Drew Dowdell

Elon has billions in his bank account and his ego is on the line with Tesla. I think Telsa will be okay for a while. That said, one of the early pieces is apparently in place for the Model-3. From what I understand is the front motor setup in the P85D is likely to be the base rear motor in the Model 3.

... the current car

Opel loses money due to GM's accounting. Opel bears a lot of GM's R&D costs that other business units get to take advantage of. The same thing happened with Saab ... Saab did a ton of work on the original Epsilon platform and 2.0T ecotec engines, but GM North America got to book most of the profits for those developments. Opel needs to stick around because the Europeans have already shown that they won't buy "family" Chevrolets. Chevy and Opel both may have an unfavorable opinion over there, but a German will push an Opel before he'll drive a Chevy. That is some interesting insight, I can see the point your making though as I think germans would push an opel before a Chevy, but I wonder about the rest of Europe? Here on the other hand die hard americans would push a US brand before a german or asian I believe. Native Europeans very much favor european brands, and when there is a home country brand available, they favor that even more. Thus in Germany, the majority of cars are German cars, in France, the majority are French cars. The Spanish like their SEATS which, though not in the majority, have a strong bit of market share. The one exception to this rule is Ford. Ford made a huge effort to integrate themselves into the European social fabric.. and Europeans are actually a bit snobbish about their Fords.... "Oh, my Ford is not an American Ford... it is a European Ford!". Thus, these Fords are considered domestics rather than imports.... usually because they are. One of my trips to Germany was around the time of the initial launch of the Fiesta in the US. It was having a hard time gaining traction here, but walking around Cologne, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a Fiesta. Part of the reason is that Ford has/had a large production facility in Cologne, so there were many Ford employees there.

Whatever you want, just maybe try and make it make at least a little sense for the brand that you're resurrecting to do it. OK then : Doble. Someone years ago tried to do a modern Doble powertrain in a first gen Taurus.

$40k for a Buick Regal?!?! No way is it worth it. Could get a year old 335i or IS350, C-class, etc. Probably a year old CTS even for that money. I think, from his earlier posts, he's looking to lease.

Bravo to you sir and thank you. Fresh starts are always nice. I was going to even stay incognito with obscure name to avoid the 'drama', but then realized that it's best if I am who I am. But I don't know how to change it once you create it. mods, if it's OK I would like to change my name to Wings4Life. If you could direct me how, or kindly do so for me. Thanks I will PM you about it later. There are some terms and conditions to doing this (purely technical in nature, just need to make sure you understand them)

LOL! I didn't say I'd want it. I'd never own any year Grand Prix ... or Impala ... or Nova......... Cort www.oldcarsstronghearts.com 1979 & 1989 Caprice Classics | pigValve, paceMaker, cowValve "Just like driving on an open highway never knowing what we're gonna find" __ Lady Antebellum __ 'Our Kind Of Love' No Impalas? Thought you liked full size Chevys...

I would say that all of them are doing it for efficiency reasons... CVT are just about the most efficient transmission possible as long as you can make the difference between the Max and Min ratios wide enough. I think in Nissan's case, it is letting them keep an old 4-cylinder on the shelf longer. Subarus are always going to feel grunty... that's just the nature of the boxer 4. Boxer 6s are a good bit smoother.

Opel loses money due to GM's accounting. Opel bears a lot of GM's R&D costs that other business units get to take advantage of. The same thing happened with Saab ... Saab did a ton of work on the original Epsilon platform and 2.0T ecotec engines, but GM North America got to book most of the profits for those developments. Opel needs to stick around because the Europeans have already shown that they won't buy "family" Chevrolets. Chevy and Opel both may have an unfavorable opinion over there, but a German will push an Opel before he'll drive a Chevy.

I think Holden needs to stay, but they'll just get rebadges from other divisions. They really should tie up closer with Opel and GMDAT since those two make the right hand drive cars. Cooperation with Buick for big RWD cars for US, Australia, and China wouldn't be a bad move. I think Mitsubishi needs to throw in the towel. They've made so many mistakes and keep making mistakes, it's clear that they aren't going to get anywhere now. Vauxhall is just rebadged Opels for English speaking market, so it's not like it costs anything to keep alive. Scion is dying and their future products don't look promising. There is no reason the Scion iM couldn't be sold as new Matrix besides the lack of AWD. The iA is going to sell worse than the Yaris does. What's left? tC and FR-S.... well there's your Celica and GT86 at Toyota. They might even sell better under the Toyota name.

Nice, has the active cruise control.... you'll love that in traffic.

I went to the Boardwalk yesterday even though it was only 70 degrees out.... got a decent haul of classic while I was there.

What other vehicles currently have 21,000 or more pre-orders which require a substantial down payment?

I'm sure BlackViper doesn't need anyone to accompany him to the lot who knows a lot about cars.

The '53 Packard looks pretty far gone though

They don't. In general everyone here is well behaved and I'm around enough to hand out the rather minor beatings that do occur. I haven't had to put a temp ban on someone in over a year and I haven't had to permanently ban someone since Josh. Only 1 person has gotten warnings in the past year at least. Buzz wanted to be the mod for the Tesla forum, I threw in Fisker too because of the similar nature of the cars and that the Fisker forum will be pretty dead for a while until the company gets back on their feet. Yeah, it's pretty quiet here...... We banned Josh? Did not know that...... Josh the old admin from a decade ago.. .the one with a drinking problem who crashed his solstice? Yeah. After I took over, he came around looking for money and was generally being.... Josh.

Because Nissan has just about given up on anything that isn't a CVT. With everyone trying different things to get better fuel mileage for CAFE standards, Nissan's biggest push in that direction so far really has been CVT everything. It has it's good and it's bad points, it isn't horrible for those looking for an appliance, but they need to get their heads out of their rears and realize that if they are going to label something as a sports car it definitely should not be running a CVT. Their CVT has been really good at hiding the deficiencies of their 4-cylinder engines in the NVH department. is that how Nissan gets away with their ancient engines too? To who else are you referring? The CVT helps to keep the RPM low on their 4-cylinder engines which helps hide the harshness of those engines in the upper rpm range. The VQ V6es are fine.

My usage is all about the social media apps and camera. I don't to "productivity" stuff on my phone, I have my Galaxy Tab 4 and a keyboard case for that which is almost always nearby if I really need it. Yeah, for Multimedia and being in the here and now; I'll admit it, Windows has a LONG way to go. It doesn't help that they've got such a small market share, and the escalation of commitment by MS. You gotta love their determination. Well - he said social media. FB seemed to work just fine for me. What social media doesn't work on Windows? There are multitudes of other social media sites and apps out there.

My usage is all about the social media apps and camera. I don't to "productivity" stuff on my phone, I have my Galaxy Tab 4 and a keyboard case for that which is almost always nearby if I really need it.

I think I'll be waiting at least for the Note 5 at this point. I'm traveling almost all of June so I won't really have time to go get the upgrade done until July anyway.

No gull-wing doors I'm guessing?

well.. an attempt at an homage..... There's one of those around here, and it always baffles me when I see it. Besides the fact that I feel like it should be too ridiculous to actually exist, I just can't believe that there is enough demand in this area to justify whatever the limo company would have paid to get the thing. Just realized that my wife when she was with me at a tradeshow a couple weeks back also saw stretch Escalades and took pics to show me. Here is what the TI has for pickup and drop off. 20150507_124405.jpg 20150507_124544.jpg that's the old body though

They did't even camo it?

They don't. In general everyone here is well behaved and I'm around enough to hand out the rather minor beatings that do occur. I haven't had to put a temp ban on someone in over a year and I haven't had to permanently ban someone since Josh. Only 1 person has gotten warnings in the past year at least. Buzz wanted to be the mod for the Tesla forum, I threw in Fisker too because of the similar nature of the cars and that the Fisker forum will be pretty dead for a while until the company gets back on their feet.

They make kilts with pockets now.