Drew Dowdell

The GM 2.5 is much smoother engine than the Nissan, but the Nissan has 400lbs less to pull around yet is a larger package with more room and with the CVT gets much better fuel economy.

98% also had other franchises to fall back on.. as for extra facilities. "Welcome to our brand new expanded pre-owned vehicle super store!*"

*Located in our former Suzuki showroom.

Go ahead and make fun of me, but I'm waiting for this to drop in late Jan/early Feb.

If I MUST stay with BB for my work phone, I'd at least want it to be that one. But there is a super secret Android and iOS pilot program starting up soon and I'm trying to get to be a beta tester.

the upgrade is a manual one, but worth it

I have been disappointed with Android and Samsung Galaxy SII.

• You have to press four buttons to make a phone call after searching directory, Windows 6 phone did it in 2. A smart phone is a phone first and smart later.
• The volume control for speaker and ear piece are same. Come on - my circa 2002 Samsung flip phone had different controls for both.
• Weather software does not show current city and the position. Windows 6 phone did that.
• The phone is a memory creep. Starts around ~265 MB after turning it on, and in an hour memory is hovering at 500 MB. Didn't Google say how streamlined usage its phones will have?
• Talk about bloatware - Media Hub, Social Hub, Voice Control, Maps and others. Despite of removing them from task manage crop back as soon as you get out of it. No software like Juice Defender, etc. make them go away. Windows at least kills the software once in the Task Manager.
• Those software are another story - rather than saving Juice, by constantly killing these bloatware use more juice.
• Support for other email providers is horrible. It is as if Google does not want you to use other emails. At least Windows (I-phone) phone had same interface for all emails. Didn't Microsoft get dinged for being partial towards IE? Google gets a free pass on this?
• Sometime after I delete an email in Yahoo and Hotmail - the emails crop up again as unread. Once I had to do that 4 times.
• After melting with Ice Cream Sandwich - Google added another horrible step. For every time I Silence, Turn Off, Restart, Airplane Mode, the obligatory message, "Are you sure you want to ----?" pops up. Yes MF go tell Larry Page to suck between my legs.
• Media Player is suckage.
• Yes it also has pop-up ads, despite making every effort to not to download any crappy apps.
• Despite of hard reset, the phone is slow.

Sure there are apps for everything. But if old crummy phones had those features standard in them, why can't this bleeding edge techno giant have it?

Smart phones were about ease to use and power of working smartly for you. These are nothing but dumb f@#king phones. My old hag Windows 6 was better in comparison. It seems like we are moving a step back with these technological enhancements and irony is that I love technology.

More importantly, the phone usage is more unsafe than my previous experience with any cellular phones especially while driving. That is a big hazard.

Just updated mine to Jellybean. The process is very straight forward.

and your #1 bullet is wrong. Just swipe the name right to dial.

Pontiac was ahead of its time with the Aztek, and once they moved the bumpers from grey tupperware to body color, the look improved substantially.

but aztek isn't really current anymore.

The Aztek wins, everyone else is playing for 2nd place.

Not a bad finish for a company that spent the last 3 months of the year in bankruptcy.

If you're going to nominate, post a pic also. Search our automotive picture gallery to see if we have your wretched vehicle in stock.

The 300C continues to be one of my favorite cars sold today.

I never liked the Honda Element from a styling standpoint, but I could never argue against its versatility. The Nissan Murano is pretty darn ugly too.

I"m just happy that the largest American made coupe will remain in production.

There is still more tuning to do, even though this is more hardware than we used to be on, performance seems to be pokey.....

That was just me trying to tune stuff.... I have to turn the SQL server off to do it.

The newest iteration of the UVO platform is a breakthrough...

Not exactly. The Volt had similar functionality implemented about a year or two ago.

An address could be sent from Google Maps to the Volt, with OnStar's turn-by-turn ready to give direction.

Also, Google used to have a send-to-car function that was compatible with a lot of makes. I guess that has since been eliminated so Google can now charge a good chunk of money for exclusivity.

I think they mean this is a first for Google Maps in the dash as an app.

Even though I own a car, I use zip car because taking the bus to work and then grabbing a Zipcar for 2 hours over lunch is cheaper than driving in and paying for parking on days that I need to run an errand. I also use Zipcar when I need a truck. I bus into downtown or over to Carnegie Mellon University, grab the truck and go.

Yet as more use this service I doubt people will care about the auto and I suspect they will end up trashed as I have seen of the few Zip's in Seattle. That is one thing I have noticed about City dwellers, they tend to not care about taking care of things.

I admit I will never be a Zip Car user, but I do understand the market and need for the Inner City Dweller.

You are fined by Zipcar if the next user finds the car in bad condition or damaged. The users are responsible for keeping the car clean and reporting damage if found. Again, I've been using Zipcar and its predecessor Flexcar since 2007 and never really had a problem.

Services like ZipCar, AirBnB, Bike Share, cowork environments, are all part of the 'collaborative consumption' movement. Not part of my reality context, but I can understand the mindset for people who don't want to be tied down with ownership of stuff....

While I see value in a service like this for a select group of inner city people, I do not see this being a mass market use here in America. I can see this more in use in Europe or the Asian Rim.

You have to remember, more than half the country lives in cities. That's a lot of market. Blanket a city with a bunch of sharable cars and a lot of city folks will opt out of car ownership all together. Zipcar is far cheaper than fueling, insuring, and paying for parking for your own car. If you live in a spot with a few of these ZipCars around, it can be a viable alternative to a $350 a month car payment + insurance + gas + parking..... plus you can pick your car depending on your mood or needs.

I gotta say, the new auto upgrader for the software ROCKS! This is a feature they just recently introduced..... normally it takes me hours to get the software updated, this took less than 1!

No, you're right it is missing. I'm not going to bother to diagnose until the software updates are complete.

I'm going to do the updates in a few minutes rather than wait till the weekend.

still think Mitt as GM CEO makes a hell of lot more sense than Akenson, plus now he's got right to work going on Michigan, we may see some progress.

But Mitt actually would rather hang at Costco and buy toilet paper now anyways.

A ham sandwich would make a better CEO than Akerson, but that doesn't mean its a good idea.

No. There is a credit card in the sun visor and you fill it up if it is below 1/4 of a tank. There are certain pin numbers you need to include when purchasing the gas, so don't think you'll be able to run around filling up your own vehicles on their credit card. They will also reimburse you for filling up the washer fluid. Some insurance is included by default, but the deductable is $500. They will let you buy that down to nothing for an extra $75 per year.

Fuel is included with Zipcars.

Could zip car be the future for college students and people who do not want to have the hassle of auto ownership? This does make me rethink if we could see the auto rental market become a auto share market for inner city people. Yet is America really 50% living in dense cities? Is seems that suburbs still requires car ownership.

Zipcar is already placing cars in key areas that are between "city" and "suburb" including college campuses that are anything but urban.

I disagree on limited growth potential and on limited win for Avis.

This lets Zipcar have easier (less expensive) access to more cars and it gives Avis an additional outlet for their cars coming out of rental rotation to make profit longer.

My only fear is that it will make Zipcar's fleet much more generic. Right now, they have a wonderful diversity of cars.... I fear them turning into ZipNissanSentra.

I think for dense inner city's this will be a win for Zipcar users with more access to auto's and yet I do agree that they could go the way of Bland rental fleet.

Yet outside of dense inner city use, zipcar and the other new start up that allows owners of cars to rent out to others will have limited traction.

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.... well... yea... but over 50% of the country's population now lives in cities. That's a pretty good market base.

I've been a member of Zipcar since they arrived in Pittsburgh when they bought Flexcar. I often have to hunt for vehicles because everything near me is taken. I've actually been considering closing my account with them for this specific reason. They are fleet constrained way before they are customer constrained.... but now it looks like they have a remedy to that.