Drew Dowdell

It might be an issue with your phone? I mostly post from safari on my iPhone. It’s how I’m posting this message now.

If the timing is right, please consider getting your third.

I don’t think there’s been a FWD BOF from any brand since ‘85. Solstice//Sky counts if you count Corvette.

Yeah, but there has to be more to it than that. Dodge gaining looks or Chrysler moving down market. I know what I feel about the cars looking back from today, but I don’t know what contemporary opinion was

The number of vaccinated + boosted in hospitals for Covid is so low it wouldn't be statistically significant. A recent report from New Haven Hospital shows that 20% of Covid patients are vaccinated, but of those, the vast majority are not boosted. This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We already know that the body's immune memory for this virus degrades over time and variants accelerate this decline. In most healthy people, the immune memory for this virus declines by 7% - 10% a month. It doesn't matter if your immunity is from a vaccine or from being infected with the virus itself, but getting vaccinated starts you off at a higher immunity than being infected. So in my case when I got my second vaccine back in Feb 2021, I would have had my full ~93% effective immunity by beginning of March, but by November when I got my booster, that effective immunity had likely dropped to around ~50%... below the effectiveness of the typical flu vaccine. Getting boosted should have bumped me back up over ~90% again. The narrative around the vaccine really needs to change to one of "you aren't fully vaccinated unless you're getting regular boosters" because of this immune memory decline. While I don't have the studies in front of me...we can prove that Covid patients are causing non-covid deaths. All you have to do is take the excess deaths number and subtract the number of known covid deaths. In 2021 we had over 15% higher than expected deaths for at least a total of 452,000 extra deaths (not all of the December data is in yet). Can *I* prove it? No, I'm not a data scientist... but that knowledge exists and is out there. Back in November we exceeded the entirety of deaths from the HIV pandemic all the way back to the '80s... but we did it in 2 years. What would be absurd is assuming that dropping the entire 40ish year case load of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the US health system in a matter of 2 years wouldn't impact the health system. When hospitals have to shut down non-urgent but still pretty serious surgeries or cancer treatments due to Covid patients, there are going to be some negative outcomes. Where have you been for the last 18 months? This has been going on for a while. Before the vaccine hospitals were having to make choices on which patients to try and save and which not to use up valuable resources on. If a 50 year old obese man with a smoking habit and a 23 year old relatively healthy woman who never smoked both check into the ER with severe covid and there's only one ventilator or ECMO machine... guess who is getting it.... Now that we have a vaccine.. the decision usually becomes even easier. The one who was vaccinated or boosted is probably getting more care primarily because it is more likely to have a positive outcome. We already know the results of not getting vaccinated and being checked in to get vented, the proof is stacked up in refrigerated trailers. The statistics have gotten better since the beginning of the pandemic, but if you were admitted for covid and got vented there was a ~75% chance you were leaving the hospital in a freezer truck. There's a video going around of a guy who needs a kidney transplant turning down the kidney and preferring to die of kidney failure rather than getting the vaccine. Talk about absurd. He's willing to die twice to "pwn the libs". This also isn't new for transplants. Transplant patients are required to be up to date on ALL their vaccines because they will be immunosuppressed after surgery. That's been the case for decades. Active alcoholics don't get livers either.

I have a particularly contrarian view on the Maverick

Because if I slip on the ice and break my leg, I can't get into a hospital because it is overrun by the unvaccinated. Car accidents, heart attacks, delaying needed cancer treatments/surgery. The unvaccinated are clogging up the health system with a disease that is now largely preventable from causing hospitalization. Unvaccinated covid patients are causing non-covid deaths. Not necessarily. There can be breakthrough cases, and there were breakthrough cases a couple years back when a few vaccinated people got measles because so many unvaxxed around them got it.

God it's ugly.

I agree that it doesn't matter... but I disagree that BOF can't ride well or inherently rides better/worse than unibody. Both can ride well, both can ride like crap. It's all the other stuff that goes into it that makes the difference. The 2011 Pathfinder was a truck based vehicle with some respectable off-roading chops. The 2012 was a Mommymobile that Nissan built for soccer moms. You might as well compare a Wrangler to a new Pathfinder. The old Trailblazers rode better than the new Traverse. That's probably a more apt comparison.

Not that I dislike the El-Dogs you posted @Robert Hall and @oldshurst442 But this was one of the last gasps of the Cadillac styling department until the CT6 came about. (With some minor brainstem activity for the '03 CTS)

Never rode in a 2011. But I can tell you that a 2022 Wagoneer rides like Town Car to the point that Albert hated driving it because it was too mushy.

They'll all be shaped like a Tylenol. I never really understood why DeSoto didn't sell, they were pretty good looking. Dodges of the era were painfully ugly. Plymouth was "beneath" it. It was probably something dumb like the Chrysler Windsor being roughly the same price and at least that sat in the same dealership with the Imperial.

The Rivian (and remarkably similar Ultium) platforms are kinda a hybrid of the two. The batteries on these are structural. A ladder frame is just a perimeter frame with extra cross members for strength. And no one will be putting leaf springs in new EVs these days, if nothing else they won't have the room under the chassis. No, I've been out of the industry rotation since Covid started.

Unibody v. BOF ride quality comes down more around what the manufacturer does beyond that decision. My BOF Avalanche rides fantastic on the highway, most of the Ram pickups and Magnaride equipped Denalis do too. The F-150 rides terrible unless there is one version out there with an active suspension that I haven't driven yet. The Ford Mach-E rides like crap if you don't get the active suspension. The Telsa Model 3, which is unibody, rides like a Conestoga wagon. You may be thinking of the really old tech stuff, but even then the Town Car v. DTS, the Town Car rode better, but the DTS handled better. Part of the reason was that the DTS was so stiff for its time that Cadillac had trouble dialing out the road imperfections. All of the last generation GM G-Bodies have that issue.

Ultium is body on frame. It's just now the frame is stuffed full of batteries.

More power in something like this is just unnecessary.

The Atlas I-6 was a modern (for the time) engine that was bolted to non-modern stuff. It was incredibly smooth and loved to rev, it really got its power higher up in the RPM band, which isn't ideal for a heavy SUV, but compared to what we have today with DOHC V6es it was fine. But then GM stuck a 4-speed automatic behind it so it always felt like it was screaming or lugging. In typical GM fashion, they canceled it right when it had the potential to flourish... the new 6-speed autos were coming out, direct Injection was being introduced to the mainstream, and turbo technology was entering a renaissance phase. An Atlas I-6 with DI and a Turbo would have beaten Ford to the punch with Ecoboost and probably been a better performer to boot. Heck, even a turbo I-5 would have been great for the re-return of the Colorado/Canyon or as 1-2 matchup against the Ford 2.7EB and 3.5EB. Both the I5 and I6 would probably have been de-bored a bit in turbo applications but it still would have been a great matchup.

GM marketing is so dumb.

Just one of the many extras you get as a member of C&G!

They probably had to scramble as they lost their main supplier when JC Whitney went under.

Bollinger never ever could have made it. This group collectively could have built a better vehicle. ——————-———— And the children were nestled, All snug in their beds, While visions of premium fuel danced in their heads,

A-Effing-Men! The RAV4 is the current lowest common denominator. It's not that it's a great car in any particular measure (thought the hybrid model does have excellent performance and efficiency, but is also quite expensive and dealers are marking it up). They aren't very comfortable, they don't handle well. The interior is meh. As low as the bar is, the CR-V is a much nicer and more comfortable vehicle all around, but it gets outsold by the Toyota. People are just buying refrigerators.

The Ford v GM question is going to come down the the EV platform. GM appears to have the edge here (pun intended) because their Ultium system looks significantly more flexible and scaleable

That assumes no other products in the pipeline and also assumes production for only the US.

Once ever, at 15 mph basically around the block of my hotel. It's not like I was on the highway with no helmet, or even up to suburban speeds. Edit: The picture I think you are referring to we did wear helmets, we just had them off for the picture. We put them back on even for the 100 yard ride onto the ferry. The only time I did ride without a helmet that I described above, I didn't take a pic.