Drew Dowdell

It's not. It's just a new dash pad, center stack, infotainment from the Regal/Insignia and new gauge cluster also from another car. Looks like new seats possible, but those could have been there on the current Mokka and I didn't know about it.

A platform lifetime is a very nebulous thing. The 2003 Malibu, 2013 Cadillac XTS, and 2016 Lacrosse and 2016 Malibu are all just variants of the same platform, yet show great evolution over time. What GM has shown lately is that the steel on the outside is nearly irrelevant.

It's just the same steering wheel its had since launch. This is just a refresh of the car, not everything will get changed

No, the ridgeline isn't going on the same trails as a Colorado.

Ridgeline may ride better (possibly, maybe) than the GM twins, but it's going to be highly compromised in capabilities. It'll do okay picking up a dozen bags of mulch from Lowes, but that's as truck as it will get, and the Honda Element is equally capable in that regard.

Sadly, yes. Curbed due to abuse. It will be back in another format eventually.

Both are great interiors but the Buick wins hands down for me, just a bit nicer. Love it in fact. You're not comparing apples to apples. The Envision is a bigger and more expensive product than the Mokka/Encore. It should look more expensive for that reason alone. Envision is likely going to start around $12+k more than the Encore when it initially debuts because they're only bringing over the premium trims at first.

Criminal? How do you expect roads to get built or repaired? The gas tax hasn't been raised in over 2 decades while fuel economy overall has improved... meaning you get much more miles of travel per tax paid than ever before. In your new truck, you pay about 0.7 cents per mile in fed gas taxes... if this $10 per barrel tax goes through, it would increase to 1.7 cents per mile. Driving my Buick, I pay about 0.6 cents a mile and in my Toronado, its about 1.7 cents a mile. Those would rise to 1.3 cents and 3.0 cents per mild respectively. Still a tiny price to pay for bridges that don't fall down. Now is exactly the time to raise the tax when prices are super cheap. I just paid $1.30 a gallon last week in Tulsa... I would still think $1.55 a gallon is dirt cheap. Our infrastructure is beyond terrible for a developed country. We get a D+ grade. Here in Pittsburgh, since there was no federal money to replace a bridge that was falling down over an interstate, they built another bridge below it to catch the pieces that were falling on the interstate below. They imploded it... finally... back in December. I get that people want lower taxes and all... but eventually you just have to admit that you're a cheapskate who thinks that everything should be handed to you for free. Making America great again means rebuilding those things that made us great in the first place... but we can't do it without paying for it.

The Model-X wasn't a mistake. The excessively expensive frills they put on it were a mistake. It would have sold just as well, if not even a little better due to potentially lower price, with normal doors. Having normal doors could have knocked up to $10k (my personal estimate) off the price and allowed the vehicle to launch sooner changing nothing else about the vehicle. People buy $70k - $80k SUVs all day every day, and it would have been a hit. But the Model-X wasn't a mistake... it was a necessity.

Clearly the merging of the Buick and Opel styles happening here. The Interior design is a thematic clear tie-in to the Buick Envision. Mokka Envision

Wow a "4.6L" pentastar that gets 25-35 mpg in a heavy-ass brick of a full-size sedan?? It's crazy because Fiat-Chrysler can barely manage that with their 4-cylinder cars. I always get good fuel economy from the LX cars with the 3.6. Highway is usually in the low to mid 30s.

It was only 5 years difference between the two.

People bought the Pruis to save on gas (even if the financials of that idea were sketchy), but taking the fuel savings aspect away, the Pruis was rather lousy as a car. It handles poorly, has a lot of road and engine noise, every one I've driven has creaks and rattles, and they're ugly. Now that gas is as low as $1.25 a gallon in some parts of the country, the fuel saving aspect is far less compelling and cannot overcome the negatives of the car. Other hybrids I've driven are actually decent at their primary task of being a car. You don't take an experience penalty to drive a Fusion Hybrid or Chevy Volt. You just get the normal, capable, Fusion and save fuel. In a Fusion hybrid, there is no downside outside of the price of admission to the hybrid theme park.

Shame.. because it's actually a fantastic car for what it was intended to be. It was just priced too high. I could be completely tempted by one once deprecation does its thing.

Later assface.

March

I agree that FCA has one foot on a very slippery stone. Their problem right now is their CEO trying to raise brands from the dead rather than trying to keep alive ones alive.

... no.. again, Dec '14 was an unusually large sales gain for the 200. They basically ran a sale and moved a whole bunch of extra metal (and probably dumped the previous bodystyle into fleets). Dec '15 was a return to norm. It looks like a big drop, but it is really just a return to normal. For the entire year, the 200 was up 52%. http://www.cheersandgears.com/topic/86233-december-2015-fca-us-llc/ December '13 - 5,652 December '14 - 16,229 (fleeting and big discounts on old model) December '15 - 8,759 (and up 52% for the year)

What would have been the best decision for the business.

It wasn't that they tanked... it was that December the year prior was abnormally high.

Yes, Ford's debt is serviceable in this economy. What happens when China tanks and takes the world economy with it? All I'm saying is that Ford needs to work on this high level of debt and get it back into industry standard ahead of the next crisis. They have the profits today to do it.

How would you know? Nissan is building their QX30 out of mostly Benz parts. That they are, but none of the body panels or interior is the same. And in this case, the Nissan would use their engine/tranny and I'd suspect Mercedes would use theirs, I suppose they could offer air suspension too. Erm... a LOT of the QX30 interior is spec Benz parts.

7,000 is just the ones that are nearing the end of their lives and need to be replaced. There are over 30k windmills operating in Germany now. We're taking past each other here. Renewable energy is the future, but there is no single technology that will become the dominant player. The future involves wind AND solar AND geothermal AND hydro all coming together to displace fossil fuels as the primary source of electricity. Germany knows it, the US knows it, China knows it. Every day we get a little closer to that tipping point. It won't happen for a while, but it will happen within our expected lifetimes... And probably a lot sooner than we think. The biggest hold up in the US is the utility companies. They pressure state legislatures into passing laws restricting grid tie in by home owners and 3rd party renewable generation. Florida Power and Light just got the legislature to greatly hinder solar energy installations.... In The Sunshine State no less...

Purely a regulatory thing rather than a technical one. Wind and solar are growing but the reality is they are no where near replacing conventional means. One has to remember the Green movement is also a big money making venture where some date is accurate but so many are also selling pipe dreams too. When you say blanket what you leave out that means wind farms that would look like a forest of wind generators. Not only is it not real cost effective to build but also becomes a ghastly sight and also in many areas impractical due to the cost of land that is taken up. It is not like a power plant with a bank of generators in one room and some flood gates to open. Also these things are not maintenance free. They take investment to keep them working and they also have issues like a run away blade that can shatter and do damage with the loss of the blade and if in a urban setting can become a killing object as some in Europe have suffered. I never said they were on their way to displacing traditional generation, only that they are taking a larger and larger chunk of the new generation being added each year while coal plants get shut down. Your second paragraph of slippery slope is actually kind of amusing. The storage problem is being addressed by the likes of Telsa and a large number of far less PR-Tastic firms. The space issue is a non-issue in the midwest and indeed most of this country. Farmers that lease to wind farms generally get higher revenue per square foot from the turbine than they do from their crops... turbines have a very small footprint. Coal plants, nuke plants, and gas turbine plants all have far far higher maintenance costs than wind farms and that's even before getting to the fuel. As for cost, on-shore wind is on-par with advanced-cycle Natural gas (the most expensive to build, but most efficient to run) and that is primarily due to the low price of the fuel at the moment. Wind is cheaper than conventional cycle natural gas generation. Wind is now the second cheapest generation out there behind advanced-cycle natural gas, again entirely dependent on the price of the fuel. Cheaper than coal, cheaper than nukes..... the only thing that would beat wind at this point is Geothermal, however there is no wide-spread installations of that going on in the US. There are now more solar jobs in the US than there are oil and gas drilling jobs. Again... I work in the energy industry for one of the largest players out there. The trend lines are pretty clear.

Sure there are a lot of wind generators but no where enough to make a dent. I was reading how the Germans have abandon Wind for the most part as a primary source as they have found to make enough you would have to have so many generators that it is impractical. Well, there may have been something lost in translation..... what's being dropped is the idea that in the future there will be a single primary source. (An idea I agree with) Power generation is going to be much more diversified and flexible. They are continuing to install more wind generation still. Germany has another issue though, and one that will begin to skew the stats very shortly. Many of their wind farms (I'm reading up to 7,000 turbines total) are fast approaching their original 15 year expected service life. So soon, that means they'll need to start the overhaul process of replacing these while also adding capacity, so going forward, they'll need 2,000 turbines a year to grow capacity by 1,000 turbines a year.