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Drew Dowdell

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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    That is a pretty decent improvement in profile. Now it looks more like a shrunken Sable instead of a shrunken Taurus. The interior looks like a good upgrade too,.
  2. Drew Dowdell
    Oh, not as an acquisition for myself. I already know what is on my radar and none of them are CVTs. The CVT isn't the deciding factor though.
  3. Drew Dowdell
    I think Toyota did it to counteract and leftover thoughts about their little sudden acceleration issue a few years ago. Sure most people have forgotten about it now, but these production plans would have been put in place that long ago.
  4. Drew Dowdell
    It definitely depends on who built it. Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive is just a really fancy sounding way of saying "CVT with two power inputs instead of one" and Pruises and Camry Hybrids go over 150k miles regularly. As do the Ford hybrids with the same basic setup. The early Nissan CVTs did have reliability issues.
  5. Drew Dowdell
    Well, it's not going to look anything like that. My bet is that Hyundai is just trying to beat VW to market. @dfelt, so much of the R&D is done already. 90% of the interior and mechanical bits are probably found on the Santa Fe.
  6. Drew Dowdell
    The Lacrosse has an Eassist. I doubt Paul would want a Regal. He like posh old school luxury like I do.
  7. Drew Dowdell
    I'm willing to give this new generation of CVT a chance
  8. Drew Dowdell
    Also "don't buy the Buick" is what Paul is lamenting about. He likes the Buick and has been a Buick driver most of his life, but the packages offered aren't competitive. Not being able to keep loyal buyers is a problem.
  9. Drew Dowdell
    Don't get sucked into the smk trap of comparing only on base price. Few of the base model Lacrosses are ever even built.
  10. Drew Dowdell
    3800, 4100, 3100, 3900, 4900. Civic back in the 70s was badged that way too.
  11. Drew Dowdell
    That's a valid point that gets invalidated by the Avalon and ES, and to a degree even the Mazda 6 now that it got a super nice new interior. Mazda is doing "Quiet Tuning" without calling it that.
  12. Drew Dowdell
    None of that is the point. Toyota, Mazda, Accord are offering it standard or option on base models. Buick makes you pick the top of the line trim and then charges you a lot more on top of that. I have the same opinion about Car Play being a $350 option on BMW and Benzes, sometimes requiring an infotainment system upgrade also, but standard on a Sonic.
  13. Drew Dowdell
    The CVT is all about cost and fuel economy. As you point out, modern automatics are very seamless these days, so they're not doing it for that reason. I have some suspicion that some vendor came out with a technological advancement to CVT design and is shopping it around to the manufacturers. Hyundai is moving the Elantra to a CVT also and making great claims as to its feel. Toyota did similar. Nissan is claiming advances with their CVT. It's odd they all come up with it a same time.
  14. Drew Dowdell
    For me, it's a nice easy Fifty Thirty. 307ci - 5030cc
  15. Drew Dowdell
    Yeah, I don't think totally alacarte is the way to go either, but some things need to be decoupled from the high price option packages, especially if they are safety items like blind spot monitoring or automatic cruise control. Accord, Camry, Corolla, Avalon (most of the Toyota line really) are all coming with these things standard now, it's time for GM and Ford and others to step up. The Mazda 6 comes with it standard on the Touring model and it's available for just $625 on the base model. That is a very fair way to do it. On the Regal it is still a $1600 option on the GS! Automatic Cruise and automatic forward braking doesn't become an option until you're in the highest non-GS trim, and then it still costs $2500 in packages to get. It is simply uncompetitive.
  16. Drew Dowdell
    I haven't noticed any quality issues with Envision... it is just completely anonymous to me....even as a current Buick owner I can't get excited for it. It's another one that is packaged weirdly compared to the competition. The base 2.5 has to go... GM did "ecoboost" before Ford did, that is turbo with direct injection, putting it attainable cars at the start. The 2008 Cobalt SS is arguably more attainable than a 2010 Taurus SHO. The Regal Turbo (2009) and Verano Turbo (2013) were both out before and at the same time respectively as the Fusion Ecoboost (2013). Your argument is correct however if you are saying that Ford was first to put Turbo+DI at the bottom end of the option packages. the Explorer was the first to get a Turbo+DI as a base engine.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    I prefer 7,700 cc.
  18. Drew Dowdell
    Here's an example: Perhaps the most direct competitor to the Buick Lacrosse is either the Toyota Avalon or the Lexus ES. The Avalon comes standard with active cruise, lane departure, automatic high beams. You can bet the new ES will come with all of that standard as well. You can't get any of that until you option up to the very top non-Avenir package and then it is still an additional $1600 on top of that. To add insult to injury, the Corolla even comes standard with that tech now. Then, as @Paolino has pointed out, rain sensing wipers aren't even an option on the Lacrosse but are available in my Encore. I get that premium brands want to charge extra for things (Benz and BMW charge you extra for Apple Car Play when it is standard in just about every mainstream brand vehicle), but even just forcing people into top of the line trim before making a feature available isn't very good business.... especially safety features. It's not just Buick either. I've seen other GM brands doing this with the newer models also.
  19. Drew Dowdell
    Buick lately is being packaged uncompetitively. I get that they're trying to be a premium brand, but many of the combinations don't make sense in light of what the competition is offering.
  20. Drew Dowdell
    It was the first Buick to get it. GMC has been using it on the 6.2 powered trucks as apparently they are unpleasant in 4 cylinder mode and some of the Denali line. Most, if not all, of the Cadillacs have it.
  21. Drew Dowdell
    Microphones placed throughout the cabin. When it picks up a sound the engineers have deemed undesirable, the audio system puts out an equal but opposite sounds wave to cancel it out. I believe they also use active engine mounts in a similar way in some models. In the Mustang and some Benzes they go a step further and enhance the good engine sounds, using the same tech.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    I think he is confusing loudness with harshness. GM (and others) cheats on some of their Turbo-4s in Buick and Cadillac by putting active noise cancellation in. My Encore has it and is very quiet, though the engine isn't as smooth as I'd want it to be. I drove a Trax which doesn't have Active Noise Cancellation and the racket was horrible. I have weird hearing though, it is difficult for me to hear at some frequencies and I have higher sensitivity to higher frequency harsh sounds. Most turbo-4s in cars without active noise cancellation aren't very pleasant for me. It's not the volume though, it's what the sound "sounds" like. With ACN, the engineers can change the interior sound quite a bit, so while a turbo-4 might be at a lower dB than a V6, the sound might be irritating (I'm not saying that is the case in the ATS T4 v. ATS V6, I'm just using it as an example). I think that is what @dfelt is trying to say.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    Nothing has been announced yet. Just because this particular tester might have a V6 doesn't mean other options won't be available.
  24. Drew Dowdell
    If only they would build something like that....
  25. Drew Dowdell
    I've been pretty happy with my TripleTreds. I don't know how they are for true performance driving (Encore, 138hp), but they've been a great all-around tire. One of the reasons I picked them was for their superior snow performance. Not quite a snow tire, but better than most other All-Seasons in that regard. The downside to them is that I've never gotten the same MPG out of the car since they went on.
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