Franco Caution posted:

The whole "V8 has to go away....act now. Never coming back" talk is not going to last.
I give Dodge a year before they magically find a way to start putting those back in Chargers and Challengers.

They will lobby or say its too hard to make batteries, and get extensions.
It's going to be years and years before manufacturers figure out how to have BEV only fleets on their lots at price points people are going to be able to stomach.

Inner Light posted:

This take is not wrong per se. If you do have money to burn in the interests of aesthetics (material choices in cabin and suspension and power train) an A4/A6 will be noticeably nicer and better than Japanese counterparts like an Accord. But the differences have obviously lessened over the years with homogenization.

meltie posted:

Yeah, I was posting it to agree with you, when a manufacturer puts an ev drivetrain into something it genericises the car, I agree.

Even making something as iconic as a Series Landie into an EV ends up taking most of the personality out of it.

I don't really think it's a bad thing for 95% of the people on the road, they just need An Driving Appliance, not a pet. Things tend toward kammback soapblobs which quietly go bzzzm for 200 miles. That's fine.

Twerk from Home posted:

I've been feeling this for a while, that gas engines provided most of the personality of a car and there's no personality to an EV. I'd hope to be proven wrong, but the future just looks very bland.

I'm extremely curious exactly what Mazda is going to do with the next generation Miata. Some type of mild hybrid is coming, but it's the Miata and I'm sure they're not going to gently caress it up. Europe still gets Miatas and the Subaru BRZ and such, right?

YOLOsubmarine posted:

US buyers overwhelming prefer SUVs and trucks even at a price premium over a comparable sedan.

Kraftwerk posted:

If I’m forced to give up sedans or 4 door hatchbacks I’m getting a base model land cruiser. I refuse to drive a cuv for any reason. They’re incredibly boring. Even my Jetta is more fun to drive and that’s not saying much.

Ambassadorofsodomy posted:

Neither of them are new now, but my (soon to be) 15 year old Corolla gets a bit better fuel mileage than my old 1990s Mazda. Despite being bigger, heavier (probably more aerodynamic though) with bigger more powerful engine.

Same size fuel tanks at 50L. If I really stretched it out I could get about 550km or so with the Mazda, and a bit over 600 with the Corolla.

dissss posted:

US gallons and Imperial gallons are for some stupid reason different sizes which often trips people up when comparing fuel economy.

Hadlock posted:

29mpg for anything older than about 2005 is pretty drat good IMO yeah

Olympic Mathlete posted:

Godzilla07 posted:

2nd gen CTS-V coupes don't appear to fetch a price premium over the sedan. Personally I'd go for a Corvette or a 6th-gen Camaro at the price a CTS-V coupe is going for.

Nissan has created a Hardbody Edition trim for the Frontier, inspired by the classic Nissan pickup truck. MSRP for this trim is $42,095.

moist turtleneck posted:

they have a good argument for the 40%, the CEOs get bumps like that while they tell the union workers that there's just no money in the budget for a raise

there was someone that had been paid the same amount every year from 2016-2023 because they needed to "make sacrifices" to keep the oem afloat

"Dawnya Ferdinandsen builds transmissions for Chevy Silverados and other trucks at a GM plant in Ohio. This summer, she was earning $27 an hour - the same as what she was making when she was hired in 2016. While CEOs enjoy their luxury watches and second homes, she says, workers like her face tough choices."

"GM last year disclosed that Mary Barra's compensation was 362 times that of the median worker at GM"

GoutPatrol posted:

When I bought my first new car in 2019 I thought "I think I'll have this car for 10 years." And now I think I will ride it until the wheels fall off. Which hopefully won't be in 2029. Things are expensive.

Twerk from Home posted:

That's gross income, pre-tax, so they're taking home less. Median rent in the US is more than $2,000/mo and you're paying more than that in any city you've ever heard of: https://www.rent.com/research/average-rent-price-report/

The median used car payment is more than $500/mo now and new is much higher, of course. Childcare is more than $1000/mo anywhere in the country and dramatically higher in cities. You don't get to live a middle class American life with a house, car, and kids for $27/hr.

mobby_6kl posted:

Why not just the Honda S660.

Mazda has some new ideas for a diesel engine. As always it sounds interesting but I'd want to see it work in practice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ-fTsqoU3Y

mobby_6kl posted:

Apparently now the X2 crossover-coupe thing exists while it didn't when I was at the BMW HQ/museum a few weeks back.



I don't like it so they'll probably sell millions.

Dr. Lunchables posted:

It’s crazy how little of that rear window area is actually window. This things gonna have blind spots as big as the moon.

I don’t buy the idea that it’s anything but a terrible design choice. If the A pillar is big enough to support the roofline (on rollover) at a 60 degree angle, there’s no way the near vertical D pillar couldn’t be as small as or smaller.

KakerMix posted:

I want the fake manual in my EV because fun = good especially since it's super simple considering and you can turn it off.

Nothing about modern cars makes sense at all, most of all 0-60 times in 3 seconds. If one is ok then we can go ahead and have a fake manual. Nobody needs their super huge trucks or their raked rear hatch areas in their ~sport~ SUVs or their ultra low profile tires on giant wheels or their button less touch screens.

Proud Christian Mom posted:

the most ragged out early 1990s Camaros and Firebirds to ever exist always had louvres.

Olympic Mathlete posted:

This is obviously going to be spendy but man, it's just all it really needs to be even though I hate big stuff.

https://twitter.com/herrmanndigital/status/1732635775697899622?t=sgZS7ATbLJrqUF1S8B0Qjw&s=19

Guinness posted:

I feel like auto makers are kind of shooting themselves in the foot with their whole approach to EVs where they must all be Tesla-alikes with way too much software and “different because the future” decisions that throw out perfectly good and well-proven designs. It’s really no surprise then that GM, famous for their high quality software engineering, is churning out turds.

A lot of the same crap is leaking into regular cars, too, but seems like every EV on the market is trying to reinvent every wheel and be whiz-bang futuristic at the cost of… well everything. Complexity, reliability, usability, and cost of ownership.

For the promise of how much simpler EVs could be compared to ICE, they sure find a thousand unnecessary ways to poo poo them up instead.

We went through something similar with hybrids like 15-20 years ago when they all had to be weird statement pieces instead of just making typical cars better — which now many cars are hybrids and you’d never know it. Please just do the same with EVs.

I’m very bullish on EVs over the coming years but the current crop is largely disposable trash.

TheBacon posted:

I have found the solution:

Sab669 posted:

Yea it's pretty much the sweet spot. Bluetooth, maybe a heated wheel and nav. What more do you need.

Russian Bear posted:

Oh I see, I assumed the trunk lid would have to be replaced (maybe just the picture making the alignment look weird). That’s a $2800 part alone (here anyway).

TheMadMilkman posted:

I used to drive a 1999 Toyota Sienna and now drive a 2024 4Runner, and I completely agree. In my defense, though, I'm 2 miles away from fire roads and trails leading into the Wasatch Mountains, so there is the realistic chance that I will go off-road. At least that's the hope.

CUVs CAN be easier to get in and out of compared to a sedan, but a Rav4 or a Corolla Cross handles that without the need to be insanely large, and both of those get fairly good gas mileage. And minivans sit just as high. And minivans are hated by late Gen-X / Millennials because that's what their parents drove, and there is nothing worse than becoming your parents. But I've said it before and I'm sure I'll mention it again. Every single person I know who has purchased a minivan was upset at first, but after 6 months couldn't imagine life without it. Ours was a godsend when we had 2 small children.

Cached Money posted:

I'm sure you can still make a car that feels like an old Caprice or Roadmaster if you really wanted. But that would cost more money to develop rather than making oversized trucks and pretending they are "commercial vehicles" to evade emission and safety regulations.

BuckyDoneGun posted:

Bad news about the 6:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/mazda-6-lives-on-australia-after-japan-axing/



They just announced they've killed it here too: https://autocar.co.nz/mazda6-culled-from-new-zealand-line-up/

I think they're fantstic looking, for some reason the sedan gives me modern Jag vibes?

Neo_Crimson posted:

Car company makes a car that enthusiasts say they want, car enthusiasts bitch about it online and don't buy it. Car company takes it off the market and car enthusiasts wonder why car companies don't do anything cool.

It's the circle of life.

CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:

Except Hyundai made undoubtfully godawful cars, there's a load of Chinese cars that are very decidedly not godawful that are fully capable of cleaning up the bottom to mid end that other car makers have vacated / not really taking seriously AND they arent so bone headed as locking themselves into big rear end shitboxes.

BYD for example is far larger as well than most in the west understand and have in some cases their tech has gotten ahead of western makers liek blade batteries and being an enormous bus baker, they have made over 3 million cars last year (and growing a a massive rate), 100,000 EV buses and well over 10,000 EV trucks overall.

It's more and more likely BYD and co are going to be huge presence going forward.

Infinotize posted:

I went and sat in an Ioniq the other day finally and it was like... completely normal sized. It's the size of a new CRV. Ok just barely bigger. But I don't get why people have an issue with that, if it was smaller inside no one would buy it, like no one bought a honda E. People don't go, a CRV oh my god what a monstrosity.

euphronius posted:

One of my neighbors has a 1986 caprice classic . I haven’t seen him drive it for years. He had it out yesterday and its tiny !! I remember in the 1980s the caprice was a huge car. Things are getting hosed up