Drew Dowdell

Yes. Please bring back the wagon!

Sheets of drywall/plywood. Not useful for a home builder of course, but a smaller contractor who only needs a dozen or so at a time and needs to keep them dry....

The Toronado hasn't been run since mid-December when she was put away for running very poorly. Sometime this week I'm going to limp her over to a former Chevy/Oldsmobile dealer who's owner is a member of the local OIds club and his mechanics have experience with this vintage 307. After that is done, I'll need to assess the list for the spring. My biggest problem is time. I'm traveling 50% of the time until June.

Freightliner Sprinter AMG? How do they get to that "30" number any other way... unless they are counting sub-models like wagons and convertibles separately?

Keeping the balance in this car is key. If they can't keep the weight distribution the same, they'll ruin what they've got going so far.

The Buick Enclave is a luxury model.

Why not I guess.... someone's gotta buy the MKS.

You could do blog on the long term ownership of this car. Users can now set up their own blogs here. The Beetle TDI is on my short list for potential vehicle purchase for myself this year. It really depends on how certain other things pan out if I decide I need a truck or not.

Wait... is Hyundai trying to crib the sweep spear?

Great buy! Only one problem.... will you actually keep it long enough for the engine to ever get broken in while you own it?

might need to do an analysis up against the Econoline, Transit, Savanna/Safari, and whatever the Nissan is called.

I drove a JX35 as a rental for a week, sandwiched between a week with a Traverse and a week with an Enclave. Let me just say that anyone that buys the JX over either of the Lambdas has some serious irrational anti-GM feelings going on. The Traverse with Leather is more than the JX's equal and the Enclave simply blows it out of the water.

Congrats! I've loved driving the Beetle and loved the TDI... never had them in the same vehicle

Welcome back!

Remind me to play poker with this man.... I'd make a killing!

Suddenly it's 2019?

"The Assembly Line"

I second that!! Congrats Mini-meets would be a great idea. There's the upcoming All-GM Nationals in Carlisle that if enough "club" members register, they provide a free tent. Dates?

There will be more news around that soon. William and I are just getting our feet wet. I'm all for mini-meets if you guys want to do them. I can help organize.

March 2, 2013 - State of the Site As promised, on the first Saturday of each month, I present the State of the Site. Last month's can be viewed here: February 2013 State of the Site. Operations Server - The new server is proving to be dead reliable with no involuntary reboots since it was installed. I still plan on having it performance tuned at some point, but it is not a priority right now. We did get pinged that we've used up 89% of our free disk space, so I will need to buy some additional room there. Software - IP Board has released a small maintenance update that I will install tomorrow or Monday evening. Nothing drastic, but a number of small fixes for annoying little things going in. Look and Feel - The new look is still on the drawing board, but I may hold off on a re-image of the site and just update the logo and header. IP Board has already announced version 4.0. When they do major version changes, the skins are notoriously difficult to migrate. MudMonster has been promoted into the Admin team. This is mostly for Spam fighting purposes. Site Ranking We've fallen back from some of the ranking gains we made in January. Part of that has come from me not being able to be so aggressive promoting the site while I was sick, traveling, and having some personal challenges. Some of the change has also come from growth from our competition. I am not disappointed with the change as a take a much longer view of the direction of CheersandGears.com and realize there will be ups and downs in our rankings. Importantly, we are still inside of one of the insides ;-) In the prior update I mentioned that I found that Google was reporting over 200k broken links to C&G. I installed a fix to address this issue and Google is now down to 120k broken links. At that rate, we should be down to a "real" number by the end of may. There will always be some broken links, but not that many. Visitor Engagement Metrics In spite of our rankings fall, we continue to do excellently with visitor engagement. Put simply, this is a measurement of how much a visitor likes the site once they get here... and by the stats, they really like us. We sport one of the lowest bounce rates among our targeted competitors and visitors spend anywhere from from 6 to 10 times as long on C&G as they do on other sites and visit up to 9 times as many pages. Social Media Engagement We've had a little progress here with some of you sharing our stories on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. There will be a large push here ahead of the NYC Auto Show. News/Review/Show coverage Being rather disengaged myself lately, I haven't finished the review and show templates, but still expect them to be completed before New York. Sales and Advertising We've gained a couple of advertisers in the mix along with our standard advertising networks. I expect to have a formal process for advertisers to buy advertising in the next two weeks. Also starting in March, we will begin aggressive advertising of ourselves. The Biggest News I am starting the legal process to make Cheers and Gears its own company by June 1st. I will continue to be the owner and managing editor. I am making this change for a number of reasons. First, there has been a substantial change in my own personal financial situation that could eventually lead to me leaving my current employment with the energy company. Some of you are aware that I also own some apartment buildings and do private I.T. consulting. I feel that the time for me to make C&G my primary venture with the other ventures providing a stable base and somewhat passive income is rapidly approaching. My ability to do this does not at all depend on rapid growth at C&G, the main change will be my ability to attend more news related events. Making C&G my primary venture has been a dream of mine for a while, but some recent events and meeting certain people over the last 4 months has convinced me that I can do it. That said, while I insist on maintaining the family and community feel we have, I do need to start to run the place like a business rather than just a hobby. Summary CheersandGears.com is one of the oldest continuously running automotive forums out there, but watch us grow now!

Glad you joined up!

AWD is the only reason the GT-R can do what it can do.

and in about 24 months, there should be a nice selection of the next gen Terrain on the lots.

I'm curious if it skips the same gears each time or if it is much more variable depending on conditions.

Well the Evoque is a soft-roader. It's probably the most capable of the breed and will go places no CR-V or X3 would dare to tread, but it is still no rock crawler like its biggest brothers.