Lamar

Mainstream: Nissan and Ford. Upscale: BMW. Used to also be Acura, but they've fallen hard. I have personal history with all the brands I named.

My dad always taught me that it's cheaper to do things right the first time. Try this on for size:

Both cars need some long-overdue brake work, but payday's not for a couple of weeks. The Virginia Tech-Wake Forest game is only on ESPN3 this evening. It's less fun watching football on the computer.

Rear - predictable, scaled down 5 (which is a scaled down 7) Side profile - looks almost exactly the same as the E90 Front - who stepped on the nose of the car and squished it? Guess we'll have to see how it drives.

Saw my first Sonic on Monday. Hope to see more so that the Aveo gets reduced to a memory.

Man, I hear you. I deal with many of those similar issues in my Bonneville. Especially those window regulators. But I have to believe that GM has learned from the corners they cut a decade ago. They pretty much have had no choice.

Yeah, I could see a Regal coupe more easily than I could have pictured a Regal wagon. Someone educate me... what was the last Buick wagon that wasn't the Roadmaster?

The Cruze is 26/38, so I really want to know where the huge drop comes from if your Verano figures are correct. Bigger engine than any that are in the Cruze?

Gotta love the reciprocity.

True that it's an AMG derivative. They use it with the 5.5 Biturbo also. I haven't seen anything that says that when you get the AMG Performance Pack (and 664 lb-ft), you have to take the 5G-TRONIC with it. I guess my point was that even though they have this transmission that could at least handle the torque produced by the V12 in the S600/CL600, it's more than likely not a mass-producible unit. Back to Cadillac... if they indeed build a V12 by mating two V6s end-to-end, what are the prospects of them somehow finding a way for the Omega car to mate the V12 with AWD? BMW and Mercedes haven't yet, and Audi got around it by building the W12. It would be huge, I think, if Cadillac could engineer that in.

That's the AMG Speedshift. Different transmission than, and won't be mass-produced like, the 7G-TRONIC. I'd love to see the actual returns on such a transmission in such a powerful car. If Dwight is to be believed, they'll be questionable.

All this talk about 12-year-olds... incidentally, the age group which probably pays more attention to Fast and the Furious. Those kids get amped up over turbo-4s like they're the best thing EVAR.

That grouping of professions/occupations = I lol'ed too. Yet I lamented the omission of doctors, lawyers, and politicians.

Except that in a large luxury car, the V12 provides that cruising character that a higher(?)-revving V8 doesn't. Hence why Audi still offers the A8 W12 that's more powerful than the more sporty S8. Now, if they want to offer two different engines in that same vein, that's ok too. Both would be rather low volume anyway, so screw CAFE.

The 7AT couldn't handle the V12 torque even though it was much newer. I have to wonder if the 9AT will be built to handle more torque or if it's another "pull-it-out-and-see-whose-is-bigger" project.

Go back and count the gears in the S600/S65 transmission and see how far away they've gotten from a 6AT.

Base Verano price is about $1,250 more than the Cruze LTZ. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

This bears repeating: These days, if you can't make a new engine outperform an old one on all fronts (power and FE, for our intents and purposes), you're in the wrong business.

Glad to do it. GL with everything. ------------- Saw a current-gen BMW Z4 the other day. In person it looks even more like a miniature 6 Series. Haven't decided if that's a good thing or not. Oh yeah... I think I've seen almost every Chevrolet SS model from the last 15 years this week. Silverado, Trailblazer, Monte Carlo, you name it...

If a true story, good thing she didn't start firing... it coulda ended up bad for her...

+ 2. As I've said, my dad has a year-old Amstaff, and when he takes her out on walks he carries a stick for that very reason. And there are several pits in my neighborhood that seem to get loose quite often.

Yeah, congrats on that. Until you're a full-fledged flier, though... keep it together! I found it odd that this was the first BMW you'd ever driven, though. Had you driven one from, say, the late 80s/early 90s, you'd definitely find a difference in the steering feedback.

Yeah, but you're the pro. Get it together!

You called it a V6 once, Chris... I can attest to the annoying chimes.

Here we go... Seen a lot of new Focuses lately, but yesterday was the first time I saw one on the road with significant front-end damage.