Jump to content
News
Reviews
Discussons
Activity
Create New...
Close

Drew Dowdell

Editor-in-Chief
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    55,885

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    528

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    With $14k off sticker... must be desperate. edit: Lord, those Southern Comfort ones are fugly too! Is this the truck version of pimp headlights, shag carpet, "classic" grille, and wide whites on a '76 Eldorado??!
  2. Drew Dowdell
    Why should I be taxed for using my brain on how to get around Idiot City planning of not building the major roads big enough and I know the side streets so I take a short cut to get home or to where I need to go faster. Transit is not efficient and bike riding is not either. Slow and way to long and not something useful during fall, winter or spring. Heck why not charge the bike riders and motorcycle/ scooter riders a fair tax for dedicated roads or covered protected lanes for their use. Why should I a driver who has earned the privilege to drive a car have to pay for bike riders and scooters? Transit CAN be efficient. But it is more expensive to operate than a bike lane, thus the congestion tax. We're quickly approaching (past?) the time where we who like to drive should be supporting drastically increased subsidies for public transit to enable and encourage those who would prefer not to drive to get off the road.
  3. Drew Dowdell
    This is how he plans to raise prices without changing total volume much. Instead of having so many dealers competing with each other by offering discounts, he wants fewer dealers with less motive to discount. By running more cars per dealer, the dealers can have higher margin without raising MSRP much, and Cadillac can lower incentives. It's a good idea all around and probably a decade past-due. As for the other premium makes, they often pair with their pedestrian brands. In Pittsburgh, off the top of my head we have: Chevrolet-VW-Audi, and the Chevy Store heavily advertises as a commercial truck superstore. Nothing like pulling your A8L TDI in for service next to a Mr. Plumber "We'll unclog your john in 15 minutes or less" Chevy Express Duramax. Lexus-Toyota-VW Mercedes-Freightliner-SMART Audi-VW-Honda One thing I wish Cadillac would do would be to enforce a naming convention. Very few of the other premium brands are referred to by their owners names.... Most are Lexus of (City name) or Audi of (Region name). The are some exceptions for very big older premium dealers, but most are like this. Saturn did this, so I'm assuming it is something written into the franchise contracts.
  4. Drew Dowdell
    Proven....how? How many people bought that?
  5. Drew Dowdell
    They do cost money to build those damn bike lanes and "rails to trails"
  6. Drew Dowdell
    I hope not! That thing is UGLY
  7. Drew Dowdell
    Maybe in your town, but in the areas that I would consider to have excellent PT would still have some service running. Even my crappy Public transit just shifts to a Sunday schedule which is fine for most on those days.
  8. Drew Dowdell
    If you're driving an old beat up Corolla, you probably can't afford a self driving car anyway. Most new cars don't exactly provide some sort of thrills to their drivers while they're doing their regular commute either. I'm also not sure they'd be that expensive either afther people start buying them in large numbers. Then why do you need a Self Driving car? For the same reason I need a non self driving car.... to always have it my disposal and to be able to hop in it whenever I want to go to somehwere. I actually enjoy driving 2/3rds of my cars. My 2013 Buick and my 1981 Oldsmobile are both enjoyable. Enjoyable doesn't have to mean "thrilling" as in handling or speed... it can simply be enjoyable and satisfying. As for commuting, I'd rather take the bus if that were a reasonable option, but due to constant cutbacks by our Republican governor, the bus service has dwindled to be unusable now. I'm actually a public transit enthusiast if there is such a thing, and yet public transit is virtually unusable to me.
  9. Drew Dowdell
    If you're driving an old beat up Corolla, you probably can't afford a self driving car anyway. Most new cars don't exactly provide some sort of thrills to their drivers while they're doing their regular commute either. I'm also not sure they'd be that expensive either afther people start buying them in large numbers. Then why do you need a Self Driving car? For the same reason I need a non self driving car.... to always have it my disposal and to be able to hop in it whenever I want to go to somehwere. Bus/Trolley + Car Sharing Again, an excellent public transit system makes cars not really necessary. The city I stay in, in Germany has a fantastic trolley and subway system. I can get anywhere I need to quickly and efficiently... and at 100€ a month, it is much cheaper than owning a car. When I need to go somewhere that I can't reach by public transit, I go to https://www.flinkster.de and select a car I want to rent for a short time.
  10. Drew Dowdell
    Why? If you're driving some s****y car like the vast majority of people do it's not like driving is bringing you some sort of joy. It's not a particularly pleasant activity for the most majority of time and I think if they (SD cars) were available and people wouldn't be affraid of the idea of letting the car drive itself they would soon become the majority. Riding in a SD car would be no different to taking a taxi. If you're driving an old beat up Corolla, you probably can't afford a self driving car anyway.
  11. Drew Dowdell
    No. But streetcars should be reinstalled. My city just made one major avenue one-way downtown taking one lane and dedicating it to bikes. That's all well and good, but our temperatures stay in the low 20s for 4 months of the year so no one uses that bike lane in those temps.
  12. Drew Dowdell
    Wouldn't they first have to GET on the road before anyone could call for them to get off? Cost is still be breezily ignored; like I stated earlier- cost estimate I saw last fall for the technology was $150,000/vehicle. Hope your 'good income' is really really really really good. COST is the 'old man with ribcage-high pants and grumpy demeanor', not the opinions of those who were asked if they would buy one. $150,000 per car doesn't seem to be an up to date estimate Balth. Cadillac is releasing their semi-autonomous system in as little as 18 months. I don't know which cars they are releasing it in, but as the XTS is currently one of the test mules, I'm sure that one is a good bet.... and I don't think we'll be seeing a $150k Cadillac XTS anytime soon. The Cadillac Super Cruise system will allow you to drive hands and foot free on the highway and in bumper to bumper traffic. As I already pointed out... most of the components are already available in cars you can buy today.
  13. Drew Dowdell
    There was nothing inherently "worst" about the Cimerron beside the badge. It was just a typical domestic compact of the day. It could, and did, wear Buick and Oldsmobile badges just fine. The Saturn ION doesn't deserve to be on this list either... if any Saturn does, it should be the LS/LW. It was an Opel Vectra variation that foreshadowed the Epsilon platform. The engine choices went from bad (an underpowered Quad-4) to worse (the awful Opel 3.0 V6). The LS was also blander than bland. The ION's main offense was that it was initially equipped with a less than stellar CVT, though it later came with a 5-speed automatic. The Ion QuadCoupe was actually a pretty nifty idea and should have been put into other GM cars (Cruze Quad-coupe anyone?) The Mustang II was just a Sports Pinto... too easy to pick on but actually better than its donor platform.
  14. Drew Dowdell
    The Asian companies have franchises now, so they're out. The only ones that would be able to do this would be Tesla and maybe the chinese.
  15. Drew Dowdell
    Highway or combined?
  16. Drew Dowdell
    Golden Hatchling.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    Doesn't make it dated. Buick was doing boosted V6es and 4s when you were in diapers. Benz is just now catching up.
  18. Drew Dowdell
    While you guys are arguing about range... here is the number that stands out to me... " 442 LB-FT" That is more than a GM 5.3 liter V8 and almost the same as the GM 6.2 liter V8. I'm sure in something as small as a C-Class, it makes it feel like it's pulling like a locomotive. I've seen the electric motor they're using in this... it's about 30% of a Tesla motor.
  19. Drew Dowdell
    I can't believe this is even still a debate..... they navel-gazed for years over a 4-door Wrangler and when they finally did it, they couldn't build enough of them to satisfy demand. The 4-door may piss off Wrangler enthusiast, but Chrysler can't turn away dollars over something petty like that. I don't think a Wrangler pickup would sell in the US at the same levels that the Frontier, Canyon, and Colorado do, but I think it will do well enough to justify its existence. Also, the overseas market would eat it up especially if they could put a 4-cylinder diesel in there.
  20. Drew Dowdell
    Everyone who sells there is a local producer, very few cars are imported into China from other locations... this is based on Chinese protectionist laws. GM has to partner with other manufacturers to build their cars for the Chinese market. They basically are building licensed version of say, the Buick Lacrosse, to sell there.
  21. Drew Dowdell
    That's not supposed to be used on a desktop, so yeah, that would look weird. The software autodetects if you are on a phone and switches to that theme as needed.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    Well that's based on today's technology. Already we have fully automatic cruise control that you can engage in traffic and all you have to do is steer... the only time you have to intervene on the brake pedal is if you are the first car approaching a stop light. Cars can park themselves today... you can pick that up in a used MKS for under $25k. Some of the Benzes will nudge you back in to your lane if you're drifting out of it (and how they can tell between an unintentional drift and an unsignaled lane change, I do not know, but it works). Even my little Buick will ding at me if I start to drift out of my lane... the tech to nudge it back on course isn't that much more... it's just electric power steering after all. The Nissan Pathfinder is one of many vehicles that already has 360 degree cameras that activate while parking. All of these technologies are available on vehicles currently well into the used market. It's not a stretch that they can be combined in some way that will be within the price range of the typical end user to allow for a more automatic driving experience. Cadillac is testing super cruise (I believe this is a different technology than the automatic SRXes) that will allow for automated freeway and bumper to bumper traffic driving. They have XTS test mules running around in Pittsburgh. That technology is due out for the 2016 model year, so Cadillac is roughly 18 months away from releasing it.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    Which is disappointing.
  24. Drew Dowdell
    the FWD v. RWD debate aside for the moment... I see a bigger issue than that. SIZE! How can they get from the nearly Full-Size Commodore to the nearly compact Insignia and keep the name!? Even going to the Lacrosse would be a bit of a jump down..... The only way I could see them moving to FWD for the Commodore and keeping true to the rest of the car would be to build an Aussie Impala.
  25. Drew Dowdell
    How quickly will these depreciate I wonder?
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.

Hey there, we noticed you're using an ad-blocker. We're a small site that is supported by ads or subscriptions. We rely on these to pay for server costs and vehicle reviews.  Please consider whitelisting us in your ad-blocker, or if you really like what you see, you can pick up one of our subscriptions for just $1.75 a month or $15 a year. It may not seem like a lot, but it goes a long way to help support real, honest content, that isn't generated by an AI bot.

See you out there.

Drew
Editor-in-Chief

I've whitelisted
Continue without support

Write what you are looking for and press enter or click the search icon to begin your search