Drew Dowdell

When I was out to pick Albert up from work this evening, I saw a first generation Neon drive by... and thought to myself..."Wow! It's been a while since I've seen one of those!" Not that I like the Neon at all, but they were once incredibly common and I hardly ever see that version. I see similar vintage Cavaliers, Sunfires, and Escorts all the time.... What cars have you noticed aren't around much anymore?

I saw a rather amusing scene on a French highway where a British tourist trying to get a toll ticket but had to get out of the car to do it.

I wish Toyota's middle market brand would disappear.....

and it's getting Fiat's Multi-Air.... not that I know what that means...

Cool history. But click on the ad anyway... it transfers money from Tradetang.com to CheersandGears.com

just keep clicking them... it costs them money

I saw Limo 1 from a distance on Wednesday.

Brougham-Holiday, I don't think you understood the assignment.

Dad taught me when I was 12 in his F-250. We had to put phone books behind my back so that I was able to push the clutch all the way in. He said, "If you can drive this, then you can drive anything."..... and it's been mostly true. The only exception has been Honda 4-cylinders. I just can't get used to driving something with .25 ft/lbs at 10,000 rpm.

The thought was that Mercury would get some of the less mainstream models that would never sell in high volumes in the U.S. in the first place. Mark them up a bit and make them "premium". Things like the Focus Cabrio, Kuga, C-max, S-max, and Galaxy,

Keep in mind that the mainstream brands have grown much much larger these days. Back in the 50's most brands would consist of a "large" and a "small" with multiple body styles of each... occasionally a sports car like the Corvette or Thunderbird would be thrown in as a halo. In the 60's, most brands added a "New Smaller" below the previous "small" with then became "medium". Wash, Rinse, Repeat for the '70s, '80s, and '90s. For example, in 1955, you could buy an Oldsmobile from the 88 line or 98 line.... and that was it. By the early 60's Oldsmobile added the F85/Cutlass and Toronado lineups. In the 1970's brought two new compacts. The '80s saw the addition of multiple FWD mid-sizers. The '90s saw the addition of a mini-van and an SUV. By 1996, Oldsmobile was fielding more nameplates (10) than there were available body styles in 1956. ( Mercury followed a remarkably similar path. In order to keep the number of brands that we had in the past, we'd need to knock every brand down to just two cars with multiple body styles and have them all (with the exception of the high lux) sold under one roof. But it costs a lot of money to do that for advertising and making sure the brands each have their own DNA... at least visually. But also, we'd have to stop caring about market share completely.... which just isn't going to happen in this world.

Alfa Romeo

No one ever accuses C&G members of being sane

Like the jist of the commercial... but really don't like how the sound seems to cut off at the end..

Neato!

Really? That doesn't sound right. Hitting another car head on that is also going 40mph has got to have more force than hitting a wall at 40mph.

A demonstration video of two Saab 9-5s crashed into each other at slight offset with each car going 60kph (about 40mph) for a 120kph (80mph) total impact speed. The passenger compartment remains incredibly intact and all four doors are still able to open after the impact.

The only thing that leaves me cold about the Lambo and the Aston is sure they sound powerful, but they don't seem to have any personality. It's slightly off topic, but still GM made. Scroll forward to 3:55 to skip all the chatter and hear the startup. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

From the thread title, I was hoping for expecting a completely different subject

The rest of the results are posted here. Sorry, I can't get the chart to format to this website properly or I'd post it here directly.

Blah... Dodge Grand Caravan because I''m retrieving lots of office equipment from our closed office there. Albert is staying here.

Staying put.... but Tuesday morning I'm making what is likely my final run to Columbus for work.

I'm sure you were just filled with rapture on that one... Where was talk years ago about how Microsoft wanted to combine the portability of Windows CE with the user friendliness of Windows ME and the security of Windows NT...... but they got stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Wheel bearing or CV joint.