Drew Dowdell

4 hours ago, G. David Felt said:

Since there is no mention from Toyota about a 2027 Grand Highlander, the dealerships have indicated it is dead and that would be on par with the released information where the 2027 Highlander is equal in length with a longer wheelbase than the Grand Highlander.

The Highlander EV has a longer wheelbase, contributing to its larger interior dimensions. The Highlander EV is designed to be a spacious and comfortable vehicle, with the ability to accommodate up to eight passengers, including adults in the third row. The Grand Highlander, on the other hand, offers more cargo capacity and a more traditional SUV design, making it suitable for those who prefer a larger vehicle with more space for cargo than passengers. Per Toyota press release.

I would not be surprised to see them produce the Grand Highlander for 2026 and kill it since no 2027 model has been announced. This lets the 2027 Highlander EV take over since it is a 3 row EV with adults in the third row unlike the current Grand Highlander that is kids only in the 3rd row.

Kia EV9 and Hyundai Ioniq 9 are clearly direct competitors for this. Yet with the Toyota Name, I expect many will make the jump to the Highlander EV.

"For 2027, if customers would like battery electric, we have the Highlander, and if they prefer gas, hybrid or hybrid Max, we have the Grand Highlander," a Toyota spokesperson confirmed at an event in Ojai, California, on Tuesday.

The Heated Rivalry series has buried deep into my brain. The music causes feelings because I associate it with scenes in the show.  This playlist has been on repeat for basically 2 months.

8 minutes ago, G. David Felt said:

Interesting observation is that before the 2027 EV launch of this Highlander, Toyota used to have the 2 row Highlander and then you paid more for the 3 row Grand Highlander. 

One Highlander to replace two and yet dealerships here in the PNW have raised prices on the few remaining Grand Highlanders for those that want a Gas-powered Hybrid over EV.

I have some family friends who were planning to get a Grand Highlander later this year and are now moving up their timeline as they are not comfortable to go EV yet even with the rang that the 2027 Highlander has.

One benefit is that Toyota has NOT really changed the Grand Highlander for the last 3 years, so buying a certified used with low miles does save over taking the depreciation hit.

Interesting observation is that in the PNW, I find plenty of 2026 and 2025 already certified used with miles of 1,000 to 13,000 miles as about a $20,000 discount which is very interesting to me and makes me wonder what the real story is on these used certified models.

My understanding is the Grand will continue for a while as the gas powered option.

That said, I kinda like this based on pics, but it depends on the interior quality which has been lacking in Toyotas lately. It's got the range required. 

15 hours ago, G. David Felt said:

Will be interesting to see how or if this comes about.

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

www.NotGonnaHappen.com

Maybe eventually but certainly not in 18 months. I’m seeing a lot of resistance to AI due to the costs involved. Plus, corporate data is so messy. Feeding messy data to AI is just asking for bad results. It will take years to clean up the data and maybe AI can help with that, but unless you’re starting a company today and building it with AI from the start and actually have AI super experts running things, it’s likely your data is too messy to use in AI right now.

One of my clients is in a conversion away from paper and struggling with it. They’re not going to AI anytime soon. We won’t even be done the paper conversion until early 2028.

19 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

True.

But isnt there an entity that needs to actually and officially put a stamp of approval on them?

Doesnt that also take time?  If safety of the people takes precedence over money...  Ha ha ha!!! 

 Im sure, like you said, nothing major will be of issue and minimal changes, if any required. 

You're talking about homogalation:

Quote

Homologation is the granting of approval by an official authority based on rules or standards. It can apply to products, court actions, sports, and academic degrees. Learn more about homologation reactions, homologation specials, and homologation in Olympics.

16 minutes ago, oldshurst442 said:

It is quite sad.  But it is a story long in the making. Decades in the making.  One reason would be of the downsizing of vehicles back in the 1970s. Another would be CAFE and the omission to include trucks in the strict CAFE emissions requirements as they did with cars.    Yada yada yada...   

I am quite accepting of this reality.  I have no (individual) power to reverse the SUV/CUV  trend as the choice of transportation.  The masses have spoken and continue to speak that they want this brand of vehicle as their daily driver needs.  Therefore, I have but no choice and to accept this reality.   

But in the Canadian market, there is a small but happy moment for sedan options.  In the EV sector.  I do not know what Chinese EVs we will be getting shortly, and if Chinese marketers are smart, they would be offering MORE of their SUVs/CUVs than they will be their sedans, because Canadians too, are on this SUV/CUV train,  but they would also be smart if they would offer their best (affordable) sedans to compete directly with Tesla sedans (models 3 and S) to see what Canadians really want to buy.  Because the Model 3, in Canada, is a good seller bucking SUV/CUV sales trends.

Therefore, in my market, the Canadian market, thanks to donald, I, Canadians,  will probably be getting slightly more sedan options than what we have now in the very near future.  Like sometime in 2026 before the year is up. 

I don't think you'll be getting them this year as nice as the option sounds. It takes time to set up a distribution channel and dealership network even if they're manufacturer owned stores. Genesis has been building a new dealership near me for nearly a year, at the moment they live in an old VW dealer.

On 6/13/2025 at 11:51 AM, G. David Felt said:

Be interesting to see what the subprime move to since as I posted above, pretty much all but two are dead after this year.

Camry - Yes still in production

Accord - Yes still in production

K5 - Refreshed 2026 version shown in Korea, but Kia has not following the death of the Stinger in the U.S. stated if after 2025 it will get updated or end of life.

Legacy - 2025 last year, end of production this summer

Altima - 2025 last year, production ends this summer

Sonata - Dead

Malibu - Dead

Isn't it sad? You now have as many mid-size family sedan choices as you have minivan choices (not counting EV sedans).

Camry - Accord - Sonata - K5
Sienna - Odyssey - Pacifica - Carnival

I feel like they've finally fixed their design language with this, though its almost a new round of neo-retro like we had in the early 2000s with the PT Cruiser, Neu Beetle, HHR, etc.

1 minute ago, oldshurst442 said:

Easy peasy.

I started with Range Rover and like you...negative.

But then I went down the Land Rover family from the 2015s. I did Discovery and said yikes...not even close. But I pressed on.  I got to this:

And then I said...woah...that is close...so I then decided to continue on sleuthing with Land Rover and went further down the years  at around the 2010 mark

And then I got this and said:

BINGO!!!

https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/163-2010-land-rover-lr2-photo-gallery/photos

LR2  from the 2010 era:

Thank you!  At least it was the right brand. 

Hey guys, see if you can figure this one out. Cannonically this is supposed to be to be a Range Rover in the story. It’s clearly not a Range Rover.

I looked at Pathfinder, Armada, some Fords and can’t figure out what it is. Should be something circa 2015 or earlier. The hazard button is in an odd place right under the screen and it looks like it has a speaker above the screen. There’s also clearly a CD player.

On 1/2/2026 at 1:07 AM, Olds Guy said:

Hmm... so it won't let delete happen?

What’s up? Need help?

On 12/23/2025 at 2:13 PM, trinacriabob said:

I once read that really, really rich people whose lives and occupations aren't really in the public eye can be understated and drive simpler cars and/or keep them for a long time.  Rich people like that also tend to be a lot nicer.

It's also an old money / new money thing.  New money goes for bling. Old money is fine with an older Benz e-class wagon, or a Toyota Land Cruiser. But even celebrities often have blend-in cars, basic old Prius or something to go out in under cover.

18 hours ago, G. David Felt said:

One would hope the site software could tell you more details on the type of bots that are attacking the site and why. That is very weird. 

It looks like they're scraper bots.  They don't seem to be doing anything except crawling the whole site.

This is really annoying. I noticed yesterday that traffic on the site was exponentially high.  Turns out we were getting crawled by apparently all of China.

I had to use Cloudfare to block the entire country because there was no pattern of repeats in the IP addresses.  You can see where I installed the rule. That's 80k hits in about 18 hours. Before discovering this, we were getting 500k hits per day, super high for this site.  There are still some getting through from Hong Kong, but not nearly the same volume.  Def something going on as the other countries surrounding China are also hitting.

10 hours ago, trinacriabob said:

Random thought ... to vent:

I was accidentally lax with a phone camera setting and then I happened to see that a big chunk of photos were in heic files.  I have had to copy them from my laptop back to my phone, where I have the feature to save them as jpeg files.

It's super boring, but I'm almost done with it.

It's probably a bit late, but there is a $0.99 plug-in on the Windows Store from Microsoft that lets your computer read HEIC files and do any conversions locally on your computer. I bought it a few years back to avoid that kind of hassle.  Once you have that, I have used Irfanview for 25 years to do batch photo conversions and with the Windows plug-in, should be able to convert HEIC files to jpeg for you.  

2 hours ago, trinacriabob said:

Today - depending on the time zone - marks

20 YEARS

that I have been on C&G.

It seems to have gone in chapters:

First 3 years:

Needed a new car, the LaCrosse was being released, and I was weighing the options, including test driving.  Some of you will remember one ghastly initial design for the LaCrosse the Bob Lutz threw the book at the design staff for. 

Next 15 years:

Owning the car, reporting on it, and driving other cars while on vacation, not to mention a lot of fighting with ocnblu ... which was hard to avoid!

Last 2 years:

NO car ... living on 2 continents ... (I would have never imagined this) ... renting cars as needed.  There's a lot more to this decision than deciding between a LaCrosse, a Grand Prix, and a Monte Carlo.  

Sure has been a while.  We're about to head into our 25th year!

1 hour ago, oldshurst442 said:

The wing is just dumb.  The hood scoops are functional. Ram air.  

 

They may be functional, but they still look silly. The ones on the one @G. David Felt posted look better.

Just now, Robert Hall said:

As far as modern wagons go, I found the recent Volvo V90 quite attractive. 

I almost posted that first, but we only got the cross country here unless you special ordered one

2 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

Yeah...it has funky designs on it. 

I like the designs on it because I like muscle cars. Classic or modern muscle cars have got all kinds of boy racer features on them.  Racing stripes.  Decals in forms of hockey sticks or stripes going alongside the sides of the car.  Fender flares. Wings and/or spoilers and 'aerodynamic' extended body panels...

An Audi A6 is kinda like a muscle car.   This particular one plays the part with the  V8 engine under the hood of its mid-sized body.  And...its a homologation trimmed car. With the aforementioned spoilers and wings and its homologation racing stripes and colours schemes on its lower body panel 'aerodynamic' bits.  

Its childish and immature and I LOVE it!!!  

Its kinda spiritual torch bearer to these:

 

Obviously the Audi is a wagon... but you get the idea. 

yeah, but I could totally get into one of those as a wagon.

(minus the silly wing and hood scoops)

19 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

I like this one even more than the CTS V  wagon

With that colour scheme of this year 2025. 

 

 

The 2026 I believe has a refreshed face.  Keeps its V8.   But is a hybrid?  Anyway, I love this wagon and I will probably love it still for 2026. 

Call me old fashioned, but as much as I like two-tone exteriors, I don't like all those colors and stripes.  Looks like a basketball shoe.

6 minutes ago, smk4565 said:

The front light bar is dumb, that trend is already overdone, Hundyia and Kia, VW, F150 Lightning, etc

OMG this! Everyone is doing it now. Tesla too. 

It's like 1986 Mercury Sable all over again.

By far, the sexiest wagon since the CTS-V Wagon. 

Purely on appearances... it's the nicest Kia Soul you can buy. 

Trying an AI Genesis G60 again with the link @G. David Felt provided.  I like this interior a lot more, I'm not sure about the look from the front. 

Here's the ones from the other thread

2 minutes ago, G. David Felt said:

Which AI Engine did you use to generate the images?

Exterior was Gemini Nano Banana 2, but then it hallucinated on the third picture and used up my free tokens. ChatGPT did the interior.