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Well. I haven't seen that many here in LA, but I am seeing a lot of commercials offering "special lease rates", which usually means one thing this early in the model year: flop sweat. When I finally wsaw one, I could see why it might not be setting the world on fire. It needs to be about 25% bigger to be a real truck, and about 25% smaller to appeal to people who don't want a real truck. Actually I was shocked- it managed to look too tall and yet too narrow at the same time. My friend (who is 5 foot nothing) for years had a Ford Ranger pick-up that she loved. We'd go to the garden center wiith it or Costco and she'd just drop the bags over the side and off we'd go. I (at 6'2") would have problems getting bags over the side of a Ridgeline.

It was 88 degrees in here today. But it cools of considerably at night. Sixty8: I really miss fall in NE. We have a poor substitute in my neighborhood; Alden drive is lined with Maple trees that are having their show right now. Why the Maples aren't on Maple Drive, I don't know. But there aren't any Palms on Palm drive either, so there you are.

Nice photos. The first three look like Helmut Newton and the last three look like Hurrell.

I hope this doesn't sound like crackpot California stuff, but I had been having similar symptoms (almost nodding off during the day, depression, inability to focus, inability to sleep at night, migranes) A friend who is a nutritionist took part my diet and redid it. She had me cut out wheat, (very tough) sugar, and caffeine. No Diet Pepsi, no soda, no booze, no pasta. She told me that I was screwing with my glycemic index by not eating at the right time, and trying to wake up my metabolism with Diet Pepsi. Then I'd crash from the caffeine wearing off. She basically put me on a diet similar to The 5-day Miracle Diet where you eat something about every 3 hours to keep your blood sugar from spiking. After about a week of hell (2 days of caffeine withdrawl and the rest of the week hating the food) I noticed that I was sleeping better and staying awake more during the day. You may want to give it a try. If you can't get the book at your library, the link I gave has use copies starting at a penny.

I'd go back in time and tell my youthful self exactly how expensive everything was going to be in the future and that maybe I should stay awake in science and grow up to be a dermatologist, ao maybe I could retire at some point. BV, are you listening? :)

Reverse snobbery is still snobbery......... :AH-HA_wink:

http://www.latimes.com/classified/automoti...-autos-highway1 Nice review. He even liked the interior. :) Edit- why are the automatic tags not working? :(

It may be a function of trying to make it work with the laminated safety glass of the windsield v/s regular tempered glass used in roof panels

Back in the day, I was fired from the gourmet food shop I worked at in SoHo for charging myself about 5 cents on the dollar for some imported cheeses and sun-dried tomatoes. Then a friend got me a job at the Olympics. Needless to say I wasn't that sorry.

HHR seems to be a certified hit in SoCal

You could say the same thing about wood. Granite is heavy, but for auto applications it will be a very thin veneer that's adhered to a steel backing with adhesives. Just like wood in most cars. At least from the factory, they do this so it doesn't bedome shrapnel during an accident. Trust me, you need to see it in person. At first you may think it looks a little feminine. I did. Then I saw a 2005 on the way home. It was like looking at a Ford GT-40 and then seeing a Model T.

I'm not exactly sure what that means. And I'm sure I don't want to. There's one short sex scene that I remember. They are in a tent and it's freezing, so it's all under blankets and practically fully clothed. And one pretty passionate kiss. That's about it. I hope these aren't spoilers- the movie is extremely faithful to the short story, which is still out in the book Close Range: Wyoming Stories. Ang Lee's movies have been hit or miss for me- this one knocked it out of the park.

Uh, I don't have allergies to British Iron. I think that they had built some of the most beautiful pieces of automotive art ever to grace the roads of any country. They were, however, notoriously fiddly and had to be maintained in ways that the American market would not put up with. I''m glad you have two cars that did you well. I'm sorry that you had two cars that didn't. I stand by my recollection of the history of British car reliability, though. Buddy. B)

Uhh, actually written, not spoken. Written by someone who grew up in the 70's had the experience of owning an MG. Written by someone who grew up with Triumphs, Jaguars and Land Rovers. Written by someone who was there to see exactly how utterly unreliable British cars were, even compared to the supposedly horrible American cars of the time. I'll put my higher edumacation up against yours any time, buddy.

You are going to be hit by this movie like a hammer. I am not a weepy person by any means, but I was teary by the end, and was upset by the movie for a good week, as was my friend: and she had the comfort of a family to go home to. It's an extremely sad movie, but an extremely good one.

I went to a screening of this movie last week. I know most people are going to dismiss it as the "gay cowboy movie", and if you can't get past one short sex scene (which doesn't show anything), you won't like it- but Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway have nude scenes (and are quite fine), so it's something for everyone. This is a movie that makes me glad that I still on occasion work with actors. Everyone involved gives incredible performances. I never thought I'd say this, but Heath Ledger should get an Oscar. It's a great movie.

The raising spline line I referred to is the distinct line from the trailing edge of the front bumper that passes through the doors and ends at the tailights. It was at it's purest form in the Evoq, CTS and XLR, and started getting watered down in the STS. Everybody is doing it now. As much as I think Cadillac does it best, in some cars it may be best to let it go. It is softer. It looks like it was thought of first, and not like it was a lot or chrome and leather thrown on an existing truck. Bu to me, it still looks like an Escalade. And I don't even like SUV's

I don't think it's as raw and in-you-face as the old design. But then again, the rapper-style thing has gotten old. Diddy and company have been donning Armani lately. This is an Escalade in a Prada Tuxedo. To be honest, even as a big fan of the raising spline-line, it's been co-opted by everybody from Mercedes to Honda. It may be time to move on from it.

They had a kind of sad display at the 2004 LA auto show as well. The final year edition of each car left to sell as well as one truly unbelievably gorgeous 1953 Fiesta in two-tone yellow over cream. So sad that it was wedged in a corner of the GM display. I still think it was an idiotic decision to axe Olds. It cost them a fortune and it's not like they made up the market share. Cut models, consolidate dealerships, fold Saturn into it (Saturn should have been Oldsmobile in the first place IMHO), but don't kill it off when it was poised to be the division that could have cut the Japanese off at the knees. Oh well, we were always an Olds family. Back in the day in my parents set, Lincolns and Cadillacs were vulgar; Buicks were for old fogies. If you bought American and you wanted luxury with a hefty dollop of sporty, you got an Olds

Rodeo's usually a zoo on Saturday and Sunday. I almost never go there then (that and the fact that there's really nothing on there that I can afford to or want to buy) I only went because of the huge and beatiful ad in the paper. I can't believe how lame the "event" was- last time I checked, a two page spread in the center of the "A" section of The Times wasn't free. This event was a total debacle. It was beyond badly organised. I got the same attitude in the store; I don't know where these people were from, but this is not how we treat people in Beverly Hills. I've was a buyer for a few years at a BH store before I got my present job- one of the things we always told people working here is that you treat everybody well, greet them, make them feel welcome. Because you never know if the teenager who just wants to try on that 40k fur won't become the next Naomi Watts. Hell, she may just be Naomi Watts. This is not New York- that woman in sweat pants and flip-flops you just dissed could be a studio head on her way home from Yoga class.

You were at the white one, right? That's what I mean- there was nothing around the white one at all to tell you that they had rented a freaking store-front down the street- or anything else, for that matter. Not even a pasteboard sign on an easel saying "the 2007 Escalade". Nothing. Just the car, sitting there looking like somebody left it there by mistake. I only noticed the store because that morning I decided to walk down to Wilshire rather than back home via Dayton and saw the storefront. Hello, Cadillac? There are quite a few people here on this board who could have come up with better onsite marketing for you. Certainly they would have shown more enthusiasm for your kick-ass new SUV than the zombies you had there. Hell, my sofa could have done better.

Anybody else go? I'd like to hear what you all thought of the way they were handling the event. I thought it wasn't handled very well. The white Escalade was sort of plonked there on Via Rodeo with nobody around it and the few staff at the store acted like they were bored to have to be around regular people after having Paris Hilton walk their runway. They might have wiped down the black Escalade in the store. I went back at 2 and the thing was covered in smudged fingerprints. The XLR-V is droolingly, heartbreakingly, rob-a-bank-to-get-it gorgeous.

The Chevy Tracker was the clone of the Vitara.

They forget one thing- one of the big reasons that the British car manufacturers went belly up is that they could not manage to make cars that could actually make ot down your driveway without breaking. They made American cars of the era look like paragons of reliability and quality control

Oh come now, the Charger must outweigh the Civic by about half a ton. The fact that it manage to trounce any Civic at all is something for Dodge to crow about