Drew Dowdell

She makes good financial sense.

What's your opinion on bamboo?

$54k? probably a stretch until you look at all of the options it's got. But there are plenty of small details that really put it over the top as a premium vehicle. There really is no comparing it to the Terrain. The GMC, as nice as it is, is still clearly in CR-V territory.

Very nice looking house... but we're gonna have to have a talk about those window treatments. If I might make a suggestion about the flooring. Costco is having an $8.00 per case discount on bamboo flooring right now. It's the cheapest I've ever seen it. It installs the same as the engineered hardwood and it's very environmentally friendly. It's also not a bamboo laminate over top of particle board. The bamboo at Costco is 100% bamboo all the way through. I think the price works out to be about $1.15 a sq foot with the current sale. If you don't have a Costco membership, find a friend to buy you a gift card. That's all you need to get in the door.

It will appeal to DINKS mostly. It's aimed more at X3/X5 drivers than the RX/MDX crowd, but it'll happily take those customers too. This is the crossover for people who need an SUV "because it might snow in Austin this year" but have everything they buy at the furniture store delivered rather than put it in their vehicle. It won't fit our friend Dfelt, but you can put those of us in the 5'10" - 6'1" range in all four seats of the car comfortably. X6, Crosstour, ZDX I should restate my position on the Lambda Caddy. Cadillac needs a Lambda sized vehicle... not necessarily on that specific platform. I was thinking about this from a different point of view today. I need to make some dealer connections so that when I get a test vehicle I can go and compare it to the competition or even it's previous versions. I was thinking of trying to find a V8 AWD 2009 SRX to drive back to back with this one to compare differences. I think I need to at least go re-look at the X3/X5.... I wasn't impressed with the X3 when I was in one a few years ago... but maybe the years have changed things. Any others you suggest I wheel the SRX up next to?

I'm half tempted to go for Rodger's FWB and just get a trailer for apartment duties.... but Albert wants me to just get a real truck so I'll stop using his CR-V to haul lawnmowers and snow blowers. So... no updates from me yet.

I'm gonna say that those who think they'll miss the Northstar... shouldn't. The engine is very smooth and is very fast. The highway rating of the previous gen with the Northstar might have been a little higher, but I don't think people were ever getting that in the real world. Driving this around tonight after stepping out of an Acadia last night, one thing came into very clear focus. Cadillac has left room between the SRX and the Escalade for a reason. If Cadillac isn't doing a Lambda, they should be. Some of the prior posters are right, this car is a lot smaller than the previous model. I too was surprised by the minimal back seat room. It is not, however, an MDX/RX clone. The SRX rides firm, probably too firm for my softly sprung tastes. Steering feel is best I've felt on a GM. You guys really need to try this engine before you take your black dress to the cleaners for the Northstar funeral. The only negative so far? 65 feels like 45.

Interactive Review: 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo AWD Premium Take part in our Interactive Review of a 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo AWD Premium

This Just In: 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo AWD Premium I just turned in the GMC Acadia SLT-2 and in turn received a 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo AWD Premium. One of the first things I noticed as I was getting into the car were the door sill plates with the Cadillac script lite in white with brushed stainless surround. Very classy looking. The interior looks mostly lifted out the the CTS on first glance. I took it for a quick run around the highway. I was disappointed when I put the hammer down as it didn't feel like much of anything.... then you look down and you're at 80mph. I'll have more for you later, but in the meantime, line up your questions for this Interactive Review of a 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo.

I don't recall with the original Enclave.... did they have all the techno gadgets like heads up display, rear parking camera, and built in LCD screens for rear passengers?

I didn't find any build quality issues. I had a woman at a gas station staring at the GMC while she was filling her Bonneville. A woman at the drive in at Wendy's complimented me on the color and said she had nail polish the same color if I ever needed touch up paint. The friend/client I work for who is on his 3rd Avalon crawled all over it and was impressed. He is looking for an Avalon replacement that will also cover the needs of hauling grandkids. This thing just barely fit in my garage.... a garage where I was able to park a Roadmaster Estate surprisingly comfortably by putting the nose under the shelf.

The Lambdas are much more "car like" in their ride. I never felt missing any power unless I was on a sharp grade in West Virginia. From a comfort perspective, I'd gather that the Lambdas are much better long distance travelers. Not that the 900s are bad, just the Lambdas are better. After driving the Acadia, I'm interested to try an Enclave for any quiet tuning they did. The Acadia is already damn quiet.

22.5 highway, 17.5 around down with me being...."assertive" Perfectly comfortable second row, the seats slide for foot room though the range isn't as far as I'd expect. I'm 5'10" and with the second row all the way back I have more leg room than I'd know what to do with. With the driver seat adjusted to my tastes, the cargo area with all rear seats folded measures 4' x 7'. You'll get everything but the ubiquitous sheet of plywood in there. I didn't feel the second row seems slightly lower than most sedans, but it wasn't noticeable after a moment. Driving this thing feels like you're driving a full size SUV, but you can get it into places a Tahoe could only dream of. Highway on ramps are where the difference between the Lambdas and the GMT-900s really shows. The mechanism itself is probably robust enough. Could probably stand a more substantial lever. $49,700...... ouch.... but I have a fairly base Traverse coming next week.

It isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be, but it works and doesn't give me the feeling that it will break. I have some video that I will post of it.

When is the last time you got a joke?

Seriously? Come on now balthazar, you're smarter than that.

I'm on my 3rd boss with this company without changing jobs. My current one couldn't be a better boss. His predecessor is a jerk to everyone, pretty much everyone hates him, but he was extra jerky to me because he's one of the ultra religious anti-gay types.

While I agree with you on the succession of names, what the person in the thread is implying is that GM just refreshed the platform and changed the name...... basically that today's Malibu is just a rehash of a 1983 Celebrity.

A friend and client of mine is on his 3rd Toyota Avalon. I tried to talk him into at least looking at a Lucerne the last time, but he said that he has a friend at the local Toyota dealer who gets him really good deals. He told me yesterday while looking over the GMC Acadia I'm currently driving that this Avalon will be his last. Though it's got 120k miles on it, he's had a number of issues with it, is bored with it (big surprise there), and the newest one isn't different enough for him to get another. The recall frenzy just put him over the top to look outside of Toyota this time around.

Again, this isn't about actual experiences with Toyota. This is about the perception of the company. If more comes out about what Toyota knew and how they handled that knowledge that isn't good, the trust people put in the company will be broken. While GM did give the media a lot of fodder to work with in the past, there are plenty of instances of the media harping on GM for things that their competitors did also. How long have we been reading about GM's "ancient" 4-speed auto? Years right? Camry kept it's 4-speed auto till 2005. The Accord still had one in 2002... but go look at a review for a 2002 Impala and you'll find some journalist harping about the 4-speed. Corolla *still* has a 4-speed for the base auto, which makes any harping on a Cobalt's 4-speed disingenuous. I remember reading reviews about the CTS where they took points off the car because they felt the steering wheel was too big. Then there's the review where the BMW had catastrophic brake failure during the evaluation and it still took 1st place. There's the performance evaluations that pit cars against each other that share a price point but very different size points and the journalists are shocked shocked that the smaller car is easier to throw around turns. I could go on and on and on.... and I have..... but the point is that there was definitely a piling on by the media on GM. edit: One of my favorites is that nearly every review of the current CTS-V manage to get a mention of the Cimmaron or 8-6-4 into the first paragraph..... Just once I want to see a review of the M3 or M5 that starts off with how awful the Isetta was.....

Great to have you post here Micheal. I don't think the recall will kill Toyota. I think the recall will kill the perception people have about Toyota's quality. Once that is gone, what reason does one have to buy Toyota products. Very few of them are lookers in the styling department, their sports car production is basically dead, other than the Pruis their fuel efficiency isn't any better or worse than Hyundai or Chevy when compared model for model. In short, the single biggest reason to buy a Toyota, the perception of quality, is now gone.

I think there are no bad choices in this one. I like the aesthetics of both.

I disagree. I think the "mainstream" that only reads USAToday headlines is very shaken by this. It upsets their worldview and their purchasing decisions. They'll just default over to Honda or this new car company...Furd? Fard?... something like that, they keep hearing good things about. The "Toyota BEST EVAR!!!!1" are the ones who think this is a government conspiracy.

I don't feel a bit foolish at all. MediaFAIL for failing to provide the complete story. So, now the score is something like Bank Customer BaD - one, Bank Bad - eleventy thousand.