Drew Dowdell

These are fun! Maybe we should make an AI Carspotters thread.

How Off-road do you go?

Hotel and other travel related taxes are popular in destination states because "other people" pay them and largely can't vote against them. Florida does the same thing with hotels, rental cars, and theme park tickets. It works in Florida and California, but not so much in Iowa. Tolling roads doesn't necessarily mean lower gas taxes. Illinois and PA routinely compete for second highest gas taxes in the country and here in PA we have the highest cost per mile toll road in the world. Part of that is because the turnpike was privatized and the money squandered, so now the state probably will be bailing them out.

We reported back in April that Cadillac would be releasing a V-Series version of their OPTIQ EV for the coming model year, joining the Cadillac Lyriq-V in the V-series lineup. Today we finally get the details. While the base Cadillac Optiq already makes 300 horsepower, the OPTIQ-V bumps that up to a robust 519 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque when the car is in Velocity Max mode. That is sufficient to sprint to 60 in just 3.5 seconds. Carrying an 85 kWh battery pack, Cadillac's preliminary range estimate comes in at 275 miles. Naturally, that range would decrease with a lot of Velocity Max driving. For charging, the OPTIQ-V is the first GM vehicle to come standard with the NACS charge port. Home charging at 240V is available at 7.7kW, 11.5 kW, and if a 100-amp breaker is available, 19.2 kW. DC Fast-Charging allows the OPTIQ-V to take on power at a rate up to 70 miles in 10 minutes. Accessing Velocity Max is done through the V-Mode button on the steering wheel or in the drive mode app in the center screen. V-Mode allows the driver to customize their experience and pre-select performance settings that are activated by the V-Mode button. Drivers can select from Launch Control for maximum straight line acceleration and Competitive Mode for extra traction management to enhance agility. Handling is managed by Continuous Damping Control (CDC) dampers. Brembo performance brake calipers are standard on the front and available in blue or red with a V-Series logo. When you want the car to take over driving, Super Cruise is standard and available for use on approved roads. All Go, Plenty of Show Cadillac makes sure other drivers know you're in something special with V-Series specific looks. The front fascia is unique to the OPTIQ-V, complete with the signature V-Pattern mesh lower grill, high gloss black front splitter, and body color lower trim. A Carbon Fiber package is available which upgrades the front splitter, rear diffuser, and rear mid-spoiler to carbon fiber. Wheels are 21-inch satin graphite alloy by default or optional 21-inch dark painted sport wheels are available. The roof is painted black standard with a panoramic fixed-glass section while two new limited-edition exterior colors: Magnus Metal Frost and Deep Ocean Tintcoat join the color palette. V-Series badging is placed prominently around the exterior. The Inside Counts Too Optiq-V offers two interior color schemes: Noir with Santorini Blue accents or Noir and Sky Cool Gray with Santorini Blue accents. An additional darker accent fabric is woven from yarn made from 100-percent recycled materials. Standard genuine carbon fiber trim decorates the center console. The standard audio system is a 19-speaker AKG Studio unit with Dolby Atmos paired with a 33-inch diagonal LED display. Starting price for the OPTIQ-V rings up at $68,795, including destination charges and before taxes and fees. View full article

The tests get harder regularly.

I have used both. I have a couple of favorites on AirBnB that I return to. Turo needs to be the right situation. There's a guy who rents out his Model-3 near me who I've used because renting his car is cheaper than fueling my truck.

I'm on some AirBnB host facebook groups and it is really location dependent. If you host Airbnb or Turo in an area that gets a lot of international/canada vistors, you're down. If you host in an area that gets a lot of domestic travel (think Smokey Mountains, Interior of the country), you're not seeing a change. That said, Turo is screwing it's hosts lately and a lot are leaving the platform.

You're correct, it's the V6. I was thinking Tacoma and got my engines mixed up. The Crosstrek doesn't offer one, but generally with Subaru, you want the turbo models for reliability. The non-turbos aren't bad, but they've had head gasket issues some 10 years ago. I don't know if those are resolved or not.

Toyota 4-cylinders had the same problem the Hyundai/Kia engines had, insufficient oiling. Their issue was 10+ years ago though and Toyota blamed it on the customer and improper maintenance. For Hyundai/Kia, it is largely limited to an earlier 4-cylinder design while Toyota had similar issues with their V6 back then also. While Hyundai/Kia's issues are not limited to engines with turbos, a car with a turbo is much harder on oil, so when the engine started to go it only made the issue worse. However, Toyota has a more recent issue with engines blowing up, specifically the new 4-cylinder hybrid being used in the iForce-Max trucks. There's a manufacturing defect that allowed metal shavings to get into the crank bearings and was frying engines at a fairly young age. Toyota has a program set up to replace these engines, much like the Tacoma frame rust recall.

I’m in favor of traffic circles because they actually improve traffic flow and you can get through them faster. I’m talking about aggressive “smart traffic lights”, speed humps on major neighborhood arteries, and artificially slow speed limits that don’t get enforced so you end up having a mismatch of people who obey the speed limit and people who drive the natural traffic flow speed limit. For example, there’s a road near me that is 50 miles an hour for most of its length but then it drops down to 35 miles an hour even though the road itself doesn’t change. The speed limit was dropped because people in town complained. But the speed limit isn’t enforced so now you have some people who do the speed limit of 35 and other people still trying to do 50. This is a fairly large road and 50 is entirely appropriate for it. With smart lights, they are able to detect how quickly the traffic gets from one light to the next, and if the traffic light feels the traffic is moving too fast, they start turning red more often to slow the traffic down. All that does is aggravate people, and then people speed more than if they could just pass through a few green lights. At their worst, the lights will only let three or four cars through even if a bunch of cars are backed up behind and then change very quickly back to red again

I think many of the “traffic calming “ techniques that civil engineers are using today end up having the opposite effect. I think they end up angering drivers, and while it might slow the driver down at that exact point, they end up speeding up in between the traffic calming devices. Further, it just makes traffic worse and angers drivers even more.

There are two 3500s with some years of overlap. The earlier one called the LX9, you are correct, is built on the 3400 block and was offered from 2004 - 2007. This one traces it history to the 3.1 from 1994, and even earlier to the 2.8 from 1980. This one made about 200 hp and between 215 - 220 lb-ft of torque depending on application. The later one started production in 2006 and ran through 2010 as the LZ4 and is entirely unrelated to the earlier one aside from name. It was all new. It is a 3900 with a sightly shorter stroke. This one came with Variable Valve Timing. The blocks of the 3500 VVT and 3900 are basically identical. Horsepower rating changed almost yearly, starting at 211, jumping to 224, then back down to 219 or 217. There is a variant of this (LZE) for flex fuel rated at 211 horsepower and only available in the Impala and Monte Carlo. To make things simple</s>, GM named ALL of these engines the 3500 High-Value engine, though the LZ4 and LZE are also sometimes referred to as 3.5 liter with VVT. The 3900 has all of that plus roller rocker arms (smoother) and a variable length intake manifold. While horsepower maxed out at 240, it has a nearly turbocharged-like torque curve with at least 90% of max torque (240 lb-ft) available from 1500 - 5500 rpm. It had active fuel management and could run on 3 cylinders in certain years, only in the Impala

The 3500 and 3900 were significantly smoother than their respective predecessors. I've told the story here before, but I was in a rental Lucerne driving across Ohio and I didn't realize I was driving in 3rd gear at highway speeds for a good many miles before I noticed.

Oh, I get it, I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying make a Maverick Raptor with that engine. For a Lobo version, they'd need something like Lobo Max.

Based on earlier responses, I updated the Generative AI Usage Policy and added the Integra pictures above as examples. Check it out. I can't think of a British actress who would fill that role well. Emily Blunt maybe, but I'm iffy on that.

1000% I think we should have a woman 007 also, these days, she can still get all the Bond-Girls. You straight guys can't argue against that!

I have always felt that 007 was the designation and not the person, much like The Doctor. When a 007 gets killed off or retired, a new 007 is recruited/hired to replace him. Same for M, same for Q. I mean, Judi Dench was an amazing M and Ralph Fiennes, the current M, is amazing at anything he does. So why can't the same be said for 007? I think we've transcended the age when Bond has to be a white male. If anything, the next movie could and should be one where part of the story is how a 007 gets recruited.

Anything at the Raptor level is specialty and people don't expect fuel economy for those trucks.

Raptors don't care about fuel efficiency.

I have to say that this is the most attractive front end treatment of all the trims. Each Maverick trim gets unique styling and this is by far the best. I suppose, theoretically, the 2.3 Ecoboost should fit