Drew Dowdell

Mobile-1 is fine in everything, just get the right weight.

Well, gold is $1,685 per ounce, guessing Gary at 180lbs means we owe him about $4,852,800..... give or take...

The Terrain IS ridiculously low in front.

Zeta is dead in the future. No new Zeta cars are coming. Dead Dead Dead Deader and Dead. Get over it, cry a little and move on. Alpha is able to be scaled up above the current sigma chassis. Omega is being built to run the next size up. Zeta is DEAD. Opel is where development for well over 50% of GM's lineup originates. Just because the Opel BRAND is losing money doesn't mean that Opel isn't an important link in the GM chain. I'm not advocating closing EITHER. I just think all of this ire directed at Opel is FOOLISH AND SHORT SIGHTED FOOT STOMPING by people mad they might not get their way.

Everything based off that list sucks. Everything based off of that list generates a profit for GM. GM cannot survive on Camaro and G8 alone. And no, the cars do NOT suck. They are exactly competitive in their respective segments. Corolla and Camry combined sell 800k a year. You want GM to just cede all of that potential money to Toyota?!? The Focus was widely reviewed as the better car than the Cruze. Look which one is selling better. Chevy can't keep Sonics on the lot more than 17 days and the Sonic is a surprisingly good car... much more so than the Fiesta or Accent. No, we know you won't physically fit in a Sonic.. but that is why GM MAKES A WIDE RANGE OF CARS FOR EVERY PURSE AND PURPOSE.

My week with a Lacrosse e-Assist driving to detroit and back runs completely counter to that. In fact, I would prefer that power train in the Terrain I have this week.

I don't doubt that the drop is there, but I'd like to see what I get back to with the new alternator first.

As you know, last night the server experienced some major issues again. Well today, I approached a person recommended to me by other people who run this same software. On the forum for IP.Board admins that I frequent, Gary is often mentioned as a savior. Well, today he did just that for us. The problem last night wasn't that Cheers and Gears doesn't have enough server. No, in fact, the server we have is way more powerful than we really need. By my calculations, we could be 5 to 6 times our current size and traffic levels.... if the server is configured properly. Essentially, we have a Z-06 engine under the hood here. And there in was our problem. I am an I.T. guy... but I'm not a Linux server specialist. My specialties are elsewhere. My bad habit of breaking C&G while trying to fix something on the server left me rather gun shy about configuring the server any more than what it comes with out of the box. Well what comes "out of the box" in a Linux web server is like a set of Pep Boy special 14" wheels and mechanical wooden brakes. With all of that power combined with base model server configuration, it was only a matter of time till bad things started happening. My solution in the past was to simply throw more power at the C&G server until it worked right, but it was costing me a huge amount of money for way more power than we should need. After last night's crash, I'd had enough. I knew that we had way more power than was needed to run a site of our size and traffic.. and I wasn't going to just throw more power at it anymore. Enter Gary. Now guys, this is where I want you to read. Gary does these repairs and tuneups for people on a completely donation basis. He asks no up front fee. All he asks is that people donate back to him relative to the level of service improvement they see. Gary worked for over 9 hours today, with almost no notice, first repairing our database, then tuning up the server to properly utilize its power, installing additional software that will enhance our speed, and installing a circuit breaker to prevent any one thing from bringing down the entire site. In short, both our speed and reliability will be like nothing C&G has ever had before. Gary has also offered to come to our rescue again should the need arise. Because of Gary's efforts, we will now be able to slash our server costs nearly in half. For the next few months, I will be sending him that half of our savings. I hope you all will leave Gary a note of thanks here and if you can spare $5 or $10, that you might send him some monetary thanks via paypal for his efforts here today. You can paypal him at GaryThomasUK at talktalk dot net - Format it as a proper email address before you send, I did it that way so he doesn't get flooded with spam. Click here to view the article

Toyota has been talking a lot of smack lately for a company that just got bitchslapped 18 months ago. I mean, when do you remember Toyota ever going around saying "Oh... next time we'll be better than Buick/VW/BMW/Fiat" ..... and all in one car.

LOL

What is with the new Japanese luxury models all looking like they are sucking a lemon? Infinity and Lexus both have this design element in their grills.

I'm not even certain that Opel has a problem. It is an accounting issue. GME should be charging GMNA GMDAT and GMAU for the use of the platforms it develops. That GMNA choses to keep the money in north america is entirely a Political/Financial move.

With a smaller Terrain, I could see a pumped up 2.5T AWD as a Typhoon edition. Metallic black, Windows blacked out, the suspension tweeked to ride tight and the monochromatic version or at least a black chrome version to give it that sweet Darth Vader look. well. I don't think they will turbo the 2.5 directly. There will be a smaller displacement engine of the same family that will be turboed. It might even end up being another turbo 2.0, but entirely different from the current one.

Walking into a Buick dealer in 4 years, the CUV lineup may look something like this. Buick Encore - Gamma GMC Terrain - Delta-Gama Buick Something - Theta-Epsilon - SWB GMC Acadia - Theta-Epsilon-LWB Buick Enclave - Lambda All premium vehicle with equipment above what you get in a same size/platform Chevy if one exists.

It was the new re-man alternator. The diodes were bad. What do ya want for $13? Ordered a reman A/C Delco with lifetime warranty. Should be here tomorrow.

I'm not sure the Terrain will ever get a V6 larger than the 3.0. The Terrain is going down in size/weight slightly for the next generation making room for a slightly smaller/lighter Acadia. I could very well see such a vehicle getting the 2.5/2.0T combination eschewing the V6 all together.

An executive who really is a car guy. Z-06 and I met him at NAIAS one year. The list of classics he owns would make most of this forum swoon. He knows his stuff. Just as brash as Lutz, just not as loud.

he is making fun of me being vegitarian for a week.

It's not dead yet.... it's just resting.

I'm not saying I'm not impressed with the V6. I'm just saying that for the fuel economy penalty, especially on the AWD edition, I would expect more torque and thus less transmission hunting on hills. Switching to the 3.6, even just tuned to 280hp like in the Lambdas, would be an improvement. The 3.0 has never been a steller performer for fuel economy in any vehicle it has been in. Going from the 3.0 to the 3.6 costs you nothing in fuel efficiency but gains you a lot in power.

Direct injection + turbo seems to be the killer combination. The DI-Turbo ecotec 2.0 and the Ford Ecoboost V6 both have all of their torque available way down low. The 3.5 liter Ford is something like 350 ft-lb at 1,750rpm (off the top of my head, but close). That makes the AWD Lincoln MKS Ecoboost launch forward like you just engaged warp drive. V8? What V8?

and yes... go into it assuming you'll eat tires and brake.... it is an SS afterall.... what price are they asking?

This and the 9-7x, despite not being very Saabish, are considered the two best incarnations of the GMT-360 platform.

Sports Activity Cross Coupe-Wagon

That concept has been done... just hasn't been put in production yet. The Volt is sort of a beta version in this regard. A better engine of smaller capacity would have improved mileage further. It would be even more amazing with a <1 liter turbo diesel.