Drew Dowdell

Honest question: The 5-speed auto in my '04 CTS did seem to adjust to my driving pattern when it was in sport mode. If I put it in sport and drove normally, it would hold a gear a bit longer before shifting, but otherwise drove normally. If I was in sport mode and being very aggressive, it would hold a lower gear longer even after I let off the gas..... if I calmed down, then it would go back to normal sport mode.... but it always took a few minutes of driving before it did. I realize that it is not the memory that @Cmicasa the Great was talking about, but the transmission did seem to adjust to variations in driving more distinctly. I will say that I have yet to experience a transmission with that level of variation in attitude since then because just after that model, everyone went to paddle shifters and the sport-automatic modes don't seem to be as aggressive. Did I imagine it?

... and nearly dead.

Torque comes at a lower rpm too

That sounds like a defect.

Jaguar was the first I thought.... With the current XJ.

I highly doubt a $50k starting price. A work van version would be very popular with the post office I'm sure.

Well it's spring time.... I guess people want to go out and have fun. I know I look at motorcycles more often now that it is getting warmer.

Mazda isn't capped on the upper end by having a luxury brand above it. They seem to be trying to creep into upper territory with loads of features. They do seem to swap out some of the interior materials for better stuff as you climb the trim ladder.

You could probably fit an Acura CDX into the bed of an Escalade EXT...... such opposites. It seems to be more difficult to make smaller cars quiet. I don't know why that seems to be.

... if the price is reasonable..... but yes, it does look like an interesting entry.

Fantastic car! They are so smooth and stable on the road. They track really well. Comparing their driving dynamics to a BMW is not unfounded. The best part is the big American V8 under the hood. It's unfortunate that the Hellcats get all the attention for their huge horsepower numbers, but the SS is so much better of a car dynamically that it more than makes up for the large horsepower deficiency. It's also unfortunate that this is the end of the SS.

At least on the older ones... I dislike how much outside noise gets into the Mini Cooper that I wouldn't want to take a long trip with just myself.

Aside from the development costs... there's no reason they couldn't go down that route with something modern. The i-MiEV is ancient technology in EV terms... it was launched in 2009 in Japan which means it was developed in the 2006 - 2008 timeframe. That actually makes it older than the Nissan Leaf. Nissan has a new Leaf coming, there would be potential for some development cost sharing there, but I don't see Nissan getting the oddball looking car while Mitsu gets a conventional looking EV Sedan. Nissan gets first dibs.

It has terrible terrible range and barely qualifies as a car.

Sure... someone gets out of the reservation line and someone else will get back in.... but they're still not going to sell all of those orders in the first year. It is going to take them 3 years to churn through the list.

I just want to point out that Tesla is not going to fill all of the reservations for the Model-3 in the first year....it will take about three years for them to churn through the backlog... in the meantime, more of those waiting on reserve could wander off and buy something else instead.

So... the delta between the two is more than double the total Mustang sales per month in China (average = 310). Are Chinese sales of Mustang still something to tapdance about? I couldn't resist either.

That's odd. I thought they swapped you into another of the same model you were turning in for service. It might not be the exact same level 60/70/80/90/100, but a Model-S gets a Model-S and a Model-X gets a Model-X. Maybe @FAPTurbo can answer?

Indeed... I feel very comfortable in the car when it's just the two of us. It's when we try to put 4 adults in there for a long trip that it becomes an issue. We can do it... but it's tight.

I moved the excellent Tesla discussion into it's own thread: Measuring Tesla's Success or Failure. Some small bits of Mitsubishi discussion got swept into there because they were in the same post as a Tesla post. I've tried to divide it up as cleanly as possible. Feel free to repost in the appropriate thread any point you made that seems to have gone into the wrong bucket.

I agree with you on the brand equity thing.... but Nissan did spend the money to buy Mitsu... so they should give Mitsu a purpose in life, which it doesn't have right now.

Back to Mitsubishi specifically - If they get a version of the Frontier also... that would make 3 versions of the same truck running around? Frontier, X-Class, and I guess we'll call it Raider(?) for now. If Nissan were smart.... they would bring back something that Mitsubishi was known for... offering AWD in many of their models. They need an AWD Galant, an AWD Eclipse, an AWD Diamante, plus all of the crossovers currently required to compete in today's market. They need to be Nissan's direct answer to Subaru, car for car.

Tesla has higher market cap only because of speculators betting on its future value.... not what the company is generating in revenue or even it's total assets minus total debts. I like Tesla, I like their cars, and I like electric cars... but market cap is not an accurate measure of a company's worth when so much of it involves speculation. For example... if we went by your standards of using market cap, United Airlines lost $750 million in worth just for having security beat up an old Doctor.... but Assets minus Debts did not change, sales don't appear to have been affected, and the stock has now bounced back and heading close to a 52 week high. Market Cap as a measure of a company's worth is as useless as tenths of a second in 0-60 times determining which car is better.

The Trax/Encore specifically have an unusually good amount of front driver room for such small vehicles.

Me. I bought an Encore when it was first released and it has served us well.