G. David Felt

Meh, Looks like all the other fastback coupe design sedans. Such a boring segment. Like the engine specs. I get what you mean Fap but for the bulk of society, Manuals are dead on arrival. Too few care about the driving experience and just want to brag about specs and get from point A to B.

Must be a local thing as diesel is crazy high compared to regular gas or CNG and washington state gives so much to go EV, so diesel is the last thing anyone out here wants.

My go to brand - Cadillac CT6 AWD 3.0L TT Deep Amethyst Metallic since there is no v edition yet. And my always trusty 2017 Escalade ESV 4WD Deep Amethyst Metallic Platinum edition. Mitsubishi as I think the company just needs to die. My two picks, Lancer Evolution Outlander

Did this thread get moved to the Political Forum? Seattle is supposed to get snow this weekend, Hawks are playing in the playoffs tomorrow, Skiing is calling my name and I am having a hard time focusing on work.

Yes we are all Jabroni's in one way or another and the sarcasm is lost again!

I say crush em, crush em all! Even after the fix, the value will be low, so good deal for used car buyers, I bet most will take the buy out offer. After all more and more people are questioning if they can even trust VW.

2017 - 2012 = 4.5 So says the School of New trumpmath!

Totally expected, I am surprised they have not killed off all auto's and just focused on CUVs.

G. David Felt Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.CheersandGears.com Mazda CX-9, 812 miles, 5 adults, 8 days, 7 nights, Grade = D- 25 years of Marriage is what started this lovely 8 days, 7 nights week for the family. Wife wanted to celebrate with the kids in a warm place. Answer was to trade in our time share condo for a time share condo on Kona at Aston Shores at Waikoloa (http://www.astonshoresatwaikoloa.com/). With the wife asking for a perfect week, I went ahead and got our place, made a reservation for a full size SUV, which sadly I could not get with Enterprise or Hertz as they both were out of stock, crazy but being married on Dec 24th does make auto rental in desirable places like the Hawaiian islands hard to find. I was able to reserve one with Budget rental who said they had a full size available for our trip. We arrived flying in on a direct flight with Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Kona, got our baggage and then off to Budget at 10pm to pick up our auto rental. Upon arriving, was met by a polite nice young woman, who checked me in, told me I would have a Mazda CX9. Due to my past experiences with Asian auto's, I did ask if they had an American suv? Sadly for Kona Budget uses Mazda as their only SUV's, so CX9 it would be. We walked out to the auto, it was the only one left in the SUV section, loaded up our luggage, got into the auto and I hit my head as I got in and off to our condo for the week. The next morning, as everyone was unpacking as we just crashed after our flight and slept, I went out to check out the Mazda. Realized that Budget does a terrible job of cleaning the auto's. Garbage was left in the center arm rest, the back door pockets had garbage in it and the interior clearly needed a wipe down. Off I went to get some paper towels and cleaned up the auto before the wife and kids saw it. Once the interior was all cleaned up, I went back in see if everyone was ready to head off to Costco to buy staples for the week when we just chill around the resort versus exploring the island. First thing I noticed is that my hitting of the head last night when we arrived was not just me being tired on a 6 1/2 hr flight. But was a piss poor design by Mazda on the CX9. My wife who is 5'8" tall had to do the same thing as me, face away from the car, place your butt in the seat and partially bent over swing into the auto. After you get past the A pillar you can sit up straight and there is plenty of head room. In fact everyone that sat in the front seats except Kay my sons girlfriend of 4 years had to do the same thing. My son and Daughter are also both 5'8" tall compared to Kay who is only 5'2" tall. Next thing is that what I thought was someone turning down the dash lights was actually not it at all but Mazda not putting any lights in the door lock or all the window buttons. Only a single light dot was on the drivers window. At night on an island that does not have bright street lights to allow the view the space to show up, finding your door locks or windows buttons is a pain. I know every maker puts basic controls on either side of the steering wheel, but Mazda really has a strange layout compared to GM, Ford or Dodge. Yes everyone has a different take on this but after all these years, some things should be consistent across all auto's. Example is the windshield wipers and rear window wiper, which should be first on the stick? I say front windshield wipers and yet Mazda felt rear should be. After checking the lights, getting myself all set for driving, we loaded up to head out for our first day of fun. The Radio / Nav system has a Bluetooth option. My son said he would connect his phone so I could hear the navigation for where we were going first for breakfast and to stream Pandora. Sadly their Bluetooth SUCKS! takes about 1 1/2 to 2 miles of driving before the system is sync'd and working, was this way all week, at least it did work once it sync'd. I did think maybe this was an Apple to Mazda issue, but after testing it with my wife's and my own Android phones, experience was the same. Sucky Bluetooth connection and reading of the device. Pandora was actually better being streamed from my sons phone than from the auto system as there was much delay and pause on the auto system but everything played fine on the cell phone. Off and driving around Kona, first thing noticed by the family was the auto let allot of wind and road noise in. Definitely not my Trailblazer for sure which is much quieter inside. Observation was that while once the radio / Nav was up and working, the angle of it in the auto in a very sunny place makes the screen pretty much useless unless you use your hand or some other item to shade the display. Backup camera worked fine, very reliable but their fish-eye lens really distorts the view. Using your shoulder checks shows two blind spots in the rear making you want to check the camera but again distorted, so was cautious of backing out, pretty much always backed into places so I could easily get out of them. Corners, I have always prided myself on knowing my corners of an auto, yet this design of the Mazda really sucks for your corners, after a day of driving, I did figure out just how far I had to be to be in tight but not hit anything. Lucky for me, I never caused damage on any of the auto. Rain, WOW, So by our resort we were in the mid to upper 80's and sunny the whole time, from about 4000 to 9000 feet the island would have rain on and off and boy was it heavy. Two things noticed that the wife was not happy about nor was I, was that even on the fastest speed the windshield did not clear the rain away very well, bothered her more than me, after all heavy rain, but even in lite rain this other really bothered me and is a safety fail. The way the design of the auto is with the side mirrors, the rain makes the side mirrors unusable. I could see nothing out the mirrors as the water comes off the front windshield and smears across the side mirrors and pretty much makes those little mirrors useless. Not a good design at all. Seats, after our first day in the CX9, the kids let me know that the back seat was hard and not comfy for more than an hour of driving. The front bucket seats while having good side support and for a person as big as me was fine, for my more petite wife, she and the kids when they sat in the front all felt like they were sitting in a Toilet falling through. Very uncomfortable bucket seat. On top of this, only the drivers seat has full electronic control so I could have it go down to the floor, the front passenger seat was set very high and so you only had back and forth and low back support. Very limited, why not have the front seat equal to the drivers. Made no sense and the one time I tried to sit in the front, it was impossible, the setting of the seat was too high for me. All around failure. 3rd row seat was nice folding flat into the floor, but two poor designs, again head rest were manual as they had to be folded down and then you had to pull the 2nd row seats forward to allow you to put up or down the third row seat. Kay said it was the same comfort as the second row and for her plenty of space but then she is only 5'2" tall and very petite. Engine, WOW, Yes on Kona you have 3 mountains, 1 that is spewing lava, very cool to visit and see, above 9000 feet they had snow after snow storm so was able to snorkel / scuba in the morning and ski in the afternoon. Why do I bring this up, simple the engine really leaves a ton to be desired. average for the week was 16.8 mpg in a FWD CUV. Sucky no way to put it for this auto, worse yet was unless you kept it revved above 4500 rpm, any minor hill caused you to loose speed fast. Driving up to the Observation scopes was very tricky as it was a dirt road with snow and traction just sucked. Not what I was expecting. So according to Mazda this is a 227HP motor on regular gas or 250 on premium. I only used regular the whole time and should have gotten 22/28/25 average of City/Highway/Combined and yet did not matter, 16.8 is what the auto reported to me as average MPG. I was filling up every other day, plus who ever thought hiding the fuel filler door release on the left side of the drivers seat under the seat was cool is an idiot. Not easy to get too. Lighting, Interior left much to be desired as places I would expect lights to be the auto had none, places that should be easy to read where not, only the drivers dash and nav system would give you clear visible displays, otherwise even the overhead lights left allot to be desired. Mazda says they have key-less illumination entry system, but it never worked on our auto unless the pathetic light they had on each rear view mirror that put out barely any light is what they consider to be this system. Exterior, the headlights are OK, they give you enough light to see the road, but when no other auto's were around I did use the high beams to see the curves better in the road. Door Locks, Mazda says they have speed-sensing auto locking, not sure what it is, but the double click to unlock the auto was slow and most times a third press of the button was needed. Center console, comfy for my arm rest, strange with the dual split opening in the center, you had to open both sides to store anything in it, so not sure why they decided to split such a small center storage arm rest into what is about two 2 1/2 inch wide doors. A single door would be much better. USB ports, sad that all would allow connection to the NAV system but only 1 port in the center arm rest would charge your device and even then only android, apple could not get a charge off the port. Really weird cheap implementation of the USB ports. End Result - The auto was reliable and got us all over the island for 812 miles. Other than that, I really could not find any exciting point that would make me recommend the auto to anyone. My family was happy with our trip, wished we had a better auto. Next time I will reserve much earlier.

Would never touch a VW product, too small, chealy made materials and just blah. GTI's are over rated IMHO.

Totally agree with Frisky on this one, we are 50 - 75 years out at the earliest of having 100% autonomous vehicles. I know I will still be driving in 25-30 years from now and have no plans to go with one of these robot auto's. I love my older auto's and love driving them and being rural, I do not see autonomous auto's working in the rural but for maybe 25% of the time.

Interesting, very much like the zip auto service in Seattle or the BMW car service. Be interesting to see how this goes for Cadillac. Not my style of having auto service but for some with money to burn I can see it working for those that like to change out their auto's often. Wonder when the Escalade V comes if that will be added to the service?

I like being a realist, life is shitty all the time and as such what ever happens I end up being happy since it is better than the worst case situation. Signed the ETERNAL REALIST OPPORTUNIST, my glass is always half full!

1965 Ford Station Wagon. Was later traded in for an 1977 Olds custom cruiser with the 403 station wagon.

Interesting update, cool that they will only be manual trans for the Type R, but at the same time, Honda is still FAILING as they are missing out on the Enthusiast that wants better performance and would pay for a quality 8 speed auto trans in this car. Weird Marketing for sure. Todays Auto trans are far superior to the manuals, why not a DCT Auto 8 spd?

FAILURE! Sorry but no CVT will handle being tuned for all out street racing. You cannot replace the strength and holding of traditional automatic transmissions with a cheap ass CVT metal impregnated band. Just cause they tune it for holding on low-end acceleration does not mean it will not skip and totally fail to deliver mid and high in aggressive driving. Plus with most people not able to drive manual trans anymore, the chance that most will come in with a manual compared to the dealership morons ordering the CVT auto is pretty clear. I would expect 1/3rd to be manual and 2/3rds to be CVT Crapola!

Very cool picture, so glad the new highway is in. Way faster and safer than allowing anyone to just drive over the dam before. I wonder the same thing, who's watching?

I agree with Ocnblu, the last one, Gray Regal with the leather interior. That one is a decent looking ride for the price. Check out under the hood, under the car for any hidden heavy rust spots and test drive it as I know you would. Hopefully the suspension will not have any issues, but I know road salt back there can really take it's toll. Best of luck to your son and his new career.

If they truly meet their March 2017 and start delivery of the auto's then far from Vaporware, but I get your point.

I am confused as I read through the tweets and the one tweet which was the only tweet that stated it would not buy Ford was about how they perceived Ford supporting Racist trump, not for closing or not moving forward with production in Mexico. Where are the tweets on canceling the mexico plant? I did not see them. Overall interesting read, thank you for posting.

What are their levels now here in January?

Totally agree with you, way better than Tesla X. We need both, EV sedans and suvs.

Tesla S I can barely fit in the front seat and due to the lack of head room the back seat is a failure for me. This as you say and it is a CUV auto has a great drag of .25, 378 miles battery pack and clearly some serious internal room. Love the Suicide Doors.