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Drew Dowdell

Editor-in-Chief
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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    I'd like something a bit larger than a Jetta though... and that is the old body jetta, not the new one.
  2. Drew Dowdell
    Subaru doesn't in a diesel
  3. Drew Dowdell
    I am very careful in the presence of automotive journalists to not describe myself as such. I feel it is somewhat disrespectful to those who do this job as their main career when I do it as more of a hobby that barely makes enough money to cover costs. There is a running joke amongst the automotive journalist crowd that any car, no matter what it is, could be made better if it was made available in a wagon, with all-wheel-drive, a diesel, and a manual transmission... all in one package. This week, my rental car was a new VW Passat. Driving between Pittsburgh and Columbus, I glanced down at the computer generated average mpg... I was pulling about 37mpg. The rest of the story is my internal monologue while driving, but I'm sure you can see where this is going: Hmm.. 37mpg, not too bad... but the diesel can get over 50mpg on this same drive...... maybe I should look at the Passat diesel again as a car for me.... .... but I'd still need some utility.... hey, weren't they going to build that Passat-Outback lookalike? That would work! .... I bet it would come with all-wheel drive too... Albert would insist on that....... hmmm an AWD diesel passat wagon.... Albert wouldn't let me get it in a manual though... that would be sweet though..... yeah a manual diesel passat wagon with AWD.... DOH! I have been assimilated!
  4. Drew Dowdell
    I thought it was a GMC... but not being a bus person, I wasn't sure.
  5. Drew Dowdell
    Are they tired of being accused of being biased do you think?
  6. Drew Dowdell
    I could send Albert back to the Buick dealer so he can learn to use Intellilink....
  7. Drew Dowdell
    I have pictures from my drive time with the Cherokee (and a debut of my better photo taking skills!) If the CR-V cooperates this weekend, I should have the time to write some reviews finally.
  8. Drew Dowdell
    That's gotta be worth a couple bucks on ebay right there!
  9. Drew Dowdell
    Maybe on the 4-cylinder ATS, they could use the wasted space on either side of the engine for front seat hip room!
  10. Drew Dowdell
    I never found the taxi rates in NYC to be completely unreasonable.... I don't mind the drivers making a little more money. A bit disengenous of a statement though since there are already a large number of hybrid taxis running around NYC already. In my most recent trips, none of my taxis have been Crown Vics... They've always been a Toyota Hybrid or Ford Hybrid.
  11. Drew Dowdell
    Maybe V6 Silverados could get an extra 5 inches in the bed!
  12. Drew Dowdell
    My Local Jeep dealer just got a few Cherokees in.
  13. Drew Dowdell
    That inefficiency is present in any vehicle on a platform that offers engines with variable number of cylinders. That same inefficiency is there in an Accord or Passat.... it is simply the nature of offering Inline engines and V engines in the same platform. edit: Even true for BMWs... a Turbo-4 is shorter than an I-6... thus there is "wasted space" under the hood of every 4-cylinder BMW. You can't just transfer that space to the rear seat passengers... the hardpoints for the engine and transmission and everything else are still there.
  14. Drew Dowdell
    You mean like wood? By your reasoning, we would be using wood for electricity generation. While coal as fuel may be cheap, the costs to burn it cleanly are high... as the standards for coal plant emissions increase, the cost effectiveness of burning the cheap fuel will decrease. Additionally, the energy from natural gas can be extracted more completely. A gas turbine with a regenerator and heat capture is like two power plants in one. The exhaust gases from such a setup are released at temperatures similar to a hot Texas day. Coal simply cannot do that. Coal plants are closing. Natural Gas plants are being built. Follow the trend line. I said I work for an Energy company... but I don't work for a company that does generation (we have some wind farms in Texas for token "green" cred, and a few gas generation plants in Canada, but that's it)... we don't have a dog in this fight aside from wanting to being able to buy energy cheaply at wholesale and sell it higher at retail.
  15. Drew Dowdell
    Don't see these out and about too often.... any of our old-timer bus fans able to identify?
  16. Drew Dowdell
    Lambda was designed from the start to be so much more than what it is today. I was supposed to spawn mini-vans, and a sedan version of it was supposed to replace the DTS and Lucerne. There is hidden flexibility in this chassis that we simply haven't seen yet.... don't expect it to be an Acadia Denali with the badges scraped off.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    We took a loss on the sales of the shares, but the gain of kept employment (and paid taxes by those employees) by the domestic auto industry is far greater than the stock sale loss.
  18. Drew Dowdell
    As much as I appreciate your links from Cleancoalusa.org, coal is not our future. It will remain in our infrastructure, but it will be diminishing over time. But who are you going to believe... the coal industry lobby website or the guy that works for one of the larger energy companies in the country?
  19. Drew Dowdell
    GM + a little help from Isuzu
  20. Drew Dowdell
    There's no reason they can't sell them... they just can't be the sole contract winner
  21. Drew Dowdell
    While I think putting so many of our eggs in just the natural gas basket is asking for trouble (Just ask the UK), for the moment, natural gas prices are so cheap, we have too much. Companies are drilling wells and then capping them because they have no place to store the gas, so they might as well just store it where it is until it is time to bring that supply to market.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    The government isn't mandating it. It is encouraging an environment for the EV car infrastructure to grow.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    Look again then.... The 150th Coal fired generation plant shut down since 2010 just shut down last month.
  24. Drew Dowdell
    Ford's design is very annoying, that's true, but in their cars that use Sync for HVAC primary control, it can end up being a reliability thing too. I've had Sync crash on me more than once.
  25. Drew Dowdell
    I'm a traditionalist, so this isn't for me really. However, there are certain cars in the generations that I'm interested in that came with white painted rims or colored hubcap inserts.... I could see a use there. The only thing I would use this for on a modern car would be that "Winter Mode" set, in black, for our CR-V or Encore.
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Drew
Editor-in-Chief

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