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Drew Dowdell

Editor-in-Chief
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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    I like the concept from the sound of it. Sleek and ultra luxury rather than the giant cars of Rolls and Bentley
  2. Drew Dowdell
    I like the looks of the new Equinox, but like @ocnblu I fear that GM is going to get to ambitious with pricing and it will hurt sales. A fully loaded CR-V Touring with AWD, sunroof, NAV, and Driving Autotronics is $33,695. A Chevrolet Equinox Premier AWD similarly equipped (but active cruise control doesn't appear to be available) is $37,900. The outgoing CX-5 is $34,600.... A completely loaded Cherokee Trailhawk V6 is still slightly less money than the Equinox So I see Chevy having to rebate these down a bit to keep them moving.
  3. Drew Dowdell
    Well we don't know what the one they tossed looks like.
  4. Drew Dowdell
    Well that explains why they extended the previous generation by 2 years with that lackluster facelift.
  5. Drew Dowdell
    I've been a long time fan of the W-bodies, but by the time these came around GM had done something to the seating position that makes them feel off to me. I could never get the seat into a comfortable position... I always felt I was sitting way too high.
  6. Drew Dowdell
    Yesh, I defer to that definition then. I looked it up. I thought the chassis itself was an Econoline frame with an MV-1 body... but apparently it's not.
  7. Drew Dowdell
    It uses a substantial amount of Econoline parts. It used the 4.6 liter V8, a Ford transmission. The dash cluster, center stack, and steering wheel are all Ford.
  8. Drew Dowdell
    They're based on the Ford Econoline I think.
  9. Drew Dowdell
    I actually like the Outlander in a "this is has a cool old school feel to it" sort of way. But old school mid-size SUVs aren't in right now. From what I understand, it's actually surprisingly capable off road with the right tires.
  10. Drew Dowdell
    The Pathfinder isn't too bad with one. I just had one on an 800 mile trip
  11. Drew Dowdell
    Thanks for notifying me. I know the solution, I just can't do it from my phone.
  12. Drew Dowdell
    Initially?
  13. Drew Dowdell
    Overall I think they are... but they aren't keeping pace with the market, especially considering they're 90% crossovers.
  14. Drew Dowdell
  15. Drew Dowdell
    *It will look like....
  16. Drew Dowdell
    I haven't attended a concert in person in years. Tomorrow I get to go see a performer I've admired for years. Classical organ music may not be everyone's cup of tea, but this guy is a virtuoso. He can re-write Bach in his head on the fly.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    It's a Forester that someone put on the photocopier and hit "Enlarge 150%"
  18. Drew Dowdell
    I'm not arguing build quality... the Traverse is a disaster in that regard.
  19. Drew Dowdell
  20. Drew Dowdell
    HVAC controls and other switchgear... yeah.. it is. The Traverse has really nice dials, metal ring with rubber grips and electroluminescent numbers for the HVAC. The Atlas has flat silver plastic and they don't have a solid feel to them. The Atlas has hard plastic on the lower dash, fine, so does the Traverse... but then VW also covered the entire inner door panel with the same stuff. The Traverse, at least for the front seats, has a padded foam material for the upper part of the door and then the hard plastic only at the map pockets at the bottom. The Traverse upper dash pad is hard plastic, but then the face of it is stitched material... the Atlas is all plastic face and dash upper (though I think you can get a stitched dash cover on upper trims)
  21. Drew Dowdell
    That was my experience years ago with the local VW dealer. A beautiful Apple Store of a place, modern, airy. Techs that couldn't fix worth a damn and management that couldn't care less about it. And they were the Phaeton certified dealership for the area.... I pity the Phaeton owners who took their cars there.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    Here's another lineup I wouldn't mind.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    Cadillac has a very inconsistent dealership network, that is certainly true. I've seen a Cadillac / Rolls dealer that would blow you away, yet others are how you described... more interested in volume sales of Equinoxes......
  24. Drew Dowdell
    I would have no problem with the Citroen DS lineup coming to the US. Edit: In that video when the narrator pauses and says "The New Generation" my mind immediately finished the sentence with "Of Olds!"
  25. Drew Dowdell
    Incredibly off topic, but when they first came out, the Daewoos looked great on paper. The transverse inline-6 in the Leganza wasn't a MPG queen, but who cared, gas was 89 cents a gallon. The engine was one of the best things about that car because it was Lexus smooth and the interiors could fool you into thinking they were a Lexus from the pictures. Not too bad for a car that was $4,000 cheaper than an equivalent Accord or $5,000 less than a Camry. They had their reliability issues, but what really killed them was their horrendous sales process. They tried to use a combination of college kids doing multi-level marketing and buy-here-pay-here lots, while service was to be taken care of at K-Mart (if memory serves on that last point). Not confidence inspiring. Tyinging this to Alfa. We have a single Alfa-Romeo dealer here in Pittsburgh at an Automotive Group I've never even heard of. From the architecture in the pictures, they look like they're an old Chrysler-Plymouth Dealer who now covers Chrysler-Dodge-Ram-Jeep-Fiat-Alfa Romeo. When Lexus came to this country, they had purpose built showrooms, so this shoving a couple cars in the back corner of an ex-Plymouth showroom doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me. In this particular case, the dealership is also 25 miles outside of the city and the next closest one is 70 miles away in Ohio.. so they better have a Tesla like pickup/drop-off service for people who are coming from BMW or Benz and used to having a dealership near downtown. Edit to add: You literally have to drive past BMW (twice), Mercedes, Jaguar, Land Rover, Cadillac, Lexus (up to twice), Lincoln, Volvo, Audi, and possibly even Maserati just to get to the only Alfa dealership here. Vehicle issues aside, the dealership network could be the thing that makes or breaks Alfa in the US. It's largely what killed Daewoo.
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