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Drew Dowdell

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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    give it a 0.33 inch lift, slap some cladding on it, Matrix Returns.
  2. Drew Dowdell
    It wasn't FCA at the time and none of those parts are still in use today. The suspension has been completely revised since the first generation. Transmission, engines, rear-diff are all replaced. Even the stupid MB cruise control lever was replaced after the first gen. There might be some random power window motor still shared, but parts like that get shared among manufacturers all the time. We don't call the Escalade based on an F-150 just because they share a transmission.
  3. Drew Dowdell
    There is almost no Benz left in this car, if any. I had one of these as a rental for my trip to Detroit for NAIAS, though mine was RWD rather than AWD. It is a fantastic roadtrip car. I don't know what kind of wheel bearing they are using but the 300C/S rolls better than nearly anything out there.. and I say that in while in the past week I've been at the helm of CT6/LS/G80. 80mph is way too easy. It's comfortable. It's big. It handles well. It goes fast. It has road presence. It is everything a big American sedan should be. On top of that, it is efficient and the infotainment system works well. My long distance trips at the aforementioned 80 mph have yielded 27mpg. Ya'll keep it under 70mph and you can get it over 30 on RWD models. If there is any letdown it is in the quality of materials in the interior. The S and the C Limited do fix some of that, but not all. This is one of my favorite vehicles on the market right now.... not because it is the best at any one thing, but because of the blend of things it does so well. I would absolutely drive the one pictured above and be very happy with it.
  4. Drew Dowdell
    It would be difficult for him to get around the NAFTA agreement for now, but I think this is largely directed at China and Europe anyway. The Chinese want into this country sooooo bad.
  5. Drew Dowdell
    Euro 6 applies to any diesel built after Sept 1 2014.
  6. Drew Dowdell
    That really saddens me. There is a Model-A in my family for probably longer than that which will eventually come to me.
  7. Drew Dowdell
    Sure, if you let the car sit in the Arizona sun for about 4 months. There just isn't enough surface area on the car to collect enough energy to do that.
  8. Drew Dowdell
    Cool. Just thought it would be a good familiar option for you since you already have a G37
  9. Drew Dowdell
    The only thing the solar panels that are on hybrids/EVs do today is keep the interior cool on hot days so that the main battery isn't drained by HVAC. But even then, it only runs while parked.
  10. Drew Dowdell
    nope
  11. Drew Dowdell
    Infiniti Q50 Hybrid - 360hp / 400+ lb-ft of torque. All wheel drive available. 26 city / 32 highway EPA rating (RWD model), but I see reports of people doing a lot better than that when switching to Eco mode, like 36 mpg highway. CPO ones can be found in the mid $25k range The downside - tiny trunk.
  12. Drew Dowdell
    Solar panels are not an alternative to batteries.
  13. Drew Dowdell
    Exactly. Even ignoring the potential rare earth mineral shortage, they are trying to get better energy density from batteries and it most cases that seems to be entirely different chemical compositions.
  14. Drew Dowdell
    GM has always way over-sized their A/C compressors, and it is purely a guess that is what is going on here. The Encore will freeze the nipples off Satan if I turn it low enough. My Toronado is the same way, as was my old Caprice, and my Avalanche, and the Roadmaster I drove for a while. My old Continental I don't recall because it had one of the best automatic climate control systems I've ever used even though it was from 1985.. set it to auto and 72 and it managed the rest. I find I have to fiddle with modern automatic climate control too much to really be called automatic. The Honda? We run that pretty close to max cool just to stay comfortable.
  15. Drew Dowdell
    They've already got R&D underway to replace it.
  16. Drew Dowdell
    Yeah, that's why I think something is wrong.... however, A/C compressors take a certain amount of horsepower to run. Sure they vary in size for the vehicle, but not by that much... so if it takes 3 hp to run, 3 horsepower is a bigger percentage of available power on my 138hp Encore than on a 250hp 2.0T of whatever make. But it's clear... A/C off and highway travel, the Encore will get 33mpg. A/C on, I'm lucky to get to 30. The Honda is the same way though, but that A/C compressor is relatively new. I had it replaced a few years ago. Nail meet Head. It was the marketing of the TDI that got people upset. People bought the diesels thinking they were another clean, high mpg alternative. So if you didn't like the looks of the Pruis (I can understand that one), but the Jetta looked good to you, the TDI was an option.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    Fine, but that wasn't what he was arguing about. His argument was about diesel efficiency v. hybrid efficiency. And the Volvo S90 PHEV sounds really good... more like a 5-cylinder than a 4... not sure how they did that one.
  18. Drew Dowdell
    The problem is that while the doors may be 8ft tall, the openers hang lower than that.
  19. Drew Dowdell
    I have... they're yuuuge. I am wondering if a common complain is the inability to get them in garages now due to height.
  20. Drew Dowdell
    Jaguar is an odd bird. Some way, some how, they manage to get by without high volumes.
  21. Drew Dowdell
    He was asked not to throw around ad hominems and to back up his claims. Everyone is allowed their own opinion... even wrong opinions. No one is allowed their own facts. Facts are facts whether you like them or not. In his case, some of his facts might have been true 10 years ago but technology has changed in the meantime. Rare is the non-hybrid V6 N/A, Turbo, or S/C, that can outrun the Volvo 4-cylinder PHEV. At 4.5 seconds to 60, it's faster than a 540xi's 4.7s, and XTS V-Sport is 5.3s. The S90 PHEV only 0.1 seconds behind the Turbo V8 Audi S6's 4.4s. Give an E400 4Matic a 1 second head start and the driver will be looking at Thor's Hammer lights rapidly approaching from behind till they both cross 60mph at the same time. A plain old E300 4Matic shows up 1.8 seconds late to the party.* After that list, can you think of any AWD midsize or fullsize sedan with a 6-cylinder that would be faster? And then after the full-size luxury sedan drag races are over and it's time to drive Granny to the Old Country Buffett, the S90 PHEV will also get 71mpg-e and be absolutely whisper quiet. Diesel can't do that. If you have a diesel big enough to keep up with an Audi V8, it's not going to be getting 71mpg. If you have a diesel capable of 71mpg, it's not going to keep up with even the E300. As for the decrease in MPG without aero or driving, that is true for any vehicle. Eco oriented hybrids will suffer more when driven hard more because they're under-powered than anything.... even my Encore drops mpg quickly if driven hard because..like the Pruis.. it is under-powered. *only AWD vehicles cited in order to keep apples to apples. Edit: I went and looked up the CT6-PHEV... at 5.2 seconds, it's faster than the XTS-V Sport and the E400. 0.1 seconds behind the A6 3.0 S/C, Faster than the A8L V6, 740i, and S450.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    Yes, but again those were sold that way up front. The reason Olds got in trouble was because they were marketing the 88 with a Rocket V8, but some of them got Chevy V8s instead because Olds couldn't build enough V8s to meet demand. It's one thing if you buy a Skylark and you know it is coming with a Chevy 305. It's another if you think you're buying an 88 with an Olds 350 and it even has a sticker saying so, but when you get to the parts counter for an oil filter (or whatever might be different) you find out its actually a Chevy 350.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    I went and looked it up and @Cubical-aka-Moltar had the right answer. In '77 they got sued and it was for using Chevy 350s in Olds 88s. It wasn't so much that they used the Chevy engine, it's that it had a sticker on it calling it an Olds Rocket V8 when it wasn't. It was considered false advertising. (1996) Setting the Pace, Publications International Ltd. (384 - 385) - One of the best Oldsmobile reference books out there. There were other Olds models using Chevy engines, and Cadillac Seville using an Olds 350 variant... but the Cadillac Seville didn't say it had a Cadillac engine... the air cleaner just says "Electronic Fuel Injection". Besides, the 350 Olds V8 had a reputation for refinement and quality that Cadillac customers didn't seem to mind it in their Cadillac, where Oldsmobile 88 buyers thought having a Chevy V8 was a downgrade regardless of actual performance. The whole thing was Olds being a victim of its own success. In 1977, 1 million Oldsmobiles were built. Only the third time to that point that a single brand had sold 1 million vehicles in a single year. The Olds V8 plant couldn't keep up with demand, so Chevy engines were substituted in.
  24. Drew Dowdell
    The XK needs to be a grand tourer like the S-Class Cabrio or 6-series Cabrio. Doing so might even give the XJ a reason to live. They don't sell a lot of them, but the ones they do sell command very high prices. Sharing with an XJ would minimize development costs. J-LR has already shown they are willing to do extreme niche high end product with things like the Velar Coupe.
  25. Drew Dowdell
    Isn't that the one GM got sued for? Or was that some other divisional cross breeding?
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