Drew Dowdell

my former asshole boss who made my life miserable for years and attended a dozen too many "management seminars" could frequently be heard to say "I'm not looking for ideas! I'm looking for results!" This was the same guy who handed out popcorn on paper towels to the team minus one person who he was about to fire. The whole team agreed the guy had to go, but his method of doing it was horrible. I'm so glad he got promoted out of my department.... but he's still considered to be a "managment all star"

will never happen. The only thing students are responsible for these days is harvesting their farm on facebook.

I think most here could agree that Geometry is probably a fairly dry subject. My 10th grade Geometry teacher was one of those who I'll never forget. He was a gruff, crotchety old man who was insanely hilarious. Probably in his late 60s and drove a brand new Camaro at the time. He actually jumped out of the classroom window once to prove a math problem to a girl who just wasn't getting it. He had constant parental complaints about him for rudeness. But you know what? To this day I still use some of his unconventional techniques to solve math problems in my head. Know what else? Kids still failed his class because they just didn't care... no matter how outrageous he got.

And this is the difference between the teacher motivating the student and the teacher interesting a student. If the student isn't motivated, no amount of "interesting" will help. Yet if the student is self motivated (a trait that seems appear during raising of the child), the subject can be less than interesting and the student can still succeed. If the student is motivated AND the teacher can make the subject matter interesting, well then that's the ideal situation.

did you find one?

An Alpha 159 is 183 inches in length. A BMW 3-series is 181 inches.

I wonder if I can get my Toronado from 140hp to 143hp with one. It's just about the worst breathing V8 ever.

uh... no.

You get multiple uses from a recharge kit, probably the lifetime of the filter if following the schedule I mentioned

The Terrain will be more efficiently packaged on a lighter platform. Basically, they'll lose exterior size while maintaining as much interior size as possible.

Their costs are nearly nothing. They're using a drop shipper and shirts are made on demand.

Chrysler Collection opens up "Imported from Detroit" boutique February 16th, 2011 Drew Dowdell - CheersandGears.com Capitalizing on their highly successful Super Bowl ad featuring their new tag line "Imported from Detroit", Chrylser has opened up a section on their Chrysler Collection website for "Imported from Detroit" t-shirts. The Made-In-USA T-shirts are retailing for $29.95 plus shipping and give you another way to Arrive in Style. We look forward to more Chrysler branded "Imported from Detroit" items added in future

I never noticed a difference in performance or mpg in either the Cutlass or CTS (both DOHC that should benefit from easier breathing). I would clean and re-oil the filter element at the standard paper filter change intervals. In my mind, it was still going to collect about the same amount of dirt over time regardless of the type of filter element I used

The 3 row Lambda for Cadillac is still very much on as of now.

Blackberry is also slowly becoming less relevant. Android (and I believe iPhone) has Exchange support natively which requires no go between like Blackberry Enterprise Server does. Blackberry Enterprise Server is VERY expensive and there is also a per-user license fee. Android and iPhone have neither. As far as Exchange Email Server is concerned, an Android phone is just another Outlook client. Blackberry has also demonstrated, multiple times, their vulnerability since ALL Blackberrys using BES must pass data through RIM's datacenter in Canada. That data center has gone down multiple times and wiped out BB service worldwide during the outage. Why they don't seem to have redundent servers in geo-diverse locations, I don't know. Anyway... the point is this. Blackberry is a dying platform. No amount of Apps can make up for that fact that their back end costs are too high. Once CTOs figure out that iPhone and Android are drastically cheaper to maintain than Blackberry, RIM's goose is cooked.

How would you like to own a street legal Camry Nascar Clone? February 15th, 2011 Drew Dowdell - CheersandGears.com Found on Ebay! How would you like to own a street legal Camry Nascar Clone? Well for the starting bid of just $89,000, this rebuilt 2009 Chevrolet Impala with a 383 cubic inch, 425hp aluminum V8, in Nascar colors and Toyota Stickers can be yours. From the Auction text: Super Street Series Stock car, 2009 replica Impala COT You are looking at an allmost new street legal stock car built by our nationally known company from Central New York, Jeffrey's Custom Conversions. JCC has been building these all steel replicas of the popular NASCARS for about 5 years. We have been featured in many magazines such as Hot Rod, Super Chevy and Speed Channels TV shows like Hot Rod and TLC's Horsepower TV to name a few. This was a feature car at the past 2009 SEMA show event in Las Vegas NV this Nov. for Optima Batteries. The car also performed at the Optima Batteries Street car Challenge in Pahrump NV road course following the SEMA show. Driven by a professional road course driver it was proven again the ability for the Super Street Series cars to handle anything you can throw at them. This lightly used 2009 New York titled Custom was completed by JCC in the spring of 2009. It was on a national show tour from June to December 09. The details and specifications are many, below is a brief description of the highlights. The tube chassis is built to our exacting specifications with electronic remote opening doors on a standard 110 inch NASCAR wheel base. The body is hand built with steel sides and the steel hood, roof and trunk are purchased from the same company supplying the NASCAR teams. The front and rear bumper are all carbon fiber with specially molded OEM lighting. It features a laminated glass windshield and defrosted rear window. The side windows are lexan with the door windows removable and stored in the trunk. This car has been tested with over 300 miles on the street, driven from the highways to the city streets of LasVegas and New York day and night. In race prep it has been tested at the high banks of Charlotte Speed way in North Carolina to the Pahrump road course in Nevada. We have achieved an excellent balance of performance and street drivability with this combination. The car is ready to be driven and enjoyed as a personal hot rod to blow away the local show goers. Or, market your company or other companies and use it as do the race teams, a mobile billboard. Rap or decal it with whatever you can dream up, name recognition is a cinch with this ultimate street machine. The SSS cars command attention wherever you drive them. Camaros and Mustangs are boring compared to the excitement driving these cars on the street or the track. As with any street legal vehicle it takes many specific components to produce a truly legal car. This car has past the New York qualifications for a non manufactured full custom vehicle and the annual state inspection. It should qualify in most of the other states in the US also. Please call me direct with any concerns I can fax a complete list of New York's custom car qualifications. The auction is for the car as you see it with all decals which can easily be removed at buyer's discretion. Included with the car is a full race water proof cover. You are bidding on an almost new car NOT an old used race car. Since these pictures the carbon fiber wing has been removed and a 2011 Nascar cup style rear spoiler and braces added. …. We guarantee your neighbor will not have one just like it!

There is some confusion about which platform the Terrain is going to. GMI is calling it "Theta III", however it's internal program code is D2__ and some other characters... which means it's on Global Delta 2. While we in the states may thing of the Cruze as being on Delta 2... it's actually Delta 1. The Cobalt was on basically a US only Delta .... 0.5 for lack of a better term.

Coming Crossover Shakeup at GMC Acadia and Terrain both getting downsized We get a scoop on some coming product changes in GMC's lineup. The biggie being that there is no more Acadia on the next generation Lambda platform. More after the jump. Coming Crossover Shakeup at GMC

Coming Crossover Shakeup at GMC Acadia and Terrain both getting downsized Conceptualization by Andrew Currie of Sector329Graphics.com February 15th, 2011 Drew Dowdell - CheersandGears.com If you like the GMC Acadia for it's full size SUV roominess, you better grab it now while it's still full size. A few weeks ago during ourreview of the 2011 GMC Acadia Denali, we wondered aloud in the review about the relevance of that top shelf GMC Crossover when there was an equally luxurious, yet more curvy Buick Enclave sitting in the same showroom. Apparently there were heads at General Motors wondering the same thing. Our inside sources have told us that plans for a GMC Acadia on the next generation Lambda platform have been put on hold. The reasoning seems to be this: When the Lambda were first created, the Acadia shared it's body shell with the now discontinued Saturn Outlook. The Chevrolet Traverse and the Buick Enclave share the other body shell. Once the volume from the Outlook was lost, the Acadia suddenly became the most expensive of the remaining trio to produce. The Acadia name, however, is not going away. GMC is much more focused on being more premium than Chevrolet lately. Plans from the inside of GM seem to be that the Acadia is going to move down a notch in size to and extended 3 row version of Theta-Epsilon platform used by the Cadillac SRX and the Saab 9-4x. Again, this has roots in the brand disposals that GM went through over the past 18 months. GM invested a lot of money in the 9-4x only to have it's hand forced into selling the entire Saab brand. Saab currently can't move the volume needed to keep the 9-4x viable on it's own, so enter GMC to pick up some of that slack. It is our hypothesis that any GMC Acadia built on the Theta-Epsilon platform will use the 9-4x body shell. This will help GMC recover the costs of developing it AND it will help it remain viable to GM's continuing partner Saab. Saab 9-4xes have been spotted running around the Milford Proving Grounds in the past few weeks. Since the 9-4x is mere minutes away from being release, we have our doubts that what is being tested is really a new 9-4x, but instead new tuning for the coming GMC Acadia. We've already sampled the 2011 Cadillac SRX Turbo and found it to be some of the best blend of fun and comfort in the luxury CUV segment, so GM clearly already has the recipe to make this a winning vehicle. The rub here is that Theta-Epsilon also happens to be the same size as the already very successful GMC Terrain. So if the Acadia is taking over that size slot, what will happen to the massively successful Terrain? The Terrain moved 60,519 units for 2010 and is already aggressively clawing it's way up the sale chart in 2011. GM apparently feels (and probably correctly) that most of the volume at the price point the Terrain sits could be taken up by the even more successful Chevrolet Equinox. A Theta-Epsilon Acadia would likely have a base price near the very top end of where the Equinox reaches. We'd guess a base price for this new Acadia around $27,000 dollars. This would leave the value leader to Chevrolet where you get the most square feet for your dollar and allow GMC to tackle the more posh end of the spectrum, thus reducing overlap between the two brands. So what happens to the Terrain? Well it's going to move down a notch in size also. The new Terrain will check in as a smaller CUV than the Equinox, but with more premium materials and performance. There is a new CUV platform coming that is based on the Gamma platform that underpins the new Chevrolet Sonic. We already know that a baby Buick Enclave is on its way and current rumours put it on that same platform, so clearly it's being built with premium intent. Powertrains are anyone's guess at this point, but I see anything from a naturally aspirated 2.4 Direct Injected Ecotec to newly revised 2.0 Turbos and up to a possible 3.6 liter high feature V6 being offered.... with GM's new eAssist sprinkled in here and there just to spice things up a bit. The only question I've yet to be able to answer is this: What happens to the size slot that the Acadia vacates. Even in 2010, the Acadia's 5th year on the market, they sold 68,295 of them, up a healthy 27% over 2009.. not exactly a market GMC should want to simply abandon. GM could mitigate volume loses by restructuring the Traverse and Enclave lineup, but I'm sure that would wait until the next generation of Lambda arrives. We also hope that along with these changes, we'll see the hot GMC Granite concept come to fruition. Such a lineup would make a great Small-Medium-Large premium crossover lineup for GMC. These changes at GMC are a strong indicator that GM is serious about greater differentiation between its brands. With the Acadia and Terrain coming down in size but going up in luxury, GMC is morphing into something more than a "Chevy with extra chrome"

Desperate Ad Wars GM Fights back at Volkswagen and Chrysler Success February 15th, 2010 Op Ed - Drew Dowdell - Chief Editor, CheersandGears.com The Wall Street Journal yesterday noted that GM's marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, acknowledged that Chrysler and Volkswagen had won "the buzz war" during the Superbowl last week with their "Imported from Detroit" and Mini-Darth Vader ads respectively. Not one to simply acknowledge defeat, Ewanick sent an email back to the crew manning the GM Marketing Mothership to start buying up keywords on Google's marketing system. The idea being if someone searched for "Imported from Detroit" on Google, instead of getting the Eminem ad they were looking for, one of GM's own advertisements would appear at the top of the list before the results the user was looking for. Is there anything wrong with this? Not in the slightest. In fact, such moves are quite typical and expected in the Google advertising game. To Mr. Ewanick's credit, the move worked. The Chevrolet "Miss Evelyn" commercial popularity soared online. However, the Darth Vader and "Imported from Detroit" spots remained the most talked about. Apparently, the strategy at GM was to keep the ads low-key in order to focus on the product. This strategy reeks of "Old GM". Instead of coming up with something creative, playful, and memorable, GM ran a few "Ok" ads and then bought up keywords so that people searching for the "OMG AWESOME!" ads would see the GM ads again. Super Bowl advertising requires a different type of commercial than one being run between segments of CSI: Miami reruns on a Wednesday afternoon. They need to be memorable. They don't need to be high budget (a Pug knocking down a glass door to get to a bag of Doritos anyone?), and they need to be "On Brand". Ask a typical Super Bowl watcher (who isn't also a car fanatic) what the Darth Vader spot was advertising and they'll likely tell you a Volkswagen. They won't mention a Passat or even get the model wrong and call it a Jetta. It is just a Volkswagen ad. The same goes for Chrysler's "Imported from Detroit" ad. Chrysler's commercial was supposed to highlight the new 200 Sedan, but the message taken away by most viewers what "Chrysler is back" or even more generally "Detroit is back". Contrast that with the "Miss Evelyn" spot: Random images of a babe driving a Chevy that's flying through the air....like that's never been done before..... while two guys narrate a typically bad action movie plot. It tells you nothing... leaves you with no feeling.. and doesn't even get you to laugh. What bothers me most about this whole thing is that GM really does have some great product now. They can afford to be more creative and witty in their advertising instead of seeing what the cool kids are doing and saying "Oh yeah!!! ME TOO!!". What makes that extra bad is that 3 out of the 4 Chevrolet spots featured during the Superbowl appeared to be fairly high budget. "Miss Evelyn" and "Lassie" both appeared to use a lot of digital special effects. The Glee-Chevrolet tie in was great to connect with the younger crowd, but I'm sure the Glee cast doesn't come cheap these days. The one spot that didn't seem high budget, didn't make up for it by being memorable.... a bunch of hard of hearing elderly people sitting around talking about the new Cruze isn't exactly something that will light up the Twitterverse. To make the creativity deficit worse, Cadillac announced a new Black Diamond edition Cadillac CTS-V just a few days before the Superbowl. Joel clearly would have known about this well in advance, so how is it that his first instinct is not to go for a Darth Vader tie in for that vehicle? After all, GM already has used that in the past. Volkswagen's Darth Vader spot was CHEAP to produce compared to the Chevrolet ads. Chrysler, other than paying for Eminem to appear, just followed a Chrysler 200 sedan around Detroit with a camera for the better half of an afternoon. No leaping Challengers, no helicopter chases, no high end computer generated imagery. I have to credit Joel Ewanick for his fast reaction to getting his butt kicked. However, I hope that his long term reaction is not just to buy up more Google keywords for better placement in front of his competitors, but instead to actually produce some memorable advertising. GM's advertising has been scattershot for years with many more bombs than wins. Instead of linking to the latest Super Bowl ads (which you can search for your self... just scroll down below whatever keywords Joel bought), I'm going to list some of the advertisements that GM got right over the years... hopefully they can look to their own past for some inspiration. "Bump" "Fanfair" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuqEyGHiq6g "Then and Now" "Roll"

The 3.0 isn't bad. It's just not class leading. It has more than enough scoot to get people around town.

both of you stop.

Does Saab have a new diesel in the works?

Hmm, we should have a naming contest for a raised 9-5x Wagon. Audi has All-Road, Volvo has XC, Subaru has Outback,