balthazar

'Das Auto' = 'the car' = 'Pontiac is car'. Fahrv..... did work well however.

But that's dumbing your entire identification system down to the LCD- who wants to do that?? The vast majority of consumers have no earthly idea what a E350 is, more probably identify it as a cube van than a mercedees 4-dr. No manufacturer should bend over to the clueless. So some don't know what it is by the moniker alone in conversation, either they learn these things or continue to look stupid.

>>"the 3rd letter does nothing to tell you if it is a car, CUV, SUV, Hybrid, Truck etc."<< No; I reject this overly-simplistic system. Rampant homogenization is draining the last shreds of soul out of automobiles. If a person can't look at an SUV and tell it's an SUV without reading a code letter, screw 'em. And as for more & more OEMs stuffing engine liters into vehicle 'names', screw their lack of creativity.

I have no problem if there was ONE 'MK-' name, but when they're all of the same ilk, bleck. I agree that the MKZ (I had to googleimage it to see if I was referencing the right one) is distinctive and expressive. I just saw that 'self-steer' vid- the techies will eat it up but all it will do is enable texting while driving. Well, if a grandchild was driving their grandparent's car, that is.

Got a chance today to look over a '98 S-class mercedees. It was a S320, so a 6-banger. Some folk gush on & on about how "class leading" this car is supposed to be, but what a sackful of Lie that is. Cheap, chintzy & low-rent inside; cheap plastics, the piece that wraps around the lower seat cushion is too close to the cushion, and it was all cracked & broken from getting in & out. Seat tracks are exposed. Most of the buttons were black plastic, set in plastic wood on the console. They weren't all even spaced, either- looked haphazard. The gauges were as plain & generic as in a '80s econobox. It had a tumescent carpeted horizontal bulge running below the dash, impeding knee room greatly- assumedly it was covering some low-hanging dash guts, but it was intrusive & weird. Headlight switch was clunky. No sensation of any design effort whatsoever. Had a decent headliner tho. I keep waiting for popular hype around a given vehicle to come remotely close to being realistic.

Journey is a truly awful suggestion. Awful in the '80s when they were current, awful in hindsight. Unfortunately for your suggestion, the widest- appeal music these days is sugary pop crapola, but it speaks to a demographic 40 years away (on average) from purchasing a new car. • • • IMO, taglines are vastly over-weighted. They change too often, and frankly they've all just about been done already. 100+ years and hundreds of brands later, and there's no new message to tell (not to mention they're all forced, anyway). Auto makers should definitely forgo issuing press releases about them, they're just not newsworthy.

A Corvette-coded 454/trans is definitely worth money. It's all rebuildable.

How the structural steel / frame seem- any initial flash rust already? How about along sheet metal seams?

No doubt IMO, at the onset of when CAFE did hit, the degree of change would've been very big from where it went. At this point tho, 2013, I think the paths would've converged pretty close to where we are now.

Quest reminds me of some sort of ultrasonic medical wand. but it doesn't repulse me. Spark, cube & juke do.

Sprinter is gaining fast on the (stupidly named) gl- and glk-, at this pace a stripped-down, cheesy, refridgerator-white cargo van will be the 'truck face' of mercedees.

She seems blissfully unaware that... its a kia. And is there any chance in hell a 14-yr old kia is worth 8425... or is that 84.25?

'55 Bel Air 2-dr post, big project, rotted floor & door bottoms, black primer, asking $5000. '70 Chevelle SS convertible, fresh restoration, 396/auto, triple black, gorgeous, except..... it had been trailered and got flipped- entire body was mashed & crunched. I think other than a few exterior bits, you might get the seats, some of the dash, factory rims & the powertrain/frame out of it. It's available for $4K.

>>"And let's remember a 2004 Corvette had 350 hp, a V6 in 2014 could make that easily."<< But the base car now has 430; 350 is a major drop down as a base car. A lot will look at that as a backwards move / cheapening, not a move forward. As for 'hasn't hurt the gt-r', gt-r only sold around 1200 units in '12 and the next gen program had not been green-lit yet. It may get its v6 lard-ass killed. Of course, only you would equate a singular cause to that.

Everything between the wheels, stylistically is fine (if nothing special), but the front & rear clips needed a redo in 2007, and here it is, rotten on the vine 7 years later. Add in being vastly overpriced and it's little wonder "no one buys them". Slash 20K off the sticker (incentives aside) and giving shoppers something stylistically that says something UNIQUE may finally work here, and stop the few people who DO buy from turning on their heel come trade-in time. Jag HAS to find a way to retain past customers.

PM sent.

Shadow looks a bit dicey around the driver frt tire.... Delta- that black RC/LB looks fantastic- that would be my vote, too.

^ It's always heartwarming to witness someone falling in love. It'd have to be a long-bed for me, I don't understand short beds. That said, I have a 'short bed +' (6.5')

I worked on the above project thru until about June '12, then dropped it for a while. I made good progress tho. In the meanwhile, a server dump lost everything, so I had to start from scratch re-posting my findings to the same forum (once restored). Now at least I take screenshots of every post. I just started back on this project within the past week, when last night I was contacted by an individual who's been researching the topic for 30 years. He says he has stacks of information, much rare, much previously unseen, and has invited me on a road trip to view his collection & 'talk shop'. Apparently, my 'new facts' on the topic were new to him. I would LOVE to take this trip, but it's not financially prudent. Round trip by air it's $550, by car its 2000 miles. This sucks.

Interesting mix up front on the W/T : satin black, matte black and matte grey. Overall, a nice blocky trucky truck !

Not a diehard Corvette fan, but I'm not aware of "bad press" due to the current engine. Any negative commentary WRT having an IBC withers immediately in the face of its performance, so those are NOT remotely potential Corvette buyers, just stone-throwers; their minds are not going to be changed. Also not aware that the Corevtte's 'survival' in in question. There was a LOT more weight to bad press for the Corvette in the late '70s, when it had 180 HP and couldn't get out of its own way. Today it's nothing but semantics.

Corvette is a halo car, a world-class aspirational performance icon. Leave 'expanding the sales numbers' to the Cruze/Spark/etc vehicles. Corvette management must NEVER place sales as a priority. It did; when Chevrolet had no V8 to offer. I won't say 'it wasn't competitive' because there almost was none, but it certainly didn't perform like the sports car it was fashioned as, until the 8 arrived.

wildmanjoe ~ >>"The low pro's nowadays already let the driver feel every bump, dip and dead prostitute in the road, so ride couldn't be that much worse."<< True; a byproduct of short stiff sidewalls. However, all the rags want to preach about is hhaannddlliinngg, as if econoboxes are carving canyons at 2AM X-mas night instead of slogging thru rush-hour at an average speed of 30 MPH. >>"I see WRX's with tall and skinny tires driving around here in the winter from time to time as well."<< You see WRX's like THAT driving around? Natch; that's a singular-purpose tire (traction in snow/ice), it has zero business in real world commuter conditions. Aren't a lot of them steel-studded, too? >>"Even if the tires were wide, a taller one would mean fewer revolution per mile and better mileage, at least in theory, plus the advantage of the car not looking like a pregnant rollerskate."<< Now we're talking about lesser distinctions. A '12 honda Fit "Sport" wears 185/55 R16s, which are 24.0" tall. If it were a -say- 185/75R16, it would increase to 26.9" tall. What this does effectively is reduce the final drive ratio, making the vehicle accelerate slower. The previous tire change would reduce a -say- 3.25 gear to 2.89. Now you have to swap gears to retain the original acceleration rates, which decreases MPG in gears below 1:1 / OD. On top of that, a 75-series tire here will only set the rag jockeys a-moaning and a-whining about the hhaannddlliinngg (the taller tire will also be heavier, increasing unsprung weight, also affecting handling). Compromises. Rims on average have of course gotten taller & taller over the last couple decades. Overall tire heights have conversely gone down quite a bit. A 1960's 8.25x15 equates to a 205/80R15, which is 27.9". I don't believe that's at all commonplace on cars today- a LaCrosse for example wears 235/50R17s : 26.25" tall. All that aside, I get your point; you're wondering on getting narrower tires on the smaller cars, instead of the mini-steamrollers the "Sport" models often have. I could see that as long as overall heights didn't move much- so they'd have to get narrower. THAT WAY, they'd be lighter, have lower rolling & wind resistances, and retain all performance stats. Handling at 75% & above would decrease, but not as much as the above scenarios I posted. At this level of distinction, I believe it boils down to marketing/perception ("fat tires look cooler/handle better").

Those purpose-built MPG rigs have 1 goal only- MPG. Ride comfort, traction, handling, etc doesn't even make the list. Besides, low-profile rubber band tires are considered 'sporty'; tall skinny tires look cheap/puny. You knew all this, tho, WMJ. BTW, the Fit wears 16"ers, the Isetta wears 10"ers. Even as a vintage guy, both seem appropriate here. Isetta is what; one-third the size of the fit?

wow, that is pretty... weird. Conceptually it's interesting, but that concept is beyond BMW to pull off. I only remember the 'neon' grille; that I like. I thought that whole 'my rims are 3" too wide for my tires" thing was already dead. Looks like an accident waiting to happen.