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Xguard86 posted:Counterpoint Kanye did a rhym about having two GSeses which made him ambidexterous. yeah, first album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_GIbPcq6bw
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Sep 25, 2014 23:10
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Cadillac 62 64 66 etc is actually catchy and pretty cool. Better than CT whatever
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Sep 25, 2014 23:12
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Ice Cube stated he "hopped her big rear end in the BMW". I assume that was not in reference to some "poormobile" 1993 3 series but a 750iL. 
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Sep 26, 2014 00:01
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TheMadMilkman posted:The naming scheme comes from copying the German luxury brands. Not sure why you're screaming about Americans. I'm talking about renaming cars in general to numbers.
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Sep 26, 2014 00:20
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VikingSkull posted:and they touted 4 wheel steer when everyone else knew that was an oddity, at best  (from http://www.bluffton.edu/~nesterd/stats/badgraphs.html)
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Sep 26, 2014 01:34
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 That was also over 20 years ago, these days Ram leads in longevity.
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Sep 26, 2014 01:48
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If there's one thing you can always count on, it's Americans not understanding statistics.
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Sep 26, 2014 02:05
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Wheeee posted:
Actually, toyota does, but that speaks more to how the trucks are used. I've never seen a toyota run up to 500k miles in 3 years towing a gooseneck. It's pretty rare to see a ram tow truck. I've never seen a nissan with a service body.
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Sep 26, 2014 02:19
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Powershift posted:Actually, toyota does, but that speaks more to how the trucks are used. *among American manufacturers. In Canada. Honestly, while Ram trucks are probably the best right now, were I in the market I'd still get a Toyota just due to their greatly superior resale.
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Sep 26, 2014 02:24
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You're all wrong. Volvo semitrucks usually last about 1.5 million miles. 
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Sep 26, 2014 02:27
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dissss posted:Really? Most people I know assosicate Skoda/VW/Audi very closely. Remember that in the US we don't get the really small engines and we don't get the stripper models. You don't get an engine below the 2.0t in an Audi here. The A3 last model hatch, which is pretty rare here, was the only Audi available for years with either a cloth interior or 2WD, and I think they dropped 2WD entirely on non-diesel models for the last few years. There's absolutely nothing like an A1/A2 here. And, obviously, no Skoda. Meanwhile in Europe I don't know how deep Audi goes with this but the last two Mercs my family owned both had roll-up windows Also who hit Throatwarbler's av, jesus
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Sep 26, 2014 04:29
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Keyser S0ze posted:Ice Cube stated he "hopped her big rear end in the BMW". I assume that was not in reference to some "poormobile" 1993 3 series but a 750iL. I've heard M3's rapped about
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Sep 26, 2014 06:12
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Powershift posted:Actually, toyota does, but that speaks more to how the trucks are used. I don't see many Ram tow trucks, but all the privateers that pick up cars at my auction with goosenecks are using Rams lol
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Sep 26, 2014 07:23
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I was joking around with my Cadillac-fanboy friend the other night about some of the moves de Nysschen is making and said his next step would probably be to start changing the names of everything that isn't an Escalade. Sure enough, the next morning I check Autoblog and see about the CT6 and groaned. Cadillac has such a huge history with so many classic model names in its portfolio and this guy thinks for some reason its more appropriate to have another Infiniti-like Q1-99 naming system? Give me a break. GM has such a hard-on for trying to make Cadillac the domestic equivalent of a European brand instead of trying to exploit its American roots and they will stop at nothing when trying to copy the Germans.
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Sep 26, 2014 12:06
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Cream_Filling posted:Cadillac already had that, though, just with A -> C -> E -> S which was fine. The key to any car name is to not change them all teh time if it's basically the same car since it all gets confusing whereas everyone even normal people knows what a Corolla is since they've been around since the 70s. Yeah, note that I'm not saying that changing Cadillac's names is a good idea, rather just arguing for why a rational set of names is attractive. edit: Killer Mike raps about riding around in a black 750 (iL, I assume)
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Sep 26, 2014 13:49
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Powershift posted:Actually, toyota does, but that speaks more to how the trucks are used. The Japanese brands don't sell in 3/4 ton or 1 ton (in the States, anyway), which is probably why. 1/2 tons aren't very popular for service trucks or primary towing applications.
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Sep 26, 2014 19:06
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Yeah, note that I'm not saying that changing Cadillac's names is a good idea, rather just arguing for why a rational set of names is attractive. I've always kinda wanted a used S500 so I can get a license plate that reads "ICEBERG5" even though that video uses a Viper
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Sep 26, 2014 19:36
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Ford knows what's up. The modular mustang could never inspire "rollin', in my new 5.0 with the drop top down so my hair can blow"
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Sep 26, 2014 20:16
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haha your avatar owns
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Sep 26, 2014 20:32
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Snowdens Secret posted:Remember that in the US we don't get the really small engines and we don't get the stripper models. You don't get an engine below the 2.0t in an Audi here. The A3 last model hatch, which is pretty rare here, was the only Audi available for years with either a cloth interior or 2WD, and I think they dropped 2WD entirely on non-diesel models for the last few years. There's absolutely nothing like an A1/A2 here. And, obviously, no Skoda. I think a lot of it in my market is second hand Japanese import cars are common and Japanese market Audis are oddly low rent. I've looked at a few late 2000s A3s with the 3.2 and Quattro and they all had cloth, no cruise, low res displays etc
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Sep 27, 2014 01:36
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Snowdens Secret posted:Meanwhile in Europe I don't know how deep Audi goes with this but the last two Mercs my family owned both had roll-up windows This reminds me of something I've wondered for a while: How is the quality of the domestic market vehicles sold by Mercedes and BMW? Over here in North America they market themselves as premium luxury brands and we only get relatively loaded models, all with grossly inflated prices and piss-poor reliability combined with absurd servicing costs. But what about in Europe where they market and sell mainstream cars, how's the quality and cost of servicing? Are the mundane Mercedes on par with mainstream brands or are they also examples of hilarious German engineering?
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Sep 27, 2014 02:06
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Wheeee posted:This reminds me of something I've wondered for a while: How is the quality of the domestic market vehicles sold by Mercedes and BMW? Over here in North America they market themselves as premium luxury brands and we only get relatively loaded models, all with grossly inflated prices and piss-poor reliability combined with absurd servicing costs. But what about in Europe where they market and sell mainstream cars, how's the quality and cost of servicing? Are the mundane Mercedes on par with mainstream brands or are they also examples of hilarious German engineering? There is no significant difference between what BMW or MB sells in the US vs other countries, European market models will have more small diesel engines available but you can buy all the US market engines too. Nor are they cheaper, even the cheapest 316i in Germany is still about the same price as the cheapest 320i in the US. "On par with mainstream brands"? In most European countries the biggest mainstream brand is VW, so.... I think the big thing that car enthusiasts should keep in mind is that outside of their very small Miata driving clique, the average person really doesn't know or care that much about cars, the primary factor for why a car maker succeeds or not in a given market really just comes down to "be there first before everyone else", and at a distant second, "how does the interior feel when the car is new", because that's when people choose which car to buy. There was a long interview about a year ago with VW's head of US marketing on Autoline after hours where he was asked, straight up, why VW's US products are such garbage while they continue to be the biggest car maker in Europe, are they only sending their poo poo cars over here and keeping the good ones for themselves? The answer, straight from VW, is that because they don't have Consumer Reports over there, European car buyers, who on average buy fewer cars and drive less than Americans, just simply don't loving know any better. Just to show I'm not some kind of irrational hater of VWs or Europeans, Look at how long Toyota and Honda had to stay in the US market to get to where they are today. Imagine yourself a new car buyer in 1989, after test driving a 1989 Ford Tempo or Chevy Lumina vs a 1989 Honda Accord, tell me with a straight face that you would seriously consider buying the Ford or Chevy? To you or I today with the benefit of hindsight it sounds laughable and yet people continued buying Fords and Chevys over Toyotas and Hondas for 30 years, enough to more or less keep those companies afloat. The US and Canada are actually fairly unique compared to most countries in that consumers are quite fickle and willing to change at the drop of a hat to reward good quality or punish bad. The Anglosphere (Except Australia) has relatively open markets and very low barriers to entry. Even then it took 30 years of continuously selling utter poo poo that was literally put together by drunks and crackheads for consumers to get the idea that GM/Ford just aren't very good at this game and that they should probably buy a Camry or Accord if they like cars that run. In most other countries it's much harder, and trade policies make it much less rewarding to investments by foreign carmakers. Because America's car market is so competitive and the government generally lets the market decide who stays (I mean other than strategically vital companies that can never be allowed to go bust, like Chrysler  ), Americans usually only get the best and people in other countries can keep buying Lancias and Peugeots.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:23
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Uhh, jackie stewart said the tempo is a real drivers car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Ws_Bp7WYA I think i'd trust jackie stewart over some rear end in a top hat on the internet.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:49
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Throatwarbler posted:Imagine yourself a new car buyer in 1989, after test driving a 1989 Ford Tempo or Chevy Lumina vs a 1989 Honda Accord, tell me with a straight face that you would seriously consider buying the Ford or Chevy? To you or I today with the benefit of hindsight it sounds laughable and yet people continued buying Fords and Chevys over Toyotas and Hondas for 30 years, enough to more or less keep those companies afloat. I was there in 1989, and can say that the allure of cars like the Lumina or Tempo was pricing. Reagan era politics artificially limited the number of imported cars through most of the 80s, which meant most imported cars sold at or near sticker. It also meant dealers tacked on a lot of ridiculous add-ons to milk the most out of each car. The dollar was also weaker than the foreign currencies through most of the 80s, causing imported goods to consistently cost more than domestic made goods. Which is why you saw Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen all invest in US plants. Most folks also don't remember during that era a 10% interest rate was considered good -- a 20% price differential between a comparably equipped Accord and a Tempo stretched over the interest rates of that era gave the domestic automakers a significant advantage. Parts and maintenance worked the same way, so even though your Tempo may need more repairs the parts were readily available and cost less. And the Tempo required less costly maintenance. Unless you got a total lemon you still came out ahead financially by a significant margin. I'm not discounting anything you said - just adding some detail and reasoning beyond the typical *hurr American Cars suck* that you tend to throw out there. During that era from a sheer economic standpoint, there was no reason for the US Automakers to invest in higher quality - all they had to do was undercut the imports price and keep the volume up and they could make money hand over fist. We know now that was shortsighted and bit them in the rear end in the 90s and 00s. Goober Peas fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 04:08
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Powershift posted:Uhh, jackie stewart said the tempo is a real drivers car. A real driver's car
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Sep 27, 2014 04:11
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Throatwarbler posted:The Anglosphere (Except Australia) Until the 1990s when the tariff drops really bit and then the mid 2000s when petrol headed north of $1.00 AU a litre. Both were major changes and killed domestic car manufacturing inside a decade. There's a lot of other factors that played into that, but Australia went remarkably quickly through the turn-about. You really have to go back to the early 70s to find a time where there wasn't a serious number of imports occupying the sales rungs below the Commodore/Kingswood/Holden and the Falcon. Chrysler and later Mitsubishi (with the Valiant and Magna respectively) never really made it beyond 4 on the table, and they were the only really domestically sourced competition. Whatever got made here, Australians have had fairly varied buying habits outside the big 2.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:11
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So apparently Ford has issues a recall on fusions and escapes in 2013-2014. Airbags can potentially fail to deploy due to an election fault which may also cause a failure on the electronic stability control
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Sep 27, 2014 04:51
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QuiteEasilyDone posted:So apparently Ford has issues a recall on fusions and escapes in 2013-2014. Airbags can potentially fail to deploy due to an election fault which may also cause a failure on the electronic stability control God drat election faults, it isn't even November yet  is there any vehicle built in the last 10 years that wasn't recalled for airbags in the last few months?
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Sep 27, 2014 05:00
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This seems to be the appropriate thread. A tech shows you the myriad of ways you can do things like open the door and pop the hood on the i8 without breaking the car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTNKiTrX0Vk I like the part about how the emergency manual door release lever was the most common thing to be broken during testing. Well this thing sure seems to be breaking a lot during our testing, so you better learn to not do that! Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 05:17
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They sound pissed off to be selling BMWs
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Sep 27, 2014 05:27
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Throatwarbler posted:I like the part about how the emergency manual door release lever was the most common thing to be broken during testing. Well this thing sure seems to be breaking a lot during our testing, so you better learn to not do that! That's supposed to be a production car? Who do they think they're fooling? Production cars don't break if you try to open the hood without two specially trained technicians. "There's no reason they would ever need to open the hood outside the shop." That sounds like BMW's 20 year design goal, no user serviceable parts.
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Sep 27, 2014 05:47
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Just like a smartphone or every other consumer good
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Sep 27, 2014 06:27
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Throatwarbler posted:Americans usually only get the best and people in other countries can keep buying Lancias and Peugeots. 
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Sep 27, 2014 07:15
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Xguard86 posted:Just like a smartphone or every other consumer good Tell that to Viggen :p My last phone was made entirely of replacement parts, except the main PCB. Everything was readily available even though it wasn't a very popular model (Motorola MB525). I put a set of bearings in my blender last month and I've had my stereo apart so many times I put thumbscrews in the cover. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 07:17
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Throatwarbler posted:This seems to be the appropriate thread. A tech shows you the myriad of ways you can do things like open the door and pop the hood on the i8 without breaking the car. The "Terrible car poo poo" thread is over that way I'm not really against gadgets and electronics but what's the point of having an electronic button you're going to have a mechanical one anyway as a backup? This isn't the space shuttle, so why have the redundancy that only increases weight and complexity? Also loved that you need to wait a minute for the fuel door to pop open! Bumming Your Scene posted:They sound pissed off to be selling BMWs The cars are selling themselves! Disgruntled Bovine posted:That's supposed to be a production car? Who do they think they're fooling? Production cars don't break if you try to open the hood without two specially trained technicians. "There's no reason they would ever need to open the hood outside the shop." That sounds like BMW's 20 year design goal, no user serviceable parts. Weren't there some white fluid tanks in there? Do you have to take the car to the dealer to refill washer fluid?
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Sep 27, 2014 10:26
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mobby_6kl posted:
Well I get that rich people want their doors to be a bit more special than cars for proles, but that's the emergency release for the door if the car loses power. If you were sitting in the dead car and forget to do the special detente thing and snap the tiny plastic release handle(proper operation requires one to turn it like 140 degrees to fully unlock the door) off, which according to the tech is the most common problem they have encountered during testing, you are now trapped in the car? I guess there's still the passenger side door so you have 2 chances to do it right. mobby_6kl posted:
The comments on Jalopnik said it was part of the coolant loop for the batteries or some such. I'm sure there's some key combo in the iDrive that will make a washer fluid filler electronically pop out of the dash like some kind of cuckoo clock. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 10:53
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Wheeee posted:This reminds me of something I've wondered for a while: How is the quality of the domestic market vehicles sold by Mercedes and BMW? Over here in North America they market themselves as premium luxury brands and we only get relatively loaded models, all with grossly inflated prices and piss-poor reliability combined with absurd servicing costs. But what about in Europe where they market and sell mainstream cars, how's the quality and cost of servicing? Are the mundane Mercedes on par with mainstream brands or are they also examples of hilarious German engineering? I don't get the "grossly inflated prices" bit. Cars in America are amazingly, stunningly cheap. When I look at car reviews and they list the price in dollars, I can't help but be insanely jealous. Using the E-class as an example, in the UK it starts at £34,270.00. That's $55,673. In the US, it's $51,400. Actually way closer than I thought. Mercedes seems to keep the prices very similar. However, with other companies, the differential is higher. The higher the price, the higher the difference, mostly due to VAT. A base Porsche 911 in the US - $84,300. A base 911 in the UK - £73,509, or $119419. 3 Series BMW: US - $32,750. UK - $38,258. All prices taken from official websites. Another thing to take into account is how far below MSRP dealers are willing to negotiate. I get the impression, that at least among car people, there is a strong culture of price negotiation when it comes to cars. This forum has plenty of advice. I feel that's not the case over in Europe, for the most part. For car stuff I mostly hang out on this forum, though, and I've never tried to buy a car at a dealer. It's a guess not backed up by any real data. Perhaps someone else could chip in. Obviously, all the prices of US made vehicles are ridiculously high due to them having to be imported. This is not a big deal if you consider regular Chryslers and such (though for some odd reason people still insist on buying them, because ~american~), but it means all the cool cars that represent a good value proposition, well, don't. The Mustang, the Corvette, the Hellcat and so on lose their value proposition completely. I'm bitter because I think the new Ecoboost Mustang looks sweet and is super cheap, over there. Bumming Your Scene posted:They sound pissed off to be selling BMWs I only did a short internship at a dealer, but from talking to people in the business, the more you work with a luxury brand, the less respect you have for it. All the people there were car enthusiasts, and talked all the time about different cars. The only praise they had for Jaguars (it was a JLR dealership) was "we have the best engine note in the business". I bet it's like that with all other brands, especially upmarket finicky ones. The best was the head technician, who kept saying things like "Englishmen can't put cars together", "There are much better offerings at this price point, but customers keep buying our cars for some reason" and "The XK looks cool from the outside, but once you have a good look on the inside, it's hilarious". Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 11:19
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Throatwarbler posted:This seems to be the appropriate thread. A tech shows you the myriad of ways you can do things like open the door and pop the hood on the i8 without breaking the car. as a mechanic let me be the first to say you dumb motherfuckers what are you loving thinking  e- god this makes me unreasonably angry, and the instructor guy is just dumping gas on the fire e2- ok the girl in it calmed me down Seizure Meat fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 11:40
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I don't get the "grossly inflated prices" bit. Cars in America are amazingly, stunningly cheap. When I look at car reviews and they list the price in dollars, I can't help but be insanely jealous. The way it works for most products is that the more mainstream and mass market a product is, the more sellers are willing to compete on price, to the point where margins are thin enough that for the most part they reflect the cost of the product. So a 3 series or Ford Focus tends to be about the same price everywhere, but once you get into the luxury stuff, since the US is the biggest market in the world, Porsche can afford to compete a little on price and make it up in volume. In Britain, reducing the price of a 911 likely won't bring in that many more buyers, but in the US it will. It's the same for American cars - They're not going to sell many Vipers or Corvettes even at a lower price, so every one they do sell will be sold to someone who is relatively insensitive to price, and even then they only have to compete with a $119k 911 instead of an $84k 911.
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Sep 27, 2014 12:17
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I don't get the "grossly inflated prices" bit. Cars in America are amazingly, stunningly cheap. When I look at car reviews and they list the price in dollars, I can't help but be insanely jealous. At least you have similar purchasing power in the UK. The base F30 here is... $39,350. That's three average annual incomes, and the next cheapest one after the stripper 316i is 320i at just $15k more  . Obviously things could be even worse, so I'm not complaining too much.
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Sep 27, 2014 12:57
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