regfootball

Pentastars do get great highway Mileage. One decision i looked at before we got our T&C was possibly an Equinox, but i had heard about the actual mileage they got, and then we rented a Grand Caravan one weekend and got killer mpg on a trip and I determined 'why would i get a small 2 row equinox when it gets worse mpg than the Grand Caravan or Journey'.

Dodge Journey mates with a Mazda protege hatch with a Mini front end

Sorry but the Acadia is not an icon like the Escalade. It would be a huge stretch to call it that. you're not a suburban milf housewife.

"FAIR" ??? How so? Big Gov't is automatically entitled to revenue streams….. why again?? in this instance, what i am referring to is fuel taxes etc, for dedicated purpose of building and maintaining roads. If the tax collects less because less cars are driven by gas, and less fuel is purchased, but the population is driving the same miles and wear on the roads, well, then it stands to reason that a tax if used for vehicles would need to be levied to pay for the use of cars on the roads. I'm as low tax as anyone, but a reasonable argument can be made here if that people are driving 10 billion miles a year and 200 billion is spent to build and maintain roads and infrastructure for cars, that if that tax revenue is reduces because fewer cars use fossil fuels, and more electrics, the loss in revenue would need to be bridged over to a tax in electricity. Or, user fees, or higher license fees etc.

The resale market will do a lot to determine what cars and powertrain configuration will rule out with EV's. Pure EV's may have an extremely limited resale market, because the range anxiety issue may not be something people are willing to deal with when buying a car second hand. Voltecs are ready for any situation with the range extender. So if you can explain to a potential buyer that it runs fine on gas as it does plugged in, that means future viability and flexibility will be maintained.....you will still have a large base of people that will buy your car. I still believe GM should do what they can to give the volt a much higher plug in range. Pure EV would be nice but the problem is the time and money to convert to a full EV 'refueling' infrastructure will take at least 20 years plus. I am guessing ICE will still be sold on cars for at least that long. ICE cars bought in 2020 will still be looking for fuel stations in 2040. Convenience stores with quick charge won't completely replace gas pumps so there is the whole thing about how convenience stores will remodel to accommodate both gas pumps and charge stations. Even though whack jobs at the federal level (encouraged by whack job enviros) will likely push for elimination of ICE and fuel stations, if someone buys a car in 2027 with an ICE and in 2033 can no longer use it, they will be really pissed off. Then, cash for ICE clunkers will have to buy back ICE vehicles. And we'll have to be guaranteed that our grid can supply every ounce of power that is needed. There will be no course anytime soon that pure EV only can serve the entire market, and because such, it will naturally be a limited market for quite awhile. If that ends up being 40% of the market, that is still a lot of cars no doubt. But it will be proof that it is a limited market, new and more importantly, resale. It is always tough to sell a new car that is bludgeoned with the prospect of a limited resale market, and then values tank, and the spiral begins. Just be sure to read about the value of lease return Nissan Leafs sometime. When those leafs bottom out in value however, they will become popular for people to buy as a cheap 3rd car, that is a neighborhood runaround. I do not see an end to ICE unless government regulations drive them from the market. Contrary to what some folks like to believe in the EV segment we are not going to be out of oil anything soon so we have time to work on these other options. Our first issue may be where will the power come from? Wind and Solar will not replace power plants in total. We are not building nukes and the president has tried to shut down coal that was just stopped for now this week. Increased in demand and increases in cost will be for sure so electric in the end may not be cheaper. My local power supplier is crying for rate hikes now and they need to put in new plants and do some major reconstruction of their systems. They even took their Nuke off line this week. Our power grid is not in all that good shape. Like Jimmy Buffet says There is a Lot to Think About. once they ween you off the gas (or force you off it), then they will go in for the kill with price of electricity and add many taxes to it to replace the losses on fuel tax (which is fair you could argue). They are coming for your pocketbook either way. The price advantages to electric car right now, will be gone once the masses adopt. What you are left with then, is the municipal and government entities in control of your fuel source, and not 'those robbing oil barrons'. Then the 'fuel' market is more controlled by power companies etc. which are rife for govt regs. One has to wonder if they will ration how much power you can use for your car. I would say the next 15-20 years will be a great time to own an EV, to fully enjoy the benefit of it. Just like the first 20 or so years of the internet, now the internet is being restricted and bought and sold and used in politics and corporate posturing. Which is why I would say Tesla is missing a great chance to stake its claim here, and every day they are late to market they are losing out on a chance to maintain survival. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/02/10/tesla-posts-q4-earnings/80194030/ The wagons are circling, huge 4th quarter loss, 889M dollar loss in 2015, yet such a rosy outlook. Spin is great when the vultures are flying above. If the 3 were out by now, this story would not be out there.

i would maintain to add to that that being able to plug in OR use gas would be of prime advantage. "fuel diversity"

good move. I doubt it will become that much more sophisticated......this is just PR talk. The Escalade is iconic, you don't mess with icons. (Although GMC did that with the Acadia). Cadillac can say this now when gas is cheap, at least its easier to. People like that the Escalade is a true truck. Keep the fans happy. I would not be surprised to see aluminum body panels and possibly a re-worked rear that would create more cabin space. An Omega based Cadillac crossover would be cool. Right now though, Cadillac will try to sell as many Escalades as they can, I think, while the cash faucet is still running and there are not many other crossovers in the cadillac showroom that can steal from it.

The resale market will do a lot to determine what cars and powertrain configuration will rule out with EV's. Pure EV's may have an extremely limited resale market, because the range anxiety issue may not be something people are willing to deal with when buying a car second hand. Voltecs are ready for any situation with the range extender. So if you can explain to a potential buyer that it runs fine on gas as it does plugged in, that means future viability and flexibility will be maintained.....you will still have a large base of people that will buy your car. I still believe GM should do what they can to give the volt a much higher plug in range. Pure EV would be nice but the problem is the time and money to convert to a full EV 'refueling' infrastructure will take at least 20 years plus. I am guessing ICE will still be sold on cars for at least that long. ICE cars bought in 2020 will still be looking for fuel stations in 2040. Convenience stores with quick charge won't completely replace gas pumps so there is the whole thing about how convenience stores will remodel to accommodate both gas pumps and charge stations. Even though whack jobs at the federal level (encouraged by whack job enviros) will likely push for elimination of ICE and fuel stations, if someone buys a car in 2027 with an ICE and in 2033 can no longer use it, they will be really pissed off. Then, cash for ICE clunkers will have to buy back ICE vehicles. And we'll have to be guaranteed that our grid can supply every ounce of power that is needed. There will be no course anytime soon that pure EV only can serve the entire market, and because such, it will naturally be a limited market for quite awhile. If that ends up being 40% of the market, that is still a lot of cars no doubt. But it will be proof that it is a limited market, new and more importantly, resale. It is always tough to sell a new car that is bludgeoned with the prospect of a limited resale market, and then values tank, and the spiral begins. Just be sure to read about the value of lease return Nissan Leafs sometime. When those leafs bottom out in value however, they will become popular for people to buy as a cheap 3rd car, that is a neighborhood runaround.

And that is the argument both of you want to represent? In Montreal...where 100 000 dollar cars are not exactly a thing...because well, the money in Quebec...is not existent practically, and what little money some people do make...its taxed like you wouldnt believe...and yet...Tesla Model S are EVERYWHERE...P85Ds even...and only growing... And this is the part of the problem of Reg's argument... 100 000 dollar cars are a niche...a small niche Electric cars are an even smaller niche... Yet...the Model S has managed to outsell equivalent priced cars form Mercedes and BMW and Audi...and Cadillac... You say California? Well, its because California is electric car friendly...so is Quebec... Michigan is HOSTILE towards electric cars...so...I bet you Tesla does not fare well in Michigan... Try again... tesla, to survive, must sell outside its rich boy toy niche and hit a meat market. or they will die. the model 3 was supposed to be here a long time ago. instead they dick around with falcon doors and make a really stupid looking model x. and think that will grow their business. what a bunch of dumb fools. niche car makers die. they could probably sell a couple hundred thousand model 3's but like the stupid Elio, its vaporware and really their ineptitude to capitalize on their market coolness i am afraid will render them into oblivion. might still need 7 years to do it, but clearly they have no plan. A shame because the Model S is a cool kit car. IF they survive it will be due to being bought out or another automaker will make the bulk of the car and the electrics will just get bolted in their and rebadged

looks good. saw a new spark tonight on a lot i trolled and this front end is pretty close to exactly the same look. new spark really looks good btw

The Venza had a face only a mother could love... that was the primary issue there. It was just uuuugly. it had a proportioning problem. It was not quite tall enough to look like a crossover. It still looked a bit like a wagon.

terrible.

xB fueled Scion. It was part of that bunch, PT Cruiser, HHR, xB, those odd vehicles that were momentarily cool alternatives to sedans and brought in acceptance of new forms of vehicle packaging. Since then, buyers welcomed 'new forms of vehicle packaging', and sedans continue to slide....but the masses now seem set on a standard design language for what crossovers etc. should be. In other words the experimentation phase is over, and everything is being mandated to fit the crossover styling formula. Well, if that's going to be the net result, then just sell a few more RAVs and highlanders. Even the Venza had to die, that is how rigid the rules are getting for vehicles that are not sedans.

the Camaro's rear seat is a parcel shelf anyways, so really the Camaro is the best v6 two seater out there.

Motor Trend and Car and Driver have stories out on the 2017 Trax updates

from a web article "For new Teslas, about 45% of the nation’s sales are in California" Californias % of overall national sales is only like 11.5-12% or so, (estimating 2 million divided by 17 million) So the market share outside of California for Tesla is even less. Probably closer to 2 tenths of 1 percent. (estimating 30,000 / 15 million)....1 in every 500 cars. The Tesla dealer closest to here is in a dump of a building in an industrial park. Classy retail. Can't go big time if you don't go high profile and nice on the showroom. Gotta be in a visible location too.

Motor Trend has a write, also. http://www.motortrend.com/news/2017-chevrolet-trax-first-look-review/

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2017-chevrolet-trax-official-photos-and-info-news 2017 Trax official photos and info from Car and Driver

like, 4 tenth of 1 percent

"Buick is desperate to become hip." True dat... And THAT is why that OBJ commercial sucked big time... Not only is the "Not your father's Oldsmobile" shtick old and stale...from the Oldsmobile days...that angle for Buick has also come to an end....Buick should have ended that last year and for this Superbowl...number 50 might add, should have been something unique... Oh...because using an up and coming football star coining his own bloody name is pure marketing genius... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B359hCC3HQU Because Buick has not hired an athlete before in its recent past to pedal their cars... Because other car companies havent hired celebrities to pedal their cars before... At least Montalban was sexy, had a sexy voice and the cars he pedaled had fine Corinthian leather... The reason why Im giving you a hard time here is that you want to dismiss Tesla so bad, that you even want to dismiss their commercials yet obviously give a pass to a very mediocre effort by Buick for that stolen "This aint your father's Olds" campaign with a very very FORGETTABLE performance by the future NFL football star... At least withTiger, we could still picture him inside his SUV while his ex smashes it...too bad for Buick he was driving a Cadillac Escalade... You want hip...WHOOMP! THERE IT IS! The fastest growing hip sport Golf, and thegame'sbiggest star, ever, cheating on his wife...and then getting his SUV smashed with his own Golf clubs by his wife... Now THAT is hip! There is your commercial! All we ended up with is an ad campaign from the late1980s early 1990s with a couple of floozies at a "marriage" jumping for flowers and the guest speaker blurts out Adele... ooops...Odelled... Maybe they should have used Adele instead....look at that cleavage... I bet you that that cleavage could get guys in a Buick showroom faster than OBJ ever could... So...how about cutting Tesla some slack? That's a heavily photoshopped Adele. Tesla won't get any slack from me because if they want to be big boys they ought to learn how to play.

I thought the OBJ Buick commercial was top notch. The car even looked good in it. Buick is desperate to become hip. And that's ok. I really like those Ellie Kemper Buick commercials too. I know some think they are cheesy, and they are, but i do think they will connect with women and a younger demograhic. Too bad the product wasn't all there first.

Why, do they have a baby puppy monkey baby monkey puppy in them?

if the platforms are good and forward thinking, they can last a long time. I would expect 6-7 years min. out of an investment in a platform. And use in a big range of vehicles. I doubt there is that much more practical and cost effective they can do to improve ride, handling, and vehicle dynamics to the point where there is diminishing returns. Cars are so much more capable than their drivers so we don't need cutting edge platforms when the buyer base wants loafing CUV's. Plus, parts costs and ability to fix and stock them improve when commonality and long run come into play. Lets hope penny pinching GM doesn't come back. The best thing would be for regulations to back off. A moratorium on tightening the noose in mpg, safety, emissions. Let the manufs make some money and become more efficient by being able to spread out their investment for awhile. I am a state rights person but admit in this industry a voluntary global standards base would be a good idea. Tell CARB to go bite itself and go away. I am sure the world automakers don't want CARB dictating the way. This capital cost savings is probably due to needing to steer money into stuff enthusiasts don't like, like autonomous cars. Pilfer the mass market cars to generate money for the future plastic pods.

Recently passed the one year mark. One year into the three year lease. Or 'rental' as Chrysler financial likes to put it. Put about 16,000 miles on it. Not too far over the 15k lease miles. However, the trip computer is off slightly on mpg so it makes me wonder if the odometer might be off actually. In any case, it's been a good ride for the first year. Just the foibles with the CV boot and axle shaft, and the trunk lid has been completely behaving. MPG has been all over the map. Because the van is flex fuel, its been receiving in its tank a diverse mix of blends. Regular blend 87 octane here in the winter has additives and has 10% ethanol in it. So that's not going to give great mpg to start. But due to the different fluctuations in price relative to regular, I have been putting in E85, E30, E15, E12........Even if gas was 1.79, if E85 is 1.39, then sometimes i will put that in. If gas is 1.89 and E15 is 1.69, then i put that in. I put gas in friday at 1.39 so of course at that i will just put that in. My father in law paid for my refill today which amounted to eight dollars and fifty cents (for gas with no ethanol in it at all). So it truly is whatever i feed it, and the mileage does swing a lot. (Ethanol E85 was 87 cents a gallon at one of our stops today) A big problem is the computer reading for MPG is consistently off compared to manually calculated mpg. The computer is always 5-10% optimistic. My GM and Ford cars have always been spot on. I don't know if this is a Chrysler thing or what. It makes me wonder if the odometer is off rather than the mpg meter. In any case, if my fuel is heavy in the ethanol blend, and its cold out, I can get around 14-16 mpg for in town driving. If i were using E10 straight all winter, i would be around 18-20 city. With our 200+ mile trip today, low ethanol blend, and with the wind at our backs for a nice chunk of the trip, the computer read 27.2 mpg. Not bad for a 5,000+ pound rolling barn door (vehicle and cargo). I imagine that would calc out real math on a fill to about 26 mpg. How it does this is the tranny upshifts and gets to 6th as fast as it can. Sometimes if you have to come to a dead stop and get it going again, you actually get better mpg and better acceleration using the manual shift mode from the stop sign. If you leave the tranny itself to do it, you will actually end up taking lots more time and then once you exceed 2,000 rpm on this thing, the gas mileage tanks badly. Holding the gears and gradual acceleration to get to your speed seems to work better than the letting the vehicle short shift itself into oblivion. This is really because the engine is not a torque monster. Its a sweet mill, revs great and has a lot of top end power, but if it had some torque down low also, that would help. Not much else to ring in on other than family loves the vehicle. I like it too. It just does what it is supposed to do. Provide a lot of space and comfortable travel. I like the steering for a van, but the vehicle isn't sporty (of course). The size is sometimes a liability for parking and that's about the only thing my wife occasionally does not like. The large 3 rows and the storage and utility is why we have it and she loves it for that. The interior is great for this type of vehicle. I love the center stack HVAC controls. Easy to use. The HVAC itself works great, front and back. The gauges are great. I love the large mirrors. You get spoiled with power doors. Don't know if I want power hatch again. I hunted for a T&C in this trim with the superconsole, which i consider a necessity. I sometimes think the cupholder setup for the back half of the console could be improved. I really hate armrests right on the seats because they are so thin and oddly placed. Someday I hope a van gets regular armrests on the console. The heated seats (first and second row) are great. Heated steering wheel is something you think is silly and not needed until you have it. The type of leather is perfect for a van. It cleans up easy with a damp cloth. It's thick and has a durable texture. I don't mind the shifter on the dash, but the next van has the rotary knob. I don't really want something to grasp and twist. A smaller, well placed shifter lever i am fine with. Nissan's new Maxima has a good small size shifter. Some of the newer cars including GM have shifters more like a joystick. I think the rotary shift knob while interesting is hard for some people to operate, and its an important piece in controlling a car. In buildings you have lever door knobs because accessibility rules don't allow plain knobs anymore. Same thing for required accessible lockers, you cannot have the opening mechanism be tight grasping (they need to be pushbutton or otherwise similar). With the population graying, I think its unwise to have a shift knob be something you grasp and twist. I have used the stow and go only a couple times but its been handy when i needed it. Will i want a vehicle this large forever? No, but at this point in time, it works well. ALways knowing you can take something home from a home store is a nice deal. We have had 6 in our van quite often, and everyone fits in any row. So the size is a big asset to us right now, but it also makes the vehicle feel large sometimes for daily driving. You weigh the tradeoffs and in the end its a good experience. We benefit quite a bit more from the size and utility than we would from a slightly smaller footprint. The new van is not downsized, and i think that is good. In order to have a downsize be noticeable, you'd have to lose about 6 inches of wheelbase, and about 300-500 pounds of weight. The new van does shed some weight but not the size. It should be improved and so that will be worthy. There will always be the likes of the new CX-9 available if we move to something smaller and more athletic down the road. Or an Edge when we don't need the third row. But even vehicles like that don't offer much if any fuel economy savings over the van. The electronics interfaces could be improved. The digital clock doesn't come on unless you turn the radio on. Fail. The touchsreen menus are kind of sucky to operate all the audio and video controls. Bluetooth works pretty decent though, and the DVD and blu ray drives both work great. The two screens are VGA and should be upgraded to higher resolution. Would love to have an OnStar option, and wifi option. Gets around decently in bad weather. Nice to see AWD will become available down the road on the new one though. The fog lights came in very handy the other night. We were in very dense fog and they made a huge difference. Fogs ought to be standard equipment, IMO. Auto high beams I have come to enjoy a lot. Didn't think i would need them but once you get used to them you wonder how you didn't have them before. Every now and then they miss dimming when they should but otherwise i am quite impressed with how well they work. BLIS and cross traffic alert are great features too. Overall i recommend it. Just be sure a van is what you want. I see many of them in my area, so I am convinced the van market is still quite healthy.

i think updated Trax is being shown at one of the upcoming auto shows. Hope they did update it.