Drew Dowdell

Yeah. My friend went to test drive the Atlas and Passport today. Each dealership had only 2 of each model in stock. The VW dealer said that they weren't taking ANY orders for the Atlas and they didn't expect replenishment until late August. That pushes a lot of people into the used market to get exactly the car they want. Couple that with the insane trade-in prices the new-wave online dealers are offering and there is a bubble forming. Carvana gave me $8,500 for a base base base model 2014 Cruze back in August, and they bought the 2013 Encore with 100k miles on it for $9,000. Back then, that was $2,500 more than any other dealer would give me on trade-in, about equal to a private party sale, so I sold it to Carvana and bought the Chrysler 300C elsewhere. Just for giggles I went and looked up what KBB says a 2013 Encore with 100k miles and the same options should be. They're now saying that it's worth $9,200 in trade and $11,200 private party.

Sedans in general do not hold their value well, however, this market has gotten so wonky that even my 2017 300C has gone up in value since I bought it in October. Trade-in is higher than what I paid. Private party is around $4k higher than what I paid. My 2013 Avalanche LTZ has increased in value enough that even though it is nearly 9 model years old, private party is over the original LS base price by $2k and $5k higher than what I paid in August and 12,000 miles ago. Trade in value is also over what I paid, but not by as much of course. I don't expect that it will ever return to the $48k sticker price it had when new... but hovering at $10k in depreciation over 9 years... well beat that with a stick. Toyota isn't the only one with good resale. BTW, the ES only comes in AWD with the 203 hp I4 engine. If you want the V6 it is FWD only. They "brag" about the ES250 AWD F-Sport 0-60 being 8.6 seconds on the website.

The ES was not a better vehicle than the Continental even by SMK standards. The ES is a Camry De Lux and nothing more, even using the same V6 the Camry gets. It doesn't come with AWD, it doesn't come with a turbo V6 and the interior is nowhere near as plush as the Continental.

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Well that's just bollocks.... that stat is based on what? Time on lot before sale? If that's the case then the Land Cruiser and Volvo V90 sell faster because they are only available by special order... meaning that it is sold before it hits the lot. The G-wagon volume is too small to be a valid sample size.

And as if on queue.....

I'm surprised my Dunkin Donuts app hasn't been blowing up

The nose is taller on the new truck as a mechanical design decision. I spoke with a GM rep pretty high up when the current trucks came out. The height of the nose was done like that for two reasons. 1. It allowed them to move more of the dirty bits forward away from the cab to improve cab interior room. It also allowed for doing this with longer/taller I-6 engines.

I think if you look at the warnings handed out, you’d have a different position

We all have our different likes and dislikes, and our vast difference of opinion, however I know I can count on all of you to join me and as a community spanning nearly 20 years in offering our thoughts and condolences to our friend @Paolino who lost his fiancé suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday. We are all thinking about you Paulie.

That’s just about your baseline level of achiness anyway

I’ll be cleaning up this thread and handing out the warnings in a few.

You're like 4 weeks late for this one....

I’ll believe it when I see it

The world is flat.

BMW already tried this with Apple CarPlay, failed, and ended up giving it out for free with the car.... and that arguably might have some merit to it because then you'd be paying for updates etc.... what updates do I need to heated seat software though? It has 4 settings.. high, medium, low, and off. Edit: I Do see merit for charging a subscription for SuperCruise however (and Cadillac does after I think 3 years) because it costs GM an enormous amount of money to keep the LIDAR maps up to date. I could see GM eventually partnering with another company (Honda for Acura is the first to come to mind) to sell the LIDAR data for other autonomous systems.

Pro Tip: Take the $5k at whatever rate and then immediately refinance with DCU.org at 1.49%. That rate maxes out at 72 months I think, so you'll cut your interest by more than half.

What's your interest rate?

The 800 cfm is all Q-Jets after 1972. But the big difference is that the secondaries are twice the size of the primaries. Not that 800 cfm even matters on my engine with tiny valves and manifold. Thats interesting that it takes you two additional carbs and four additional barrels to beat an ‘81 e-Qjet in CFM ?

Choke only on the center? I've never studied how tri-carb setups even work. I assume that it opens all three at the same time when you step on the pedal... not progressively opening additional carbs as you give it more pedal like a QuadraJet does.

The thread went way off topic for a bit... at the request of the person who pulled it off topic, I've cleaned up that part of the thread. Let's keep it to discussion of @balthazar's truck please.

The 2020+ R nine T has those settings... I do not. But I think his Ducati is old enough that it also doesn't have those settings... I want to say his is a '15 or '16? Not sure.

I let my friend with the Streetfighter ride the r nine t and now he's considering trading for one. His issue with the Ducati is that he finds it hard to ride calmly.... he can't just go out and cruise because the bike wants to go fast all the time. That's a problem if you just want to commute to work on your bike a couple of days a week because it make the commute exhausting. I've taken the bike to work 4 times now and it's just perfect. It is completely happy just puttering along at moped speeds while we slog our way through suburban rush hour traffic.... and when I want to pull on the throttle it's ready to go fast. You can get on my bike at a lower cost, mine only cost what it did because of what I was looking for. But you can get a 2014 R nine T original (lower to the ground, higher end suspension, higher end brakes, more instrumentation, shorter rake) for $8,280. Or you can get a 2018 R nine T Pure (my bike, lower to the ground, shorter rake) for $9,250, but this one has upgrades, including one that I plan to do which costs about $700. Mine was $10,900, but it only had 2,600 miles (hit 3,000 last night) and also has upgrades like the wire wheels, heated grips, and stability control. The seller also threw in the bag + mount, phone mount, and a throttle lock. I feel like I got a fair deal because even though I plan to do upgrades, absolutely none are necessary like that bag + mount would have been had I bought it without. I've had it at speed now that I agree with the reviewers that more higher gears would be good.

In my area at least, they now have more doses than they have willing recipients. If you've been waiting for your shot, look around to see if there are some new appointments available.

Did you ever get it to spin?