Drew Dowdell
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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell
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Doesn't going from hollow to solid make a difference even if diameter doesn't increase?
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Moog or nothing. Dorman is just your basic OEM replacement of which the quality will be roughly the same as the OEM. The Moogs are better. edit: Doh! I just re-read your post. Get the moog links. Get a moog swaybar if you can. the dorman being solid is an upgrade, but their stuff hasn't impressed me beyond that.
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I think the only people who care about that aspect are Cadillac fans.. because whoever buys a 7 Series wants the car for what it is.. not for how much it weighs. What it weighs has a direct effect on how it performs. The CT6 has a 600+ lb advantage over the 740i. That means all of the various engines Cadillac will be putting in the CT6 will have that much less work to perform to move the car. That means better cornering and handling. While you are correct. I think I said it in a different thread it all comes down to how well they tune the suspension. It could weigh 2000lbs and still drive like crap, it would weigh 6000lbs and drive like crap. And that is why I don't think weight matters much "In this class" of cars. They are large cars.. the vast majority will not be taking them to their nearest road course or canon but they will want a superb ride for sure. No argument whatsoever on the acceleration advantages, and with that comes mpg as well. I completely understand that part for the manufacturer..again most people buying a 70k car aren't the most concerned over 1mpg. But they will want it to accelerate hard when they demand it. It just means that Cadillac can tune a softer ride and not have the car lean over in corners. It means that 400 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque go a lot further, faster, in the CT6. It means a 500ish horsepower TTV8 will go even further still. It means a few more miles of electric propulsion on the plug-in models. It means longer driving ranges on the diesel models (and I'd argue the diesel buyers would be concerned, otherwise they'd buy a gasser). Cadillac has been really good at tuning their suspensions for a few years now, that's not one of the areas where they get complaints... so I'm not too concerned there.
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I thought there was a Twin-Turbo Pentastar coming too?
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I think the only people who care about that aspect are Cadillac fans.. because whoever buys a 7 Series wants the car for what it is.. not for how much it weighs. What it weighs has a direct effect on how it performs. The CT6 has a 600+ lb advantage over the 740i. That means all of the various engines Cadillac will be putting in the CT6 will have that much less work to perform to move the car. That means better cornering and handling.
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Well it does tell me that they aren't going to beat the CT6 in weight... not by a longshot.
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That title..... this isn't the X-Rated forum!
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- paint
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It's okay, I don't think you'll be CEO either.
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They only cut 190 lbs?!
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GMC sells at a higher transaction price. You may not see a distinction there, but the accountants do. Put it another way, if GMC was such a money loser, it would have been closed during the bankruptcy.
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Sorry. You lost me when you said the 300 sold on the basis of fleets and the wimpy V6 engine.Same old wings. Yup yup yup Actually, he's right. At release, Chrysler was selling base base base model 300s with a 2.7 liter V6 and cheap wheels. They had a ridiculously low base price (lower than the Magnum, about $22k, I recall) because there was no Charger at the time and Chrysler was trying to sell a single the sedan to cover the now dead Intrepid, Concord, 300M, and LHS (dead for 2.5 years at that point). Sales did well if you consider the 300 to have replaced the Concord and 300M, but they weren't great if you considered the lost sales from Intrepid. A good many of those 2.7 powered 300s ended up in the rental fleets or got snapped up by gangstas on a budget.
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The first-gen 300 had a Hemi. It sold on that primarily and the interior for the day was .. sufficient. It wasn't spectacular, it wasn't bad.
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- Continental
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Pretty low bar you set there...
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The MKZ is not even the same size car as the Chrysler 300.... There is unlikely to be any cross shopping there.... the MKS's interior is simply not up to snuff of even the lower end 300. Again, you keep trying to hang these cars' failure on the drive wheels when it's the rest of the car that is the issue. The MKS looks and feels like a consumer grade Ford. It doesn't matter if the car is RWD and powered by puppydog smiles, it isn't going to sell as a luxury car if it doesn't feel like a luxury car inside. Even the Acura RLX is selling poorly because it is such a dull car. It really feels like an Accord DeLux in so many ways. The switching the drivetrain to RWD would not change the fact that the materials and switchgear inside the car look and feel like consumer grade Honda. You just cited the Catera and 1st Gen CTS as if they were proving your point when in fact it proves mine. The Catera had fantastic handling and in the regions where the car was powered properly (i.e. not with the wretched Opel V6) it is a well respected performance sedan. It had everything in your check list... it was RWD and had great handling, yet it still flopped. Why? Because the interior was not up to Cadillac expectations and it had reliability issues. The CTS addressed most of the reliability issues and did better than the Catera for it, but it was a 5-series sized car selling at a 3-series price... why? Because the interior was not perceived as 5-series level. It didn't matter that it was RWD or that it used the same fantastic 5-speed auto that the 5-series used... the interior was simply not the luxury level people were expecting. All of the same things can be said about the final STS... which did worse than the FWD model it replaced. The savior for the Continental will be what they do with the interior... not which wheels are driving the car (which, again, is all of them)
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Utter insanity from an armchair CEO. You really have no clue where the profit is do you? Chrysler brand with only 3 models sells almost as many vehicles in the US as Volkswagen with 12+ models. GMC is a huge profit center for GM. People who buy GMCs usually specifically seek them out over their Chevrolet versions. 25% of all GMC sales are Denali trim when a Denali trim is available. The Denali trim alone outsells the entirety of Jaguar/Land Rover. If you are a CEO and people are offering $3,000 - $5,000 dollars for Chrome trim and extra woodgrain... you take their money and run.
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Wheelbases are about the same. The Grand Coupes are a bit larger overall length.
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I've never friggin understood why people tailgate when there is PLENTY of room to make a pass! It can be so frustrating. All it does it piss off both parties. I want to drive a car with active cruise so bad! I'm just so curious how it actually feels when behind the wheel. I'm an avid cruise control user so the whole active cruise intrigues me. It just.. .workes. It makes driving in heavy volume at any speed much more relaxing. Nice...Nice... What kind of vehicle were you in that had it recently? Mercedes-Benz CLS400 4Matic - I'll have the review up in a week or two (I hope)
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You keep putting the blame on the drive system. Do you really think those cars would have sold ANY better if they were RWD instead of FWD without ANY other changes? I don't think so... and in fact they probably would have sold worse.
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Why are they aiming at the "gran coupe" class when this isn't a "gra coupe"? Wouldn't that mean E Class and A6? That is what those are both built on, correct? Aiming for the size and room of the bigger cars without the handling penalty (lighter weight, 4 wheel steering). The CT6 is building it's own segment rather than trying to align exactly with what the Germans are doing. Hmmmm.. interesting.. Kind of confusing by saying they are aiming at the CLS and A7 though. Well the CLS and A7 are a bit bigger than the E-Class/A6, but aren't as large as the 7-series/S-Class. They're trade-off cars.
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I want to drive a car with active cruise so bad! I'm just so curious how it actually feels when behind the wheel. I'm an avid cruise control user so the whole active cruise intrigues me. It just.. .workes. It makes driving in heavy volume at any speed much more relaxing.
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Maryland had signs up saying they were targeting aggressive drivers...... so instead I drove passive aggressively.
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All sides.... to your corners.
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Why are they aiming at the "gran coupe" class when this isn't a "gra coupe"? Wouldn't that mean E Class and A6? That is what those are both built on, correct? Aiming for the size and room of the bigger cars without the handling penalty (lighter weight, 4 wheel steering). The CT6 is building it's own segment rather than trying to align exactly with what the Germans are doing.
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That's... exactly what happened. Numbers rounded for simplicity: They got $50 billion of TARP money $40 billion was converted to equity that the government owned. The remaining $10 billion was considered a loan that GM would have to pay back. About $7 billion of that $10 billion balance was held in escrow to be used only if GM really needed it. GM paid back a couple billion from their earnings. GM decided they didn't need the rest of the loan, so returned the remaining TARP money back to the government, thus paying off the loan part of the TARP. Maybe it is just confusion, but from what I read in a few articles last night was that what was in Escrow was part of what was given to GM and not part of the loan. From FactCheck.org - "GM simply handed back TARP money it had been lent and hadn’t used. Those funds had been sitting in an escrow account, should the automaker need them. (The company didn’t borrow new money to pay back an older loan.)"
