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Guinness posted:- taller interior space People don't give this enough credit. The exact same infant car seat that required the front passenger seat to be all the way forward in a 2007 Mazdaspeed3, fit in the backseat of a 2013 CR-V with both front seats fully back. Those are vehicles with nearly identical width, length, and wheelbase, only significantly differing in height. The CR-V felt no harder to navigate around town or into a parking spot, and the only way it fell short of the MS3 was being gutless and boring. More power is easy to solve and most people want boring anyway.
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Sep 1, 2023 20:03
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OBAMNA PHONE posted:probably due to CAFE rules letting manufacturers further game the fuel economy regulations This and there's no room in the market for them anymore. The only people who bought them this last go-round with the Cruze Eco / Ford SFEs and the like were people who specifically wanted a brand-new high fuel economy car that was also purely gasoline-powered. Even contemporary reviews of the Focus SFE pointed out that it was priced pretty much on par with the Insight and Prius C, both of which had better fuel economy. If you were willing to buy a lightly used example of the most reliable car ever made, a regular Prius would have been a better choice than any of them for the person who just wants the cheapest to own/run car and doesn't care how it hits the numbers. Adjusted for inflation a barebones Focus SFE would be about $25-26k today; a new Bolt 1LT starts at $28k before the federal tax incentive. Even without the federal incentive, that sticker price difference is made up in 2-3 years of driving on electrons instead of gasoline.
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Sep 2, 2023 16:45
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skipdogg posted:A half assed example, back in the late 90's I think Dodge/Chrysler was having issues with transmissions failing left and right. They designed the drat thing to have a 30K mile service interval. Who is going to buy a new car and then service the transmission every 30K. So when these things started failing around the 60K+ mark, they got a reputation for building lovely transmissions. Chrysler already had a reputation for lovely transmissions long before the late '90s, and they weren't the only ones. Pretty much all of the early overdrive automatics from the domestics were unmitigated dogshit - we had two Grand Voyagers that didn't even make it to that first interval before making GBS threads the automatic. GM wasn't any better. The second GV got replaced with a '97 Suburban with a 4L60E that grenaded at 40k, despite GM having built variants of that transmission for 15 years by then. Or how about GM's early launches of Dexcool and discovering only after shipping it in millions of cars that it ate gaskets? Poor maintenance doesn't help but there was a lot of cheapness engineered into 1990s domestic products and you could not maintain your way around that.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:52
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Sab669 posted:Not a new car at all but god drat; Worth it to absolutely flex on every other dad in the pickup/dropoff line.
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Sep 15, 2023 05:05
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Godzilla07 posted:Cybertruck is still more real than the new Nissan Z. It's incredible how Nissan can't produce what's essentially a heavy refresh of a 20-year old car. I've seen two new Zs on the road and no Cybertrukkks, and one of those Zs actually had personal-owner plates on it instead of testing plates.
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Oct 20, 2023 16:26
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euphronius posted:End of an era. Kind of sad 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?
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Nov 8, 2023 18:34
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I agree that the long wheelbase makes it a poor choice for a lot of offroading - but it's not a fullsize. The GM Colorado/Canyon are rated for 7700lb, Gladiator 7650lb, Ranger 7500lb, and the next best from there is the Tacoma at 6800lb. The Colorado/Canyon and Gladiator even both use rear axles derived from the Dana 44. Payload specs are harder to nail down since they vary widely on trim, but even then they're right in the thick of the midsize class at ~1500lb. With all that said, the Gladiator brings all the day-to-day annoyances of a Wrangler (solid front axle with terrible steering, aerodynamics somehow worse than a brick, noisy, leaky, etc) without as much capability on tough trails. I will forever argue that the right way to own a Wrangler is to not, and the least-wrong way to own a Wrangler is for it not to be anything but a toy. If I really wanted a pickup to offroad with, I'd be eyeballing the ZR2/AT4 or the Ranger Raptor.
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Nov 12, 2023 22:30
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WTFBEES posted:I am firmly against cutting holes in car roofs, and doubly against cutting them off all together, but it sounds like a lot of the problems you all describe are solved by a hat. You'd have to be some kind of pervert to take the roof off of a vehicle, right?   Funny enough I have never actually dropped the top on my TJ except for when I swapped out the original soft top for a replacement. Doors off and rear windows removed, though? 
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Nov 13, 2023 03:16
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This sounds like the Costco Auto Program except probably worse somehow.
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Nov 17, 2023 16:23
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OBAMNA PHONE posted:Probably bloated up to late 90s 1500 size by now The only way my 2018 Canyon is smaller than a 1960-2000 half-ton truck is width. To be perfectly fair, the Canyon also has equal-or-better payload and towing capacity to a 1960-2000 half-ton truck.
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Dec 13, 2023 18:56
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Olympic Mathlete posted:I mean you laugh but modern CUVs and SUVs would look exactly this goofy if it wasn't for all the specific design tricks to draw your eyes away from the fact the size of them is awkward as gently caress visually. Stuff like fake exhausts and big plastic diffusers that do nothing, extra lights fitted a foot or more under the main ones, huge grilles and fake venting, lower half of the car painted black and cinched up towards the back to make the car less visually heavy... 
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Dec 20, 2023 22:03
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