A Horse With No Name

I agree....it is Sweet! And BMW needs the competition, IMHO they are loosing their edge....

The Chrysler Norseman showcar that went down on the Andria Doria...does anyone know if they got pics (the divers) when they found the car? Also, I read something about them finding the car on the Titanic when they were exploring the inside of the wreck, did anyone read anything about this? Just Curious if anyone has info....

That sucks! ...and nice to see you around a little bit...everything okay?

I think you've got it....

Driver swerves to avoid moose, hits bear instead Motorist escapes uninjured but animal is wounded OSLO, Norway — A Norwegian driver who swerved his car on a rural road to avoid running into a moose hit a bear instead, authorities said on Thursday. The driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225 kilometers (140 miles) north of Oslo, around midnight on Wednesday, and tried to go around the animal, not realizing that a bear was also nearby. "The driver had lost a bit of speed as he tried to avoid the moose before hitting the bear," said Svein Erik Bjorke of the local wildlife authority, who was out in the forest searching for the wounded animal. "We are currently tracking the bear and we have found traces of blood indicating internal injuries," he said. The driver escaped uninjured while his car suffered some damage. Norway's rugged mountains are sparsely populated and full of wildlife. The country, nearly the size of Germany but home to just 5 million people, has around 100,000 moose and 150 brown bears, authorities said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48692851.../#.UC5jG6DE2Dk

I love how they tow. My son worked for a landscaping company earlier this summer, and that thing will pull a trailer with a backhoe like nobody's bidness...

It is sharp, and I am glad your reviewing the AWD version. From what I hear the AWD system in this car is just fantastic, and I am really looking forward to future input on how you like it. I know why they do it (separate emissions certification) but I wish they didn't have CVT only with the AWD. Interested to know how you like the CVT also, I have heard the Suzuki CVT is much nicer than the Nissan CVT.

I think you hit on the real point here, it's not a sport sedan, it is merely sporty. It's much slower than a GTI when pushed hard, the GTI is tuned much more like a pure sports car, and as such, my money would be ( and may be shortly in the future) on a GTI. I think it's a much more mature sporty car than the Focus ST, but I would like to see the Focus ST go back to back with the Jetta GLI, as I think it is a more direct competitor than the GTI. ST and GLI both seem more mass market, which isn't a bad thing. Keep us posted, and sweet car, loved your review, very well written.

Answer me this then Dwight, why did Ford go to OHC for their V8's...? New Ford Ecoboost is getting rave reviews from my racing buddies who use them to tow with and my blue collar buddies who use them to work out of. Curious to see what GM does!

Does this element exist outside of Ohio? I'm pretty sure we have a wroldwide monopoly on Moron production here.... thanks for the link, Z!

When the green flag drops, the bull$h! stops.....

I didn't post this to stir crap, but to point out how far we have to come... And yeah, I was kind of disgusted reading it myself....

...which is kind of the way thing seem to be going with things like Truecar, where you can get the average fair price per transaction. Interesting take on things, reg....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoo...kruptcy-again/ From the article: President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That's good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market. Right now, the federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26% of the company. It would need to get about $53.00/share for these to break even on the bailout, but the stock closed at only $20.21/share on Tuesday. This left the government holding $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion. Right now, the government's GM stock is worth about 39% less than it was on November 17, 2010, when the company went public at $33.00/share. However, during the intervening time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by almost 20%, so GM shares have lost 49% of their value relative to the Dow. It's doubtful that the Obama administration would attempt to sell off the government's massive position in GM while the stock price is falling. It would be too embarrassing politically. Accordingly, if GM shares continue to decline, it is likely that Obama would ride the stock down to zero. GM is unlikely to hit the wall before the election, but, given current trends, the company could easily do so again before the end of a second Obama term. In the 1960s, GM averaged a 48.3% share of the U.S. car and truck market. For the first 7 months of 2012, their market share was 18.0%, down from 20.0% for the same period in 2011. With a loss of market share comes a loss of relative cost-competitiveness. There is only so much market share that GM can lose before it would no longer have the resources to attempt to recover. To help understand why GM keeps losing market share, let's look at the saga of the Chevy Malibu. The Malibu is GM's entry in the automobile market's ' D-Segment'. The D-Segment comprises mid-size, popularly priced, family sedans, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. The D-Segment accounted for 14.7% of the total U.S. vehicle market in 2011, and 21.3% during the first 7 months of 2012. Because the D-Segment is the highest volume single vehicle class in the U.S., and the U.S. is GM's home market, it is difficult to imagine how GM could survive long term unless it can profitably develop, manufacture, and market a vehicle that can hold its own in the D-Segment. This is true not only because of the revenue potential of the D-Segment, but also because of what an also-ran Malibu would say about GM's ability to execute at this time in its history. GM is in the process of introducing a totally redesigned 2013 Chevy Malibu. It will compete in the D-Segment with, among others, the following: the Ford Fusion (totally redesigned for 2013); the Honda Accord (totally redesigned for 2013); the Hyundai Sonata (totally redesigned for 2011); the Nissan Altima (totally redesigned for 2013); the Toyota Camry (refreshed for 2013); and the Volkswagen Passat (totally redesigned for 2012). Automobile technology is progressing so fast that the best vehicle in a given segment is usually just the newest design in that segment. Accordingly, if a car company comes out with a new, completely redesigned vehicle, it had better be superior to the older models being offered by its competitors. If it is not, the company will spend the next five years (the usual time between major redesigns in this segment) losing market share and/or offering costly 'incentives' to 'move the metal'. Uh-oh. At this point, it appears that the 2013 Malibu is not only inferior to the 2012 Volkswagen Passat, it's not even as good as the car it replaces, the 2012 Chevy Malibu. If you follow the automobile enthusiast press, you know that, under the leadership of then product czar Bob Lutz, GM went all out to develop a competitive D-Segment car for the 2008 model year. The result was the 2008 Chevy Malibu, which managed to get itself named by Car and Driver magazine as one of the '10 Best Cars' for 2008. However, when tested head to head against six other D-Segment sedans in the March 2008 issue of Car and Driver, the 2008 Malibu came in third, behind the Honda Accord and the Nissan Altima. Adjusted to the points scale that Car and Driver uses today, the 2008 Malibu scored 187 points, 6% lower than the winning 2008 Honda Accord's 198 points. Still, third was a respectable showing. The previous generation of the Malibu, a darling of rental car fleets, would have come in dead last in any D-Segment comparison test. Acknowledging the importance of the D-Segment to the company' s future, GM's CEO, Dan Akerson, ordered that the introduction of the redesigned 2013 Chevy Malibu be advanced by six months, from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2012. In their March 2012 issue, Car and Driver published another D-Segment comparison test, pitting the 2013 Chevy Malibu Eco against five competing vehicles. This time, the Malibu came in dead last. Not only was the 2013 Malibu (183 points) crushed by the winning 2012 Volkswagen Passat (211 points), it was soundly beaten by the 2012 Honda Accord (198 points), a 5-model-year-old design due for replacement this fall. Worst of all, the 2013 Malibu scored (and placed) lower than the 2008 Malibu would have in the same test.

You and I would both end up in jail...that guy was incredibly lucky not to get busted....

Dude...you need to meet some of the people in the "ricer" part of the import community. You would swear that someone wrote instructions in either crayon or lipstick on their naked parents so they would remember how to conceive a child and bring it into this world.

Depends on what you want the car to do, for some forms of rallying and for rallycross, it is a fantastic car. To each his own...I just thought the billboard was funny.

I love this era of trucks properly fixed up though...GM built some GREAT trucks in that era!

Wicked cool, and lots more courage than I will ever have....

I agree with you... except if you're parking in NYC (or another VERY tight metro), the dumb Smart seats a big guy better than a Cruze or Malibu and parks anywhere at a fraction of the hassle... and suddenly makes sense. I can understand it in that situation, and even though I like small cars, the A segment cars like Scion IQ, Smart, Fiat 500 are too small in my book.

Welcome to the site, I just passed on a similar BMW that was much nicer, but much more expensive. Good luck getting her back on the road, and if your ever near Ohio I know of a couple of possible parts cars for the BMW...if the guy didn't crush the parts cars yet. Love the Iroc, BTW... Enjoy the site!