XT1' category is wisely canceled. What is the breakout of last gen SRX FWD vs. AWD, and same question for the XT5. I would think the majority of both were AWD (and growing). In the CUV segment, drive wheels don't seem to make an impact one way or another.

Late '80s Dodge ram shortbed, mottled & fading yellows, minor rust, no tailgate, chain perhaps zip-tied to hitch hole in bumper and dangling about 1 inch from road, cobbled together rack in the front of the bed with the spare sitting vertical, some tie-down straps, jumper cables- his whole 'road service' collection, and the topper: crudely hand-cut 'Rat Fink' logo spray-painted in black on the doors.

Buick ran high speed endurance tests @ Daytona in 1960, averaging 120 MPH for 10,000 miles. Part of that accomplishment was due to 'in-flight' refueling. At speeds up to 130 MPH, the car took 15 gallons every half hour. Fuel dispensing, under pressure, took 6 seconds.

If I had mad money, I wouldn't even consider a ferrari or Lambo or whatever. I would have a custom builder make me something unique. Like this :

Nothing in here for me.

Underseat storage & rear leg room in the ext cab looks pathetic & unusable. Diesel option has same power figures Duramax did in 2004 (ya: 6.6L vs. 5.0L. Still). While it's certainly competent, it's not going to gain many converts (I realize this is a light duty truck; "filling the niche between 1/2-ton & 3/4-ton" prose not withstanding).

It's not ugly and it's not beautiful; it's just another oh-so-mild variation of a dozen other vehicles already out. NO ONE is making major market inroads (Alfa : "quadruple production") based on design alone anymore, which is the only potential left, as everyone is competitive (within segment) on specifications. Alfa has huge baggage in the U.S. that remains to be seen of it can be dropped and sell some vehicles… or not.

So gorgeous on Sabre Spokes (plus A/C)!

'97 E350 (the Ford, not mercedes). It was as bad as it looked: outer bearing had catastrophic failure, cage was all bent up, dust cap was inside the hubcap and there were no rollers to be seen. Rollers must've done so much tossing & turning inside the hub that they enlarged the rotors' hub to much it wouldn't take a new race but the spindle was fine with a bit of touch-up. I'm really not sure what happened; never saw something like this before. So; replaced the rotor, bearings and dust cap. Seems good now.

Well… that's Mercedes for you. Frankly, those buttons were too clunky IMO- I always thought centered & hidden lock cylinders were the more graceful treatment.

• Battery cables & shut-off switch done, terminals cleaned & cables tightened down. Tested switch and it's a-workin'.

didn't a number of Euro cars have that trunk pushbutton; you could lock it w the key, or unlock it & pop it w the button?

Oh BOY; I can't WAIT to work on this mess on Wednesday (at least it's supposed to be like 56 out) :

'60s International pickup, a bit rough but still on the road. Other than that I haven't seen anything interesting in a long while. That alone is going to force me to put the COE on the road.

But they WANT to, and desperately. Rolls doesn't own BMW, it's the other way around. How Daimler possibly resisted branding the smart as a Mercedes would be a fascinating look at management teetering on the edge.

Why not stick to car talk in car talk thread segments. Trying to tie politics to automotive preferences is beyond ridiculous.

'Sales' is not the 'luxury game'. That's the 'mainstream game'.

The cars pictured above were a 500CI and a 425CI, respectively. No Caddys with the 305...

People don't trade up within brands, that's a fallacy.

So. Much. ROOM! front hip room : 66" front leg room : 44.6"

Tech question inserted here ~ On all or most AWD cars, are these systems on all the time or can some of them be switched off? Saw a mashed benz being towed down the highway and the front wheels (up on the tow truck sling) were spinning at highway speeds.

BMW has been in a downward sales spiral for over a year. Their vehicles are beyond stylistically tired, and they've wasted too much time with unappealing niche variants. Time will tell if they can gain direction & turn things around, but here's another month of very lackluster numbers. The CLA-GLA are mercedes, and being purchased privately, those people are now part of the mercedes customer base- like it or not. Accord-tier consumers- nice. As the upper series cars stagnate, the middle series cars & low-end cheapies do relatively well, the 'customer base' shifts downward in the 'checkbook spectrum'. Especially in the relative numbers these 'get em while they're cheep!' models sell. The question is, if sales continue to crash, will Daimler dump them and just wring better MPG out of the core models instead?

It's not a dis; it's the cold truth. There's no QUESTION Benz is mainstream- the only brands in the U.S. selling stripped refrigerator white cargo vans RIGHT NEXT to $100K plus vehicles is Benz and Chevy. They could have put up a 'perception wall' and called these cheap black plastic clad work boxes, you know; Freightliner, like they started out being but no; HAD to ride the image coattails, which only muddies the perception of the rest of the brand. ALL THEY DID was change the emblem- it's the penultimate 'badge-engineered' vehicle. Thank God Cadillac has no plans on a Crest-adorned Chevy/Nissan cargo van. {shudder}

Looks like the 'bloom is off the daisy' on the FWD "cheap mercedes" experiment. 56% drop is horrific- time for major incentives. GLA sales also took a huge drop in a expanding market. This is why any 'sub-ATS / XT2' talk is pure nonsense; this level of car cannot be built to the image of a luxury brand. The value humpers swoop in for the badge and once that market is saturated, there's only a trickle outside that.