Drew Dowdell

I think a suburban is a wagon

Drew Dowdell - January 26, 2012 - CheersandGears.com Yesterday on Facebook, Aaron Bragman a new friend I met at NAIAS, and I got into a friendly back and forth over whether the Audi A3 was a hatchback or a wagon. I insist that it was a wagon and Aaron insists it is a hatch. My original position is that the A3 is a wagon because of the third rear window. Aaron says no, it is an identical car to the Volkswagen GTI which couldn't be called anything but a hatch. Now before I go on, I'm going to preempt some of the old timers here. For the sake of this argument, we are going to use body style definitions that apply to cars post.. oh... 1980 or so. That means a sedan is a 4-door and a coupe is a 2-door regardless of the existence of b-pillars or not. For the sake of sanity, we are going to leave out anything that would be considered a cross-over..... yes, I'm looking at you BMW. 2007 Volkswagen GTI - VW N.A. 2008 Audi A3 - Audi N.A. Aaron further explains that the distinguishing factor is "...rear cargo room. It should be longer than it is tall. Which is not the case with the GTI or the A3." While I begin to agree, I don't think that is the entire answer. I started to doubt my "third window makes a wagon" criteria when I realized there were vehicles out there that were most definitely hatches yet still had a third window in the rear. The two examples that immediately come to mind are the Subaru Impreza and the Pontiac Vibe. That defeat in hand, I set out thinking how to define a hatchback opposed to a wagon. My next thought was about the slope of the rear of the car, thinking that a more gradual slope could be a hatch and a flat back would be a wagon. That idea immediately got torpedoed by the 1996 Roadmaster with its sloping rear glass and the Chevrolet Sonic hatch or the original GTI with their flat backs. I thought more about the Roadmaster as it was one of the last of the true big wagons from back in the day. What if it had been a hatch? What would a Roadmaster hatchback looked like? Had GM built a Roadmaster hatchback, they would have needed to cut the car off just behind the rear wheels! That would have made the Roadmaster hatch much shorter than the sedan; and there in was the answer. 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate So, the definitions I came up with are these: Wagon - a sedan that had the enclosed passenger area extended around the trunk of the vehicle losing no length in the process. Hatchback - A coupe or sedan that had its trunk, truncated, typically losing length. Going back to the A3, this definition holds true. We recently ran an article on the potential A3 sedan coming in the next generation. That sedan would end up being 6 inches longer than the A3 5-door that started this whole debate. The Impreza hatch? 173 inches compared to the 180 of the sedan. The Vibe? 171 inches compared to the 178 inches of the Corolla it was based on. While there may be some exceptions to the rule, I'm fairly confident that this rule will hold. So what do you think dear readers? Is my definition fairly sound? View full article

well... not a turbo anymore.

I put the "who is reading this thread" back on.

that should be all fixed as of now. the table repair that I was trying to hold off on doing until this weekend forced my hand this morning.

It's been loading snappy for me lately, but I'll keep an eye out for it. Our server utilization is pretty low.

Escape has some potential, but he likes the looks of the Buick. I'm not sure he has seen the new Escape.

What Omega buys you that would be difficult to do with Alpha is width. We know very little about Omega at this point, but it wouldn't need to be as flexible as Alpha (not a huge draw for Roadmaster Wagons these days), thus less expensive to build. It would just need to be amortized across multiple brands. I can see: Cadillac ZTS Buick Park Ave (at least in size) also sold in China Holden/Chevy Statesman/Caprice Opel Omega (limited possibility here, that market is dead in Europe) There is even a case to be made that Omega is an outgrowth of Alpha in the first place, but different enough to warrant its own platform name. That would reduce the costs of the platform and allow the relatively low volume vehicles listed above.

na, he wants to "sit up high" but it can't be a big vehicle. If it isn't the Encore, I'm going to end up having to find a cream puff Suzuki X-90

What's wrong with that?

Well aware, but they are often solved in similar ways. Things that shouldn't collapse in a crash are the same things that shouldn't flex under high torque loads. GM used a lot of very high strength lightweight material in the car. My guess is that a Camaro built on this frame will go down in weight from the sedan. As it is now, the sedan is already the same weight as a V6 Mustang and only 100lbs heavier than the 4-cylinder Genesis Coupe, and 200lbs lighter than the Infiniti G-Coupe... all vehicles that I'm sure are being bench marked against. In my mind, that give GM a fantastic amount of wiggle room.

I think Camino is talking more about the stress the power of a V8 could put on a frame. To that I would reply that GM had to design the thing to meet ever increasing crash standards in the first place, so the frame has to be pretty strong already to meet that standard. Probably more so than what the V8 requirement would be.

It absolutely has the ability to exchange sub-frames.

still missing pics of this in the garage

No more CR-Vs in this household. He is actually rather smitten with the Encore right now because it has every attribute he really wants. Good fuel economy, AWD, decent interior space but not a huge vehicle for him to wheel around. Most importantly, heated seats and a touch of luxury. He wouldn't drive the Terrain when we had it here 2 weeks ago. To him, it might as well have been a Yukon.

... it was a joke at your computer's expense.

If it can fit the DOHC 3.6, it can fit the LS-series. and there is no way Chevy will build a Camaro that doesn't have a V8 available.... not yet.... not with Ford and Hyundai upping the V8 war in their sport ccupes. Could there be a Camaro with a turbo 4? Sure, and I think there should be one made. Also remember, Alpha is where the next CTS goes. So that means it needs to be able to handle being built into a CTS-V

I think that is your sound card screwing with you.

Hopefully..Epsilon II so far has only 2 wheelbase variations..107.x and 111.x, both pretty short. Not just wheelbase variations, but also body styles. Epsilon has been a sedan, coupe, wagon, 5-door hatch, soft top convertible and hard top convertible and been sold in every division except GMC. I think that widespread use is what PCS was referring to.

I shut it off during the database problems we had over the weekend. I'll turn it back on once I'm convinced we are stable