Robert Hall

I think I'd replace my Grand Cherokee with an Audi A4 Quattro or BMW 330iX. I'd like to go back to a car as a daily driver, and AWD w/ a manual transmission seems to fit best.

Interesting... I've heard about that practice also...rah rah! My company's morale-building exercise is team drinking (less so now that it used to be as people have gotten older and some have gotten married and had kids)...but a few years ago, it was the norm for at least 60% of the company (small company) to go to a local pub several nights a week for 3-4 hrs a night after work..

I really think GM would have been better off with a regular ragtop for the G6... it would have made it a better Sebring/Solara competitor, IMHO...

The C3 was a pretty poor design---tiny on the inside, huge on the outside, no real trunk... something that bad wouldn't fly today..

Looks like a blurry pic of the concept shown at NAIAS..with maybe a few detail differences around the front end.

After seeing a few Civics in person, it looks like they watered down the design for the US...the 5dr available in the UK looks much more interesting, with its distinctive headlight and taillight treatments and rear end shape....the rear ends on the US trunked models look like an afterthought...

Yeah, 6 weeks seems pretty much the norm in Western Europe...and 35 hr work weeks in some professions... in the US I've gotten used to 50 hr weeks and 3 weeks of vacation, but I'd love to have 6 weeks.

I've read that the US has now passed Japan in total hrs worked per year... some industries are esp. heavy on the OT... software, for example... my project manager and other managers in my company averaged about 3000 hrs last year (I was slacking, only had 2300 hrs for the year).

The Super Bee, Road Runner badging/naming was kind of campy, cartoony..I guess they were products of their times.--fun naming for fun cars. Though I prefer the more serious-named version of these cars--the Coronet R/T and GTX.

I like coining words also.. I coined one at work a couple years ago...and have other people using it--'actionize'... as in 'the resources are actionizing on their tasks'. (i.e. the developers are working on their tasks). A related word is 'actionizable'..i.e. a task is actionizable if you can work on it.. Actionizable is derived from 'actionable', which I heard Colin Powell use on CNN a few years ago. Another one I use is 'blorch', though I think it was used in Calvin and Hobbes years ago... 'blorch' is the nasty stuff you cough up when you have a bad cold or sore throat.

Hmmm..the 1970 colors and striping is a bit overdone. A Charger SRT/8 with no graphics and in a color like dark gray would be more to my taste. Of course, I can understand them playing up the retrostalgia angle, considering what a strong musclecar heritage Dodge has...

The front fascia is too busy... the other Acuras have pretty clean front ends...

I haven't seen it yet... will have to check it out..I usually don't get into Westerns, but this sounds like it is pretty atypical. The best movies I saw in '05 were probably Hustle & Flow, Syriana, Crash, and Munich...

Hmmm... 1. water from the company water cooler 2. Coffee from the company Daz Bog coffee pots 3. Coffee from Starbucks this morning 4. OJ at home w/ breakfast this morning 5. Water when I woke up from the glass on my nightstand I'll be heading with my cubies to the pub tonite after work, so I'll probably have a barley pop or two...

Day 5 is off to a good start...the first 1/2 hr Sunday was something else... I'm glad for TiVo so I could grab Simpsons/etc while watching 24.. I got started with Day 4 last year...rented Day 1-3 and caught up during 4. I'm hooked now.. The other show I'm waiting on now is season 5 of the Sopranos (March)....and I hope The Wire comes back eventually.

A character on Space Ghost...Moltar the Imperious. Just thought it was interesting...like the sound of the word. On technology-oriented boards, I've used nicknames like 'Cubical', 'Cubist', 'The Encubed' before, and my hip-hop alias is 'DJ Qubikal'. All because I work in a Dilbert environment...cube life 4 eva!!! (I even built a cubicle in my home office).

Interesting..I've always thought 'hella' originated on 'South Park'...didn't realize it had usage in the real world. I like both Nor Cal and So Cal... personally, I prefer So Cal for the scenery, climate, beach towns, etc... but career-wise, Nor Cal would be the best place for me, as the Bay Area is the center of the universe for software...

My perfect Riv would be a black '71 boattail w/ no vinyl top, 455, Buick mags, narrow stripe whitewalls. Big, bold, & beautiful. A silver '63-65 would be my second choice.

I had a similar problem with a manually folding, heated power mirror on my Jeep Grand Cherokee..after hitting the mirror on a freeway construction barrel at 50mph it was just hanging by the wires, the plastic base broken. I got a replacement mirror head w/ glass and wiring for about $100 on the internet (some discount mirror supply place)....hooked it up and attached it myself (the most work was getting the interior door panel off).

I've never had an issue w/ the glare of DRLs...then again, I usually always wear sunglasses when driving in the daytime...they polarize the stuff, I guess..

Yes, I know what you mean..I've found in general the Detroit area (and many other places in the Midwest) have a 'best days are behind it', dying feel to them.. it seems their glory days are long past, and they are in the downward spiral. Totally different feel from cities in the west, metro areas I've lived in like Denver and Phoenix have experienced growth booms for the last decade or more and seem fresh and new feeling overall...

Yes, same place in the hierarchy.... the BRX and RDX are targeting the X3...I assume Lexus will have a model in there eventually, below the RX...and Merc is likely going to have an MLK eventually.

Poor design and engineering, it sounds like...

Don't the Tahoe and Yukon share doors and rear quarters as well? And glass?

So Buick is replacing the Ultra designation with 'Super' for the top-of-the-range models? Seems too retro...'Super' just seems so...OLD. (When I think of a Buick Super I think of something from the '40s or early '50s).