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.

I don't think we need global names. Then we end up with Alpha-Numerics on everything because there are very few names that translate well everywhere.

Does anyone have anything about the Giulia? Maybe questions for @Anthony Fongaro?

But I do.... you've had your rebuttal... now let it go.

Back to your corners guys.... @surreal1272 we won't put any Alfa Romeo on your sandwich okay? You don't have to have any.

I've lived in Pittsburgh since 1998 and I still cannot stand Primanti Brothers. I thought of another idea for Kirkland Signature Motors: It would be a good way for PSA to finally get a foothold in the US. Their vehicles are largely conventional by today's standards, yet different enough that they won't be mistaken for someone else's badge engineered product. This new Peugeot 3008 crossover would be the perfect intro product.

new hashtag? #MAGA - Make an AWD Galant Again....... might get it to go viral.

Ah, so VW is going to be making Trax to the US.

We use something called a VPS which is a containered server that shares hardware with other containered servers, all on one really big server. I buy a container of a certain size (CPU, RAM, Hard Drive) and that amount of capacity is sectioned off for me. For Ram and CPU, that works well... we always get what we're paying for. Disk space is a little more tricky, because while they can guarantee the amount of space we get, they cannot guarantee the performance of that disk. And that's where our problem on the old server started. The performance of the old server was being degraded by being on platter disks on a busy server. When you went to load the webpage, the server would have to wait till the disks caught up. Someone else on the same server container was having so much disk activity that it was causing long wait times for us. Moving to SSD drives speed that process up. The wait times I'm seeing on the disks now are literally a fraction of a percent of what they were on the old server. Some of that could be better neighbors, but I expect a lot of it is faster drives. Since moving servers is a big process, I decided to take the time to upgrade the OS, add ram, and processor. The nice thing is that even with these upgrades, the monthly cost stays the same. Yes, a couple of posts could have gone astray. I did shut down the site to public access last night before I started the move, but certain users have the ability to bypass that block and still post.

But it should be worth it... We're now on the newest version of Linux server OS. I've doubled the amount of ram. I've doubled the number of processors and we've moved a couple generations newer. We're now on Solid State Disk rather than spinning disk. I haven't tuned the software to it's new roomier digs yet, so hopefully there is even more performance to be gained once I do.

I haven't seen it.

I don't see the Acadia getting that engine. Even the Enclave would be a longshot as much as we both may wish. The only way I see it ever making it into the XT5 is if they put it in the XTS after the upgrade and possibly the LaCrosse.

Pittsburgh's idea of fine cuisine is putting coleslaw and french fries on a sandwich. It's a culinary wasteland here. Funny you mentioned the Olive Oil though... so much of the olive oil out there doesn't actually meet the criteria for Extra Virgin... and even others have other oils cut in with them. One of the ones that aced the tests for Extra Virgin Olive Oil?? Kirkland Brand Olive Oil..

Radio silence so far. I do know it is supposed to launch in 2018. Shanghai Auto Show is in just about a month. Stay tuned.

They really need to get back to their roots. Make an AWD Galant again. Make a decent off-roader SUV. Make an AWD sports coupe that doesn't weigh 3900 lbs. But now, under Nissan control, they won't do any of that.

Wait... VW thinks this has market potential in the US, but the Amarok doesn't?

I could see this working well for large families who always buy the same things in bulk. My Costco purchases are rarely ever large enough to justify it. I'm usually just passing by and stop in to pick something up.... like today, I get a prescription filled at Costco and the only other thing I bought was a container of Feta cheese.

I'll let you in on a secret: The head games are no different dating guys. As I've actually been off the market for over 9 years and my partner and I are very much in tune with each other emotionally, it doesn't bother me much. I'm less interested in self driving as I am in active cruise control and automatic emergency braking. I've used active cruise control in a Benz CLS400 driving from NJ up the coast to Boston and having it in that traffic was fantastic. That combined with the automatic emergency braking saved my butt in at least one specific instance during a freak storm on that trip.

Higher than take rates on hi-po mid-size crossovers. There is also the engineering to account for. A turbo V6 xt5 isn't going to have anything to share it's power train with.

When I actually go to my office in downtown these days, I am 90% bus travel. I hate bumper to bumper traffic.

hahah! switch hitters have twice the fun! Don't get me wrong, I looooove driving. What I hate is traffic. When it's bumper to bumper city driving or even heavy volume high speed highway driving, the fun is already gone because of the other drivers who are generally idiots. I to a lot of long distance driving, often weekly. My last trip was Pittsburgh - DC - NYC. Tomorrow I'm doing Pittsburgh - DC and back on Friday. When I drive for fun, I want total control. When I drive for "work", I much rather the car do the work.

Haha, I'm the opposite. I really want adaptive cruise at minimum on my next vehicle.

Apple fans have made Apple one of the most cash rich companies in the world. Tesla could do far worse than having that situation.

Cool. Didn't know. Back to the topic. I don't think the Chinese cars built by Chinese brands would work. They don't have the quality know-how yet. The ones overseen by GM or Volvo could be okay, but I'm not sure that Costco, which prides itself on customer satisfaction, would want to hang their hat on that.