Drew Dowdell

a good buy for the eccentric collector. Basically... me if I had money.

Is is possible that the AWD feels more "on" all the time?

Not really faint praise at all. It's a 4-cylinder that rolls like a 6 and gets great gas mileage verse a 6 cyclinder that needs to down shift often and gets relatively poor gas mileage even amongst its peers.

We get it. you want a coupe. A Riviera is coming.

GM is just now, after 25 years of stumbling around in the dark and stepping into a huge pile of dog $h!, regaining its balance. No, they don't make large coupe right now... you know what they do make? Three very competative small cars that the market is responding very well to. They are making Buicks that people under 75 want to go out and buy. They are making Buicks that have Lexus saying stuff like "You just wait! You just WAIT till we come out with something new! Then you'll be sorry!". They are making Cadillacs that the only way for the M3 to beat it on the track was for the BMW to be driven by a 22 year old and the Cadillac driven by a 78 year old. They are making a mid-size crossover that is selling so well they've had to move production twice in order to keep up with demand. They are making a Camaro (a large coupe if I've ever driven one) that is beating the Mustang in sales. They have two brand new RWD platforms, one coming on line this summer and another we will see for the first time sometime next year, both with a multitude of cars planned for them, both started after bankruptcy. Question: What other car company out there has two brand new RWD platforms? Not even Benz or BMW can claim that. The new 5-series is a cut down 7-series. The C-Class is a rehash of a platform going back to 2003. BMW and Benz's newest platforms are front wheel drive.

With the miles, the condition, and the claimed maintenance, I could see it going as high as 8k... if someone from the Reatta club picks up a whiff.

The nice thing about the VR6 is how smooth it is. It is almost an I-6 in that regard while only taking up the space of a longish V6.

I may only get 14mpg out of my Toronado (needing a carb tuneup I believe) but it still used less energy than if I bought a brand new car, especially seeing as I only do about 4,000 miles a year in it.

I think all of the Olds posted by WMJ lately I haven't liked.

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.