moist turtleneck posted:

https://twitter.com/RoadandTrack/status/1721564379311677555?t=eKTzYHzN9Kj0Q4L9YhYRFQ&s=19

LeeMajors posted:

It really sucks that’s we never get rad stuff here.

Powershift posted:

It looks like the 5.7 hemi might be dead.

With the charger and challenger gone, the 2025 ram 1500 doesn't even have a V8 option. Just the 3.6, and 2 tunes of the 3.0 i6.

Powershift posted:

It looks like the 5.7 hemi might be dead.

With the charger and challenger gone, the 2025 ram 1500 doesn't even have a V8 option. Just the 3.6, and 2 tunes of the 3.0 i6.

mobby_6kl posted:

You're getting the Cybertruck though

davecrazy posted:

I speced out a '24 Ram TRX for giggles and fully loaded its like 120k. That's nuts.

davecrazy posted:

I think the I6 Hurricane is the real deal. Have one in my Grand Wagoneer and never missed the Hemi.

I speced out a '24 Ram TRX for giggles and fully loaded its like 120k. That's nuts.

moist turtleneck posted:

Hadlock posted:

At $10,000 and the (CA) fine for no registration being $1000, what is the break even on driving this thing illegally? I think you might be able to drive it to the 25 year mark getting a fine annually and still come out ahead. Definitely 10 years

euphronius posted:

End of an era. Kind of sad

IOwnCalculus posted:

Less "sad" since the not-too-distant future is electrifying everything anyway - but now I'm wondering, when was the last time any of the big three offered a full-size truck without any V8 option at all? Early '50s, probably?

Powershift posted:

Yes, i also think it is the real deal in warranty.

Out of warranty? ehhhhhh

It's a shame there's no business case for dodge to make a sports car/grand tourer with it.

quote:

"They're keeping gasoline engines. The official designation for the vehicle platform is LB and it will have the new GME-T6 Hurricane inline-six in RWD and AWD," the source said. "It will be using the Stellantis Gen 4 transmission that's also rolling out to Mack Assembly, Jefferson North Assembly, and Toledo North."

Wistful of Dollars posted:

I think there’s allegedly been a new i6 charger for a decade

quote:

As news started coming out about electric cars in early 2016, Michael Young, a self-described “car guy,” knew he wanted to try one. One afternoon, he strolled into his local dealership and asked to test drive the BMW i3, a small, sporty car with a range of up to 150 miles. The salesperson stopped him. “You can’t drive that car on the highway,” Young recalls the salesperson saying, explaining that the car couldn’t go over 45 miles per hour.

“I was kind of dumbfounded by that,” Young said.

Young knew it could go much faster — and, after convincing the salesperson to let him go on a test drive, ultimately bought the i3.

Hadlock posted:

My sweet summer child

Twerk from Home posted:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/11/09/car-dealerships-ev-sales/

I realize that everyone expects car dealers to be lovely, but at some point isn't this fraud? This isn't even saying "this car will turn all the heads and get you a date" or "let me get my manager to see if we can sell it for that", it's directly lying about if a car is legal to drive on the freeway.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans-party-car-dealers-2024-desantis.html posted:

I walked and walked so far I lost sight of Auto Spin, and eventually washed up in the “EV Solutions Center,” which was tucked into the farthest reaches of the building.

Here, in the exurbs of the convention, was scheduled programming meant to enlighten dealers about the promise of selling EVs. I hunkered down for a presentation by Buzz Smith, “the EV-angelist.” His lecture, “Selling EVs Is Easy, Even in Texas!,” was already underway.

Bald and goateed, Buzz wore a shimmering, red-sequined sports coat that seemed, in places, to have been set upon by plastic-hungry moths. Take the time to learn how the car actually works, he counseled the crowd. Get the buyers out for a test drive. “The big message, though, is do not mention the environment. Do NOT mention climate change,” he warned. In other words: Don’t let politics kill a sale. The crowd nodded. People took notes.

As the microphone made the rounds for questions, one dealer in a light-blue button-down came huffing down the aisle like an objector trying to thwart a marriage. He grabbed the mic, plopped down in the front row, and exhaled as he asked, peevishly: “What is the labor cost?” (He was referring to the cost required to hire technicians to service EVs.)

“I don’t know,” said Buzz.

“That’s a good question! Thank you!” the blue-button-downed man shot back, praising himself. “It’s just a lot of risk! These workers are afraid of getting electrocuted; they have to wear gloves.”

There were risks too, Buzz said, in fixing an internal combustion engine. And the new class of mechanics was being trained on EVs. The question asker glowered in his chair. An emcee swooped in, thanked the attendees, and the crowd dispersed.

I headed over to the stage to talk to Buzz.

This was not his first presentation, he told me. Hecklers were not uncommon. EVs were up against the economic interests of dealers, who were already conservative—i.e., prone to be suspicious of them—and the full force of Fox News was giving dealers a spread of made-up reasons to hate EVs even more.

“There’s a lot of resistance,” Buzz told me, “because of the compensation plan. We’re asking them to make about a quarter of the income they used to make. So there’s lots of pushback, especially if they’re staunch conservatives.”

In other words, even if the dealers’ lobby were able to contain the Tesla contagion, legacy-brand EVs sold through dealerships still posed a problem. This was partially because of virtual showrooms—companies were creating their own sales floors online, and setting transparent, no-haggle prices. But more importantly, dealers make the majority of their money on servicing cars and financing them. Actually selling the cars is not that remunerative. State laws give dealers exclusive rights over warranty service, which manufacturers are forced to pay dealers to provide. (Dealers make even more selling semi-pointless add-ons like “extended warranty” coverage.) Compared with traditional cars, EVs have far fewer component parts; they don’t need constant servicing or oil changes. That means that electric vehicles generate 40 percent less aftermarket revenue. Not to mention, EV technicians are harder to come by and thus more expensive to hire than regular mechanics, which further eats into dealer profit. And because EVs are a new technology, and expensive, buyers tend to be more skeptical about them and slower to pony up the cash to drive off in one, which means more time dedicated to each sale, more time dedicated to learning about what’s under the hood, and thus, lower margins for salesmen too. More work, less pay—bad, bad, bad.

Buzz wasn’t discouraged by pushback, he assured me, just like he wasn’t discouraged after his colleagues at the dealership where he’d worked nicknamed him “the Socialist.” But he had, he admitted, retired from sales and taken up blogging. Buzz, I got the sense, was part of the reason some of the official material came with a disclaimer: “The views and opinions presented in this educational program and any accompanying handout material are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of NADA.”

“Dealerships are a little bit blinded by the power of their organization and the franchise laws,” Buzz said. They can lobby all they want, he told me, but in the end, “it’s not gonna work.”

quote:

Under the hood, there will be an engine or two, but buyers likely won’t care. That being said, it’s a Subaru so that means AWD, CVT, and not enough HP. Of course, we’ll find out full details on November 16.

Failson posted:

New Forrester pictures leaked:




https://www.carscoops.com/2023/11/2025-subaru-forester-leaks-ahead-of-la-debut-should-go-back-into-the-woods/

lol

quote:

Under the hood, there will be an engine or two, but buyers likely won’t care. That being said, it’s a Subaru so that means AWD, CVT, and not enough HP. Of course, we’ll find out full details on November 16.

Hadlock posted:

That's a nice looking Ford Explorer station wagon

MeruFM posted:

the forester was always the SUV, the outback is the lifted wagon

MeruFM posted:

the forester was always the SUV, the outback is the lifted wagon

Olympic Mathlete posted:

Thissssssss doesn't look very capable.

https://twitter.com/DimaZeniuk/status/1722799384193032583?t=Wv-kShKe6q6y5dgMY3KsUw&s=19

BuckyDoneGun posted:

I'm willing to believe that of course it's a prototype under test without finished software, but gently caress, these things are supposed to be in customer hands the end of the month right?