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eriddy posted:Why do manufacturers underrate their cars at all? Is it just to give a huge margin of error for individual engines or does having more HP change the way a car is sold (like maybe more HP in a minivan = lower sales?). In some places HP are directly linked to taxes so car manufacturers tend to get a nice number that covers manufacturing variances and tax brackets, same with engine displacement.
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Nov 29, 2017 09:12
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drgitlin posted:I think there is a version like that in Europe, but they might not bring it here if the other ones don’t sell. The q2 model(rear wheel drive with a LSD) for the super and business trim is selling less units than the quadrifoglio in its home market so i don't think it going to exist for much longer.
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Dec 11, 2017 14:05
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It's annoying because if you look at the Alfa market for 105/115s the low-trim ones with sporting features are incredibly popular. Juniors with LSDs, etc sold decently at the time and sell very well now. I do think that the 105/115 owner group would consider a new Alfa if the spec was similar, but you can only either get a fairly boring automatic Giulia or spend a poo poo ton of money on a QV. In  the alfa costs as much if not more than the equivalent BMW so it's a very hard sell as its value will plummet. The engine lineup is minimal(right now the diesel engines are 70-80% of the car dealerships stock and nobody wants them due to dieselgate, the 2.0l petrol variants might as well not exist as our fuel prices are absurdly high) and the first units had abysmal build quality kinda poisoning the well with bad rep. I played with both a Tipo(Dodge Dart made in Turkey) and a decently specced Giulia and some of the plastics had similiar quality. I hope they changed the interiors for the USDM variant 
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Dec 11, 2017 15:34
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drgitlin posted:I don’t think you can even get a manual version? The 2.0L Ti with the LSD is about $40k though. There is a run of the mill 6 speed with the diesels and the petrol 2.0l. Never saw a QV in the wild with anything but the zf auto.
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Dec 11, 2017 16:08
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dissss posted:Which past Alfas have felt 'special'? "Twin spark" inline fours were very good for the times, never been very fond of the "Busso", while it had a distinctive noise it wasn't very fuel efficient and kinda unreliable. Without dwelling in the past too much, 156 were very good and with good pricing and its derivatives(147 and gt) were decent. Alfa kinda lost it after they started using the GM-codeveloped chassis for the 159 and the brera, that chassis was super heavy and the car dynamics suffered for it. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Dec 12, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2017 10:49
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dissss posted:If you think a Sentra is bad rental car pray you never get stuck with an 'automatic' Punto The selespeed designers have a circle of hell ready for them, it's genuinely awful. The dualogic that succeded it is still bad but doable. Main problem with Fiat and autos is that they have very cramped engine bays so they couldn't put say a 1.4 and an auto(the panda 100hp with its 1.4 requires literal olympic grade gymnastics when servicing) on a small city car(semiautos are more serviceable on the alfas and their 2.0+l variants). Their 1.4l petrol engine is another weird oddity, mostly due to lack of interest(Italian car taxes used the engine displacement as a metric to pick the amount of cash you needed to pay yearly so all italian car makers had a veiled interest into fitting the smallest engine possible into their city cars) . Depending on the model, is either a derivative of a mid nineties engine or an evolution of a late eighties unit. Guess what is the more modern one? The late eighties F.I.R.E.-derivative, which has been kept up to date since 1985. I could go right now to a FIAT dealer and buy a car with an engine that has been designed before i was born and updated over the years sorta like a ship of Theseus . Another Punto that you shouldn't never even try to find, let alone drive, is the mk1 punto cabrio variant, a punto with a cloth roof, an additional ton of reinforcement and close to zero chassis rigidity. Slow as molasses and prone to collapse at the early convenience(any car crash in one of those is a death sentence, it makes the half EuroNCAP star fiat cinquecento look positively safe). EDIT: I'd like to join to the chorus of "Shame about Suzuki being sorta unknown", my 2005 Swift is a joy to drive and the spare/accessories catalog is 100% stocked even today(with FIAT i would expect to not being able to fetch OEM accessories/spares after a couple of years of a model being discontinued instead of the decade and change of my Suzuki) SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 19:52
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Applebees Appetizer posted:I doubt the new Jimny would pass crash standards anyway, no point bringing it over here. Jimnys are currently sold in Europe so it wouldn't be impossible to sell them in the us, it's just a commercial choice on Suzuki's end.
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Jun 20, 2018 17:35
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KakerMix posted:America is a land of differences. In Europe a small car has a tow rating, here that exact same car is incapable of pulling that same weight. A colleague of mine has the current gen(which is pretty much the same car since the early nineties) and I've rode on it a few times. Very spartan/rugged interior and the ride is very stout. The engine will outlive the car and the country is driven onto with just a minimal amount of maintenance. I'm expecting the new jimny to be a tarted up Ignis, which is not entirely a bad thing, the current jimny is pretty much like an old school defender comfort wise.
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Jun 20, 2018 18:00
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Its the same engine from the 500 Abarth, which does have a 200hp special edition. The highest they let it go outside of a special edition is 180hp, however. There are aftermarket kits to go 200-220 hp on the 1.4 multiair in italy if you don't mind the engine grenading on you https://www.quattroruote.it/news/nuovi-modelli/2018/06/27/romeo_ferraris_l_abarth_124_spider_sfiora_i_220_cv.html
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May 18, 2019 10:26
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Lord Stimperor posted:Talking about European knock-off cars, I really dig the new Peugeot 508 hard. I think I'm particularly attracted to the striped lights, which have become the trademark of the recent Peugeot's. Eh, they priced it too high, it's pretty much at BMW prices here(MSRP starts at 31k compared to a 3er at 40k) so i don't think it's going to sell much. Shame as the hot versions of the older peugeot sedans were kinda cool(with the 406/407 being sorta of a movie star with the taxxi movies after all...) ...
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Jul 19, 2019 11:04
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:I'm a big fan of the Maserati but I think I prefer the coupe. I also think the Alfa 8c is a good candidate, but of course it's several years out of production at this point. The 4C is pretty much a smaller clone and it's a lot cheaper(and still in production)...
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Jul 29, 2019 07:38
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Lord Stimperor posted:The question was specifically about the European market and why manual transmissions are still the default there. When I was car hunting earlier this year I didn't come across any non-hybrid car where the auto transmission was not a paid extra. But maybe I'm just shopping at the wrong brands. The issue is that European cars have less torque(mostly due to smaller engines) so automatics don’t work as well as manuals. If you have enough displacement to drive without having to redline constantly, so more than your average 0.8-1.2l engine, an auto will do just fine. A lot of euro brands won’t stock autos due to your average buyer thinking they are getting some old 4 speed without overdrive instead of the modern 8 speeds. Just heard fiat advertising their zf 8 speed for their ducato van on national radios making it sound like the seventh wonder(compared to their poo poo selespeed surely is), given enough time(and euro 7 likely requiring bigger displacement rather than big turbos) I am expecting to see manuals relegated to cheap shitboxes.
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Oct 5, 2019 15:09
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Kivi posted:The traffic infrastructure is bit more sane in the EU then US so there's no need for excessive power, so a smaller displacement is fine even with automatics. My sis has a CX-3 and she most likely has never hit the red line because the loud noise makes her think "this will hurt the engine" (her comment when I test drove that thing) The CX3 is either a 2.0l petrol or 1.5 turbodiesel, both with plenty of grunt. The cheap shitbox segment that i was referring to(which is the top seller in markets like southern europe) is mostly smaller than 1.3l, where autos are not the best pick. Hell i still remember the fiat dualogic and selespeed where they tried to achieve auto-like features but without the power drain of a conventional auto, it was atrocious. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 5, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2019 16:21
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Applebees Appetizer posted:Most Toyotas, and almost all Honda automatics are CVT now. That article might not be entirely accurate, the fiat punto(it stopped being called that way in 2005) in that list had a robotized manual transmission(duallogic), not a cvt. The grande punto evo (the latest/last iteration of the punto family) stopped being sold with anything but a manual in 2016, with a end of production in 2018. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 5, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2019 17:59
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Balliver Shagnasty posted:I don't think Europeans ever took to the Jetta. The Golf with a butt™ was really for squeamish Murrikuns who thought hatchbacks were for poors. It's a regional thing, wolks sold the jetta as vento or bora in some areas of europe. Both in sw and sedan variants. In Italy it was sort of a flop in most iterations(no longer imported since 2014), as it was barely cheaper than a Passat. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 12:49
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Olympic Mathlete posted:A: I was not aware that Daihatsu were owned by Toyota The daihatsu copen is one of the few japanese cars we get in my country that are rare cause they are too tiny to work as anything but a toy, i cannot fit in one without the top down.
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Oct 21, 2019 17:15
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FCA main pain point is the midrange hatchback, they don’t have much to offer but old tech while PSA have a decent chassis with the 308. Plus the opel corsa chassis is a derivative of the old grande punto that got developed in JV with GM so there’s instant synergy there, there are plenty of rumors about punto being revived after the panda launch which would benefit from a nice chassis done with both FCA and PSA tech
SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 22:41
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mobby_6kl posted:What do they need a midrange hatchback for? Nobody's buying them in the US and though they still sell in Europe, they're not going to get anywhere against the Golf, Focus, Octavia, etc. And even if they really needed one, they could've just platform-shared it. Surprise surprise, fiat best sellers are hatchbacks and they have lost a sizable number of vehicles sales in the segment due to lack of model refreshes(due to lack of tech/money). Euro FCA has only a decent model right now in the midrange hatch segment(Giulietta) and it's using a old chassis(a minimal refresh of the one used by the old delta) and rather old engines. Designing a chassis on your own is expensive and the bigger the car the more expensive it gets(as a midgrange hatchback need to fight not just the cheap hyundais but the germans too with the 1er and a-class). Last time fiat attempted to platform share with another group on a mid-high end car(not truck/commercial) it got the immense failure called Premium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM/Fiat_Premium_platform , which makes fiat management less inclined to do so. JK Fresco posted:Also everything I've heaed about Fiat is their corporate is insanely archaic with like no modern management or analysis, and endless vicious politicking, particularly in the Fiat side. Basically Rome right before the fall FCA management is a red tape hell with multiple layers on complexity which cause every tiny item to take ten times the usual so a project that should have been done in five years takes ten(and make the new product obsolete, limiting sales). Ferrari is kept isolated from other FCA business units for that very reason. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 10:20
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dissss posted:They only stopped selling the Punto because NCAP retested it and shamed them into retiring it. poo poo EuroNCAP results never stopped fiat from selling cars, I still remember the seicento being sold in the early 2000s with just one star and people getting shamed when they bought one for their kids or the mk1 panda with literal tinfoil doors with no reinforce beams being sold in the late nineties. If I remember correctly the issue was the engines being barely able to get euro 6d on the lighter 500/panda and not on the heavier grande punto. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 11:45
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JK Fresco posted:Does Peugeot even make a single memorable or interesting car Peugeot are good on the tech side(engine/chassis/driving exp) but drab. Citroens are good on the looks but horrid on the rest. PSA engines were used on the mini if i remember correctly
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Nov 1, 2019 13:36
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Re: panda backseat Point 1: the panda is not a luxobarge, the back seat would rattle itself out of its supports if you drove it in that temporary setting(which wouldn't engage its mechanical locks/restraints). Panda was a utilitarian vehicle to empower lower classes to get a vehicle and a temp baby mode was a extra(which nobody used afaik). Point 2: an accident with a mk1 panda is lethal for everybody in it. I think that vechicle would score more stars for pedestrians than occupants as pedestrians might just get crippled rather than flat out dead Point 3: it's not like vehicles of that vintage had isofix, as i said before fiat vehicles tends to linger a lot on the drawing board and at the time the original panda was designed i think you would see baby straps or cradles to be fitted over the rear seat storage areas(which would be as lethal as the 45 degree angle seating) .
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Nov 1, 2019 20:04
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Pryor on Fire posted:Surveys regularly show that 80% of Italian men have never used a washing machine or done laundry in their lives. Once you think about that for a bit, Italy starts to make a lot more sense. Can we drop this stupid derail? TIA.
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Nov 1, 2019 20:25
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JK Fresco posted:There's a ton of 2014 Leafs selling for $6000 and you can even drive them on the highway The AMI is going to be euro only so using euro prices would be more apt. The cheapest nissan leaf i can find is 10.5k€ (https://www.autoscout24.it/annunci/...ldtsrc=listPage) at stupid kms(so the battery is likely to be busted) while the closest thing to a ami (the citroen czero/peugeot e-ion/Mitsu i-miev) is about 12.5k€ new and 8.5k€ used(https://www.autoscout24.it/annunci/...ldtsrc=listPage). 6 grand is not a bad deal for a new city only car, there are people dailying the Renault TWIZY here for crying out loud...
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Feb 29, 2020 11:45
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Olympic Mathlete posted:The 2 door Bronco looks great ...but that's because it's just a fatter Jimny Just as a thought exercise a current jimny is 365/165/173 cm, a bronco is 441/220/200 cm.
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Jul 14, 2020 15:38
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The Fiat Strada was sold in as a work vehicle under a different brand of FCA https://www.fiatprofessional.com/it/fine-serie/strada It's a rare sight on our roads as a ducato(rammaster in the states) was barely more expensive and can pack a lot more stuff safely. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Oct 24, 2020 |
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Oct 24, 2020 13:45
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Lord Stimperor posted:I just recalled that I actually drove a Renault Kangoo just like this one below for a year during civic service. That thing owned, it hat only two (installed) seats but the sheer amount of stuff you could cram in the back was unbelievable. The seating position wasn't very tall but it was still super comfortable and I enjoyed practically every moment riding it with my co-worker then. The fiat equivalent (Fiorino) is pretty much a bag of holding on wheels and the windowed variant is a common small bus for airport shuttles and the like
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Oct 25, 2020 12:25
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Tonton Macoute posted:I have a soft spot for Suzuki for some reason. Being a Swift owner, I do think they are decent, sadly their biggest problem is that the main engine for small to medium cars barely cuts for euro6a emissions(which has made the Jimny unable to be sold after less than a year of commercialization). Tiny front wheel drive econoboxes might still fit but stuff like their small 4WD models will require major investments to be able to be sold in the near future.
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Nov 20, 2020 21:49
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Grobbit posted:3-4 years ago when I was looking at getting a hot hatch the Swift Sport (mk3 with NA engine) was a strong contender. It did lose out to the sensible choice of a Golf GTI though, but it would have been a fine choice if I were limited on budget (small boot not withstanding), as it was fun to chuck around and the fit and features were perfectly adequate for me. LCV vehicles cannot be converted back without getting hosed raw by the rozzers. LCV isn't just weaker emissions, it's cheaper taxes too. From what i've heard they plan to make the 1.3l/95hp engine into either a lower powered unit or a same powered, bigger displacement one. The latter means more taxes in certain markets while the former means worse reviews(my 2006 swift 4x4 struggles sometimes at euro4/93hp and the jimny weighs a shitton more than mine). SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 23:42
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Kraftwerk posted:What?? Does that mean BMW B58 motors are reliable now?? toyota supra = bmw z4 If the engine grenades cause bmw doing german things, toyota gets angry so they overspecced it.
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Nov 28, 2020 23:09
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YOLOsubmarine posted:The B58 went into production in 2015 whereas the Supra didn’t come out until 2019 so I don’t think Toyota had much to do with it. The N55 that was its predecessor was also pretty reliable. It was the N54 that had issues with turbos and hpfp failure. Toyota or any other brand wouldn't enter into a multiple year production agreement without a very long design phase, given that they updated their Supra branding at USPTO in 2014, they might had some early validation of the engine back then.
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Nov 29, 2020 13:22
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crackhaed posted:Love how it looks but I was really hoping the 500e would get some performance increases over the previous gen. The higher trim at a 9.0s 0-60 is quite disappointing for an EV in 2020. Keep in mind that the new 500 is an attempt to cover both the higher spec pandas and mid spec 500, they are aiming for nice but not fancy to get volumes(and leaving high end open for abarth). The 500 as it is, is slotted in the spot that should have been covered by the centoventi(while the 500 should have been an hybrid).
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Dec 7, 2020 21:09
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Their goal, at least when PSA bought GME, was to do brand regionalization on the same platforms. Germans may not want to buy Peugeots or Citroens, but if you slap an Opel badge on the same car it will likely sell in Germany. Fiat's the only real new brand overlap they're inheriting, and Fiat is well on its way to being Italian-market only. I think it vaguely makes sense. They've been pretty successful so far, and I really only see upside for PSA on this one due to US exposure (other than the fact that you are inheriting a bunch of legacy Fiat / Chrsyler / FCA mess). Beside the US brands, FCA has quite a bit of historical names to create virtual segmentation be it innocenti, autobianchi, lancia, alfa romeo and abarth. PSA has no luxury or high end brands while FCA has in spades(even if they were discontinued or scaled down).
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Jan 4, 2021 21:20
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Throatwarbler posted:I went to VW's site to check because in my mind the Tiguan was one of the more powerful entries in the segment, and found out that the current Tiguan's 2.0t only makes 184hp. The 2.0t in the 1st gen Tiguan from like 2006 had 200hp. Italian Tiguan configurator has a 1.5 tFSI with 150hp and 2.0 TDI with 150 and 200hp or 1.4tFSI hybrid with 245 hp. What country configurator are you looking at? If it’s the us maybe they are compensating for low octane fuel.
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Jan 11, 2021 19:52
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Has anybody heard any announcements about cars with apple carkey beside BMW? The incredibly generic sounding name makes it impossible to search.
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Jan 26, 2021 20:39
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Kraftwerk posted:I don’t know about you guys but this feature sounds like something incredibly easy to exploit in order to steal cars. Most oem car keys security is pretty much various shades of bad, hopefully the tech used to store and handle credit cards in most phones should be a bit more sturdy than the bare minimum you see in car fobs. It's likely going to end up in cars more expensive than i can buy for the near future but, unlike carplay, i don't see much interest in it from car brands since the announcement. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jan 26, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 21:02
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I honestly feel that this trend of “every control is either capacitive or touch screen” will get curbed by lawmakers after enough people get hurt or killed due to having to look away from the road. It’s humanly impossible to tinker with dash capacitive buttons without looking at them, which is also a sticking point of current(my2021) VAG GROUP cars in reviews as even the steering wheel are capacitive and journos are having issues using them properly(giving bad reviews).
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Feb 8, 2021 17:39
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smooth jazz posted:When touchscreens in cars became common, say 8-10 years ago, everyone I know including myself almost killed themselves within 5 minutes of leaving the dealership. FYI Ford volume knob is a capacitive stylus bolted to the glass, aka if the touchscreen goes on the fritz the knob stop working. It’s a step in the right direction but I would have preferred a less crash prone option
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Feb 9, 2021 08:57
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Mr. Apollo posted:Audi officially revealed the e-tron GT. This doesn't bode well for their electronic mirrors, their new halo car reverted to conventional glass...
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Feb 9, 2021 21:05
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KozmoNaut posted:That tech has been in some tablet-style PCs for custom navigation/taxi systems for some time, I'm actually surprised they're not the standard for automotive OEMs by now. Infrared point tracking is slow as balls and imprecise as hell, also it’s an additional part to the display unit compared to the capacitive sensor film which is embedded(and has much better economy of scale)
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Feb 9, 2021 23:45
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i own every Bionicle posted:We generally don’t see manual hybrid cars because of marketing and emotional reasons and not because of technical requirements. Manual hybrids can and have been done successfully (first gen Insight, and the new EU only Ford Puma, for example), and they could be great to drive. The Vonnen add-on for Porsches is also reportedly quite good, but expensive and heavy as an aftermarket part compared to more normal engine upgrades. It’s just that with the manual subset of most car sales being very small, the subset of that which would also be hybrid is even smaller, it really doesn’t make sense to most automakers to build them. We think of hybrid tech as futuristic, and manuals as traditional, and thus most enthusiasts who want manuals would probably shun hybrids. There is a shitton of mild hybrid manuals here in the eu(most of Suzuki catalog for instance), as you said it’s just a regional marketing issue. There is a push to move automatics down in the usual manual-only engine sizes(eg 1.6 and lower) to provide more smooth city driving and more advanced cruise options(on a manual you have a finite speed/rpm range to work with) but most brands are still doing asinine prices on autos so people keep getting manuals. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Feb 12, 2021 |
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Feb 12, 2021 18:18
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