G. David Felt

Local Fiat dealer Fiat of Kirkland http://www.fiatofkirkland.com/ has tons on the lot and are doing a end of summer blow out sale to try and get them moving. They just do not sell. 149 in stock according to the web site but across the street from them is their holding pen on a vacant lot and this morning I counted over 100 there alone. I suspect they have closer to 200+ in stock and a truck was waiting to unload more. Fiat 500 = failure in the Pacific Northwest.

High schools need to bring back auto-shop so that kids can learn how to wrench on a auto. There are many excellent options for a fun first time auto, yet the current High School crowd is very much part of the Entitlement problem we have. They do not want to work very hard for something nice and they seem to be to out of shape to actually do hard work.

Ford has destroyed Lincoln with their platinum line of auto's. There really is no luxury in Lincoln when you have the Ford units equal of better than what Lincoln can offer. At this point, better to be a Buick/Chrysler competitor and reboot the brand completely than to try and live in a fantasy world of so called luxury that does not exist.

I would get an automotive stethoscope and craw under it and start probing to see if it is coming from the engine or tranny. It might be worth it to take it to a good tranny shop and have them review the tranny to see if the issue is there. I know the place by me does excellent assessments and have been honest with telling me when it is nothing in the tranny but an actual engine issue. This could help you deduce the point of noise faster if you can remove a major component from the problem. To me I am thinking tranny based on your videos. Something is slowly dying and the noise seems to come when you put the power of the engine against the tranny. One thought, crawl underneath and have someone move from drive to neutral and listen to the tranny and check the drive line and see if the noise shows up better.

To you both for even thinking of killing off these awesome items.

Hunting

I challenge the need for the license plate and stickers. If states wanted to reduce costs, they could easily go to a standardized bar code plate on the rear of cars and all the officer has to do is have their window cam scan the plate and tell them if the license was paid for that year and if there is any other issues with the plate/car/owner. This would reduce the stickers and need for coming up with plates. Yes you could still have custom name plates, but most I think would care less about the plate and just pay their yearly fees. You could take this one step farther and get rid of the plate all together and just go with a GPS tracker that must be installed on all auto's but then the Privacy Freaks would scream bloody murder that the gov has their tracking info even though they already do with cell's, nav's, Onstar etc. Think of it as an RFID tag for each car that a police officer can scan for when pulling you over.

You always said you loved to be a slave to the payment Mr. New Car!

Totally disagree with you Soku47, the Tundra is one of the ugliest trucks out there with it's pug nose grill and total lack of style. Ford is not much better or Nissan, but GM and Dodge have awesome looking trucks. In regards to Diesel, I think all companies are going to have to come up with a high mileage diesel and hybrid for their light weight trucks.

Hybrid would be wise to be one of the first out there with a killer application of high power and torque for a sports car. Be interesting to see what the concepts end up being. Pure electric to the rear wheels with a diesel or CNG powered generator?

Bad News, we get stuck with expensive luxury golf carts. Good News, California gets stuck with being the R&D pigs. Hopefully more cars that are electric will end up with 200-300 mile range like Tesla.

Bow

wow, I can say that these were interesting cars but have not seen one in 20 years.

Be interesting to see what the compact CUV will be as well as the so called full size since the SRX is mid size.

I am also amazed at the poor implementation on 2010 and older cars. Seems these are the early days of software based electronics and they suck. Worse yet is that GM seems to be fast to stop doing updates to fix the poor quality software features compared to current model lines. Wish I had an answer but I am just as frusterated by the slow response on nav, radios, etc of GM's auto's that have these features.

Foe

http://seattle.ebayclassifieds.com/classic-cars/gig-harbor/1969-gto-judge/?ad=26757977 So someone here in Seattle believes that a all original 1969 GTO Judge is worth $75,000. Cheers or Jeers?

http://seattle.ebayclassifieds.com/classic-cars/tacoma/1965-buick-riviera-rebuilt-401-nailhead/?ad=18880943 So does this get a Cheer or Jeer for a project car and is it worth the price being asked?

Here I wish EU and US would just come together to have a logical single standard. Personally, I wish we would just make standard the rear tail lights with yell for turn and not all it to be all red which is hard for color blind to see. Folding mirrors also should be standard and a bit bigger to give a proper picture. I have seen far to many broken fixed mirrors on cars that never seem to get fixed.

Sounds Sweet! Show us the production! One Request, can you add just a bit more room inside for us 6'6" tall peeps to fit please? I can fit now but have to be reclined to fit. Rather be more upright.

Divorce

It would save OEMs money in development and certification costs for sure. It would also mean GM would have to find new excuses not to offer diesel-powered Cadillacs Exactly, I bet the people of the world could easily reduce the cost of development and crash testing with a Global auto standard.

I represent the local po-po and do communications in media, so I can't have terribly long hair. As much I liked the long hair, I think I'm happy with it shorter. I would agree with you, representing the locall po-po shorter hair is much better. Nice picture, too bad the electric pole is in the background otherwise an excellent photo.

I have to agree with Ocnblu that this is Volvo's version of Cadillac's ElMiraj concept. Just how many will actually come to market and be sold recovering the R&D cost along with helping the brand image will be interesting to see.