Z-06

Although I agree with you that development should not be public about the product that is still conceptual and Honda did not make promises is a good point there are a few points you need to understand as to why GM thumped their chest. 1. Greenies view GM as an environment killer. Has a Honda dealership been destroyed by a Green Movement? Do people paint Kill Fridgeline on it? The movie who killed the electric car had GM as a villain not Honda. Like it or not GM has to sell its cars to the people who are part of these, either performing those actions by believing in what has been told. In short, GM had to convey people that it is changing perceptions. 2. All the times are speculations. Mercedes just showed off the battery with Li-Ion in a full production guise. I will not be surprised that MB, BMW and GM are working in sync for the Li-Ion technology just like the hybrid transmissions. 3. Another way to see is just like Lutz likes to play hard, by getting out in public he is forcing the company to meet or exceed the demands or get blown down and out forever. This may be a bold and brilliant strategy. Show fear in the eyes of the employees and the goods will be delivered. 4. I can understand about Chevy being boisterous in US, what about CPF's talk in Germany with Flextreme? They claimed it to be 50mpg. Do you think Europeans will believe in that BS? Considering the image Opel has, it would be a huge mistake.

There is no real reason for placement of the calipers. 9 o'clock or 3 o'clock is the norm because they are easy to package. Usually the car manufacturers optimize the placement for better space. You know how crowded it is getting there considering 4-6 pistons, adding cooling devices, etc.

It should not be overtly retro. Should have modern touches to it, just like the exterior. I am glad GM is working on it. The day is coming closer for its arrival.

Linkity The fourth TE to surface after 9-4 and Provoq. 2010 Chevrolet Equinox - Spied "Heeeeere, boy!" Chevy's version of GM's new crossover family jumps the fence. BY STEVE SILER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE SYZDEK FOR BRENDA PRIDDY AND COMPANY, CORIE AMSDEN, WADE RATZLAFF, AND AARON KILEY March 2008 A few months ago, we were there when the 2010 Cadillac BRX—an upcoming version of GM's TE family of crossovers that also includes the recently released Saturn Vue and the upcoming Saab 9-4X—was let out of the house for track testing. Now another of the TE platform-mates is not only out of the house but also out on the road, barking and chasing cars. Based on the pictures we just got from our spies, the 2010 Chevy Equinox appears to share its body-side stampings, wheelbase, and certain other key elements with the Cadillac. This prototype's front end appears to be darn close to that of the shorter-wheelbase Vue, although its thin bar in the middle of the grille—as opposed to a fat bar at the top of the grille—clearly gives this one away as a Chevy. The interior shot reveals interesting thick-rimmed gauge pods and silver trim around the HVAC registers—design elements we've not seen in Chevrolets before. Under the skin, little is known at this point. We expect that GM's 3.6-liter V-6 from the Vue will make it to the Chevrolet, and we half expect an SS version with a 300-plus-hp direct-injection V-6, as seen in the Cadillac CTS. We'll see what GM has done to address the Vue's pesky weight problem, something that prevents even the hybrid version from getting truly great fuel economy. But given that the current Equinox has provided the basis for a variety of alternative-fuel powerplant experiments, including a small fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell versions, we expect the next one will include not only a two-mode hybrid but also a plug-in hybrid and the next generation of hydrogen fuel-cell powerplants. Regardless of what it has beneath it, we like what we see so far. If Chevy can pull the same kind of coup for crossovers that it did in the sedan market with the Malibu, we predict more praise for the bow-tie division.

Those things come for a knockout prices. If I was in a market for a luxury vehicle a CPO Phaeton will be high on the list but with the W12. That 5500lb sled makes the 340hp V8 look anemic.

That will probably sit forever like the goats did.

Phaeton is an amazing piece of machinery. Too bad people here think it is a bloated VW. Because it is not. The car is more engineered than a S class or 7 er or A8. Americans care more for the looks and emotions rather than utility and thoughts. We had Chinese Christmas this year (the one where you bring 1/2 gifts per individual, draw numbers and pick and exchange gifts, pretty fun). I put two gifts, one packaged very nicely and had a junk broken toy and torn bicycle tire, the other was a $50 gift cert for Outback wrapped in a newspaper. No prizes for guessing which gift got chosen the most before it was even opened. People were flocking it, while the Gift cert laid there till the end.

Where have I read this before.... Right.... In the CTS-V thread. In the Acura RL thread. In the Lambda thread. In the BMW M3 thread. In the Chevrolet Malibu thread. In the Alpha thread. In the general rant thread. In the happy birthday to K.C. thread. Man am I having de-ja-vus?

The same can be said of the Caddy Escalade by general public. It is just a glorified GMT-900. Like O.C. mentioned it is the RL that is the tainted vehicle in Acura Lineup. TSX and TL are fine cars, and so is the MDX. I have reservations for the RDX for 1. it is not fun to drive as they portray it, and 2. it is expensive. (Sorry siegen I feel that it is $3-4k expensive) Acura's philosophy is more comfort and luxury for race. They are not raw speed oriented. But they get the business done. Frankly in daily driving with cruise set at 70 mph, a 505 hp car will do the same thing as a 200 hp FWD for most of Suzy Mcmansions, or Carlie Trailermacher, or Eddie Importhumper. Unfortunately that is where the 90-95% of US customer is. It is a 2 way street. US customers get the blandness and less performance because they ask for it. Priority is not to hear rattle, have gulpies of coke and water, be able to talk while on the phone. Not about handling the twisties, or pushing the car to the limits or running 0-60 in between the stop lights.

BV just to give a perspective. An average F1 race lasts for 300 miles, with about 60 laps. If the end difference for each lap is about 1 second, then the difference between two drivers is 60 seconds at the end of the race. Now if F1 GP was on the 'ring there would be about 20 laps, or about 260 seconds of difference. That is a lot. The average time between 1st and 2nd place in racing is 3-4 sec over the entire race. You are loosing 13 seconds in only one lap (may be three for a comparable F1 race i.e. 4 seconds per lap). That is a significant amount and the track length is irrelevant. A 260 seconds time means Schumacher can get out of his Ferrari, pee, get back and still manage to beat Fernando Alonso. Even the Le Mans is a long track (8.4 miles) and the Audi diesel had a 2 second advantage over other cars, which they called HUGE. Whatever you call, GM coolaid, or other's bashing. 13 seconds on the ring is not a small time gap.

Find a viable alternative, or let the entire America not drive for a week, or open the pants and take it in the cinnamon ring.

You are gonna be poked at soon.

Come on guys you are giving too much credit to Toy.

Nice one.

You mean smk4565 is not the best poster. That is unfair for him.

Will it have manual transmission? Umm probably not.

Good one Loki. Pecker Forester's dream come true.

Why isn't the SRX getting the DI?

Msy be the same cars running around in circles like Rommel did in Africa.

Linkity Americans Start to Curb Their Thirst for Gasoline By ANA CAMPOY March 3, 2008; Page A1 As crude-oil prices climb to historic highs, steep gasoline prices and the weak economy are beginning to curb Americans' gas-guzzling ways. In the past six weeks, the nation's gasoline consumption has fallen by an average 1.1% from year-earlier levels, according to weekly government data. That's the most sustained drop in demand in at least 16 years, except for the declines that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which temporarily knocked out a big chunk of the U.S. gasoline supply system. This time, however, there is evidence that Americans are changing their driving habits and lifestyles in ways that could lead to a long-term slowdown in their gasoline consumption. As supplies have outstripped demand, gasoline inventories have been on the rise for the past four months, reaching their highest levels since February 1994. Yet, in a sign of the growing disconnect between demand and the market, prices at the pump are being driven higher by a powerful rally in crude oil. Investors piling money into commodities as a refuge from inflation have helped push oil prices close to their inflation-adjusted record of $103.76 a barrel, set in 1980. On Thursday, oil closed at $102.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a new high in nominal terms, but slipped back 75 cents on Friday to settle at $101.84 a barrel. As refiners pay more for the oil they use, gasoline prices have gained sharply in recent weeks to an average of $3.13 a gallon in the week ended Feb. 25, up 40% from $2.24 a gallon in January 2007. That's stoking worries that prices will rise even more sharply as demand gets a boost from the approaching vacation season, when more Americans take to the road. Some experts predict gasoline could cost as much as $4 a gallon this summer. If oil prices pull gasoline higher in the current economic climate, Americans are likely to pare back consumption even more, which should help at least damp the rise in prices as refiners build up a safety margin against fears of supply disruptions, experts say. Of course, if the economy perks up, gasoline consumption could rise again. After softening between 1989 and 1991 as U.S. economic growth slowed, gasoline demand started to recover in 1992 and continued to expand until 2007, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, economists and industry executives say demand would be likely to grow at a slower pace than in the past as Americans gradually become more fuel-efficient. Economists and policy makers have puzzled for years over what it would take to curb Americans' ravenous appetite for fossil fuels. Now they appear to be getting an answer: sustained pain. Over the past five years, the climb in gasoline prices, driven largely by the run-up in crude oil, hardly seemed to dent the nation's growing thirst for the fuel. Conventional thinking held that consumption would begin to taper off when gasoline hit $3 a gallon. But $3 came and went in September 2005, and gasoline demand didn't flinch. Consumers complained about the cost of filling their tanks, pinched pennies by shopping at Wal-Mart, and kept driving. Economists who study the effects of gasoline prices on demand say consumers tend to look at short-term price spikes as an anomaly, and don't do much to change their habits. They might spend less elsewhere to compensate, or take short-term conservation measures they can easily reverse, such as driving slower or taking public transportation, but the impact is minimal. Regular gasoline prices jumped to $2.34 a gallon at the end of 2006, up 62% from 2003, according to the EIA. Yet demand continued to grow at an average 1.1% a year. Consumers were better able to absorb the increase because it was spread over four years, and the economy was doing fairly well. Today, a weakening economy is intensifying the effects of high gasoline prices, at the same time Americans are being pinched by broader inflation. In January, consumer prices were up 4.3% from a year earlier, a 16-year high, led by sharply rising food and energy costs. Even stripping out food and energy, the so-called core inflation rate was up 2.5% from the previous year, reflecting higher costs for purchases such as education and medical care. The combination of forces is prompting Americans to cut back on driving, sometimes taking public transportation instead. It's also setting the stage for what may be a long-term slowdown in gasoline demand by forcing Americans to become more fuel-efficient faster. "If you think about the fact that U.S. motorists are responsible for one out of nine barrels of oil consumed in the world...and that consumption is no longer growing the way it used to, that's a major structural change in the market," says Adam Robinson, analyst with Lehman Brothers. The longer gasoline prices remain high, the greater the potential consumer response. A 10% rise in gasoline prices reduces consumption by just 0.6% in the short term, but it can cut demand by about 4% if sustained over 15 or so years, according to studies compiled by the Congressional Budget Office. As consumers make major spending decisions, such as where to live and what kind of vehicle to drive, they are beginning to factor in the cost of fuel. Some are choosing smaller cars or hybrids, or are moving closer to their jobs to cut down on driving. Those changes effectively lock in lower gasoline consumption rates for the future, regardless of the state of the economy or the level of gasoline prices. Anne Heedt, of Clovis, Calif., has been moving toward a more fuel-efficient lifestyle for the past few years. She owns a Toyota Prius hybrid but takes her bike on errands when weather permits. "We're not always going to have the same accessibility to gasoline that we've had in past decades, so we do have to start thinking about what we're going to do over the next 50 years," said the 31-year-old Ms. Heedt, who used to work at a medical office but is between jobs. A weaker economy gets some of the credit for lessening demand. The EIA estimates that a 1% reduction in personal income cuts gasoline demand by 0.5% as consumers, along with truckers who deliver goods, cut back on driving, says Laurie Falter, an oil-industry economist at the agency. The nation's slumping housing market has magnified that effect. In past years, when the housing market was booming, consumers used home equity to finance spending, including the cost of filling their gas tanks, says Antoine Halff, an analyst with Newedge, the jointly owned brokerage arm of Société Générale and Crédit Agricole's Calyon unit. The housing boom encouraged the development of far-flung suburbs, contributing to longer commutes. Now developers are building more walkable neighborhoods close to city centers and public transit, and Americans are beginning to migrate back toward their workplaces, city planners and other experts say. David Hopper, who lives in the rural community of Markleville, Ind., is preparing to move to a new house in Plainfield, cutting his commute to Indianapolis to 15 miles from 47 miles. Mr. Hopper decided to move closer to the city last summer, when gas prices hit $3.40 a gallon in his area. "I'm expecting to save quite a bit," said the 52-year-old engineer. Not only will his new home be closer to his job, but to shopping and schools, which he calculates will save him 90 to 100 gallons of gasoline a month. Pinched consumers also are speeding up their shift to more fuel-efficient cars. Sales of large cars dropped by 2.6% in 2006 and by 10.5% in 2007. In January, they plummeted 26.5% from a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp. Car dealers are selling fewer minivans and large sport-utility vehicles. In fact, only small cars and smaller, more fuel-efficient SUVs, are showing a rise in sales. Small-car sales in January were up 6.5% from a year earlier, while sales of crossover vehicle grew 15.1%, Autodata Corp. says. Write to Ana Campoy at [email protected]

Linkity Regulators Look to Raise Bar On Vehicles' Roof Strength March 3, 2008 EYES ON THE ROAD By JOSEPH B. WHITE If you dropped a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta on its roof, and then did the same thing to a big, tough Dodge Ram pickup truck, which one would likely suffer less damage and do a better job protecting the passengers? The answer, based on a federal test of roof strength, is the Jetta. If that doesn't make sense to you, take comfort in the fact that you aren't alone. Since the early 1990s, car makers have dramatically improved the crashworthiness of the fronts, sides and rears of their cars, responding to the demands of consumers and regulators. But the strength of your vehicle's roof is governed by a standard that hasn't changed since Richard Nixon was in the White House. Despite years of pressure from safety advocates and insurers, the industry and regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have stuck with the same relatively lenient standard since September 1973. That looks like it's about to change. NHTSA in January proposed tougher roof strength standards and a more rigorous roof crush test that at least 75% of vehicles currently on the road would flunk if they were enacted tomorrow. What NHTSA will do could become clearer this summer after the agency digests comments on its proposal, which are due in mid-March. The pressure for change of the nearly 35-year-old roof crush standard will only increase. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety plans soon to release a report on roof crush safety and the group's president, Adrian Lund, says eventually the IIHS plans to add a roof crush test to its existing array of well-publicized front and side crash tests. How many lives would a requirement for stronger roofs in cars and trucks save? That's just one of the areas of dispute in this contentious corner of the vehicle safety debate. The government estimates it could be as few as 476 people a year. Or it could be more than 1,000 people a year. It depends on how you count and who you count. For consumers and lay people without engineering degrees, the roof crush issue is either a thicket of highly technical arguments, or a matter where the only question is why a common sense solution hasn't been ordered up. The current rules require that vehicles weighing 6,000 pounds or less have roof designs that can withstand a force equivalent to 1.5 times the vehicle's weight -- a measure known as a strength-to-weight ratio, without crushing in by more than 5 inches. Vehicles heavier than 6,000 pounds are exempted from the standard. That probably made sense in 1973, when passenger vehicles were virtually all cars. But in today's world, that standard effectively exempts the largest and heaviest pickups and sport utilities -- even though pickups and SUVs overall have higher tendencies to roll over than do sedans like the Jetta. NHTSA's proposal would boost the minimum strength to weight ratio to at least 2.5 times the vehicle's weight, although the agency is looking at a figure as high as 3.5 times the vehicle's weight. In addition, NHTSA is pondering a new test that would apply crushing force to two sides of the roof, instead of just one. Safety advocates and consumer groups have problems with the government's existing roof crush standard on several points. Exempting heavy vehicles is one. The minimum strength to weight ratio of 1.5 times the vehicle weight is another. The latest NHTSA proposal addresses both those complaints. NHTSA's testing method is a third point of controversy. NHTSA assesses roof strength by pushing a metal plate down on one side of the roof. Safety groups say a "dynamic" test -- in other words actually putting the vehicle through a rollover -- is the right way to measure a vehicle's ability to protect occupants in such a violent crash. But NHTSA so far isn't considering a dynamic test. Auto makers, individually and through the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, have evolved in their response to the roof crush issue over the years. For a time, some industry officials tried to argue that it wasn't roofs crushing in that hurt people. It was people, usually unbelted, hitting the roof that was the problem. Now, the Alliance has moved to a different posture. The industry group hasn't issued a formal comment on NHTSA's latest proposal. But in the past, the industry lobby has stressed that roof strength is just one of several factors important to avoiding death in rollover accidents. The industry should get credit for the wider use of electronic stability control, which helps to avoid the sideways skids that often lead to rollovers, the Alliance's past comments suggest. The Alliance emphasizes that if a more rigorous standard is adopted that the industry needs time to redesign vehicles to meet it, and some exemptions for certain types of vehicles that might never pass the test. Of concern are convertibles, not surprisingly, which NHTSA's proposal would exclude. The industry also wants separate standards for "low roof line vehicles" and vehicles such as the Jeep Wrangler, that are basically open body trucks. Auto makers warn that putting more steel in roofs will add cost and weight -- the latter problem compounded by the penalty exacted on fuel economy. NHTSA says that raising the strength-to-weight ratio of a Ford Explorer to 3.0 would add $33 to $35, and up to 23 pounds of weight. NHTSA has estimated that overall, raising the roof strength to weight ratio for all vehicles to 2.5 would add an average of $11 per vehicle, although costs would vary by model. The Alliance has argued the costs would be more -- in a range from $55 to $185 a car to meet the 2.5 ratio standard. This is a movie the auto industry has starred in before, quite reluctantly and painfully. It's true that in the car business, with margins that are narrow to non-existent, $55 to $185 a car is a serious issue for the bottom line. But it's also true that these sorts of cost benefit analyses never look good when weighed against the value of a life, as they often are in courts of law. In the meantime, anyone who wants a vehicle with a roof that meets or exceeds the proposed 2.5 strength to weight ratio in a one-sided roof crush test, NHTSA has provided a useful list in its proposed rule. (See the full proposal PDF) • Send comments about Eyes on the Road to [email protected]. NHTSA'S TOP PERFORMERS These vehicles performed the best is NHTSA's current roof test. Best car: VW Jetta (5.1) Best SUV: Volvo XC90. (4.6) Best pickup: Toyota Tacoma (4.4) Best Detroit brand: Ford 500 (Taurus) 3.9

No one would like to see jewels hidden under the kilt on a windy day really right? Is it a good enough rationale for a light comment? I think it is.

It was a dike fest in Daytona. What can you expect, bunch of dikes of different colors, enhancements, modifications, color being ridden.