Drew Dowdell

It's all part of GM's master plan to reduce costs by reducing customers. If they don't actually have anyone who wants to buy their product then they don't have to go to expense of actually designing and building things. Their new business model involves producing concepts that tour the autoshow circuit in perpetuity <like the Camaro, Velite, and Beat> without ever actually being produced and charging people to come view the concepts. Sure, market share will take a beating, but look at all the money they'll save after all the plants get closed. In other words: Step 1: Cancel all the good vehicles .... Step 3: Profit!

How much do new airports and interstates cost? The PA turnpike is in the final stages of a complete rebuild, how much did that cost?

I think Civics are at an 80,000 mile interval. My 3.4 DOHC Cutlass was an 80,000 mile belt also.

fixed. LAX to Albuquerque, NM = 804 miles by car. A TGV at 300mph would take 2.68 hours, assuming non-stop service. Take out dealing with LAX, taxing, baggage delays, security. TGV would be way faster. Basically.... write your congressman.

Maglev is too expensive and not really needed. The fastest maglev is only 5mph faster than the fastest TGV, yet the TGV doesn't require special track.

If you get too far over 4 litres, people start expecting 8 cylinders rather than 6.

The 5.3 is cheaper then the DI3.6HF, makes more power, has displacement on demand and E85, and will fit into the same engine bays that the 3.6 does. If you're going to fill an engine bay to get the most grunt, you don't use a DOHC V6 to do it.

:deadhorse: :deadhorse: :deadhorse: I thought the whole "horsepower per litre" argument has already been shown to be a red herring on this board. It comes down to PACKAGING. If you're really concerned about horsepower per litre, put the turbo ecotec in place of the HF and call it a day. You picked a rather neglected, old, and underdeveloped <much like your argument>, pushrod V6 to compare to GM's finest DOHC engine and you expect us to be shocked, SHOCKED, that the pushrod engine doesn't perform like the DOHC. Go pop the hood on your CTS, take off the plastic cover, and take note of just how much SPACE the 3.6 takes up. Next, go look under the hood of any 3500 powered vehicle. Notice how much space it DOESN'T take up. You are using an engine that has been around since the last decade to try prove that a new DOHC is better than an old pushrod. Well I hope you are sitting down, because I have news for you. When the Quad-4 came out... it was waaay better than the iron duke it replaced. I know.. it shocked me too. GM spent a ton of money and put a lot of technology into the Quad-4 and it instantly surpassed it's predecessor. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe. MY point is that if GM had put the same amount of money into a pushrod V6 as they have into the HF line they would have easily come up with an engine that would match the performance of the HF. Yes it would have been a larger displacement but it still would have fit in the same space as the HF. The 3.6 is about as big as GM can go on a DOHC V6 Epsilon. However, a pushrod V6 can increase displacement dramatically and push up into V8 territory. Now I'm not advocating that GM take this course of action. GM could come up the sweetest reving V6 in the world, but if it was operated by pushrods, the press <and you> would &#036;h&#33; all over it before shoving all four of your cam shafts back up your ass.

You realize that most intra-continental flights in the US are between 600 and 1,000 miles? The TGV can run at 357 mph. Round that down to 300 mph and you're still doing a pretty good pace. To put that in perspective, it is 300 miles from Pittsburgh to Philly. So that's a 1 hour trip by train. US Air currently schedules 45 minutes between Pitt and Philly, but I have to stand in airport security for 40 minutes just to get to my gate to wait another 30 minutes to board my flight, and then wait 20 minutes for my bags at the other end. Getting on and off the train is much faster than getting on and off a flight. Trains are substantially more comfortable as well.

3.6 uses chains and is frequently described as louder than it's DOHC counterparts from honda.

I'm sure they'd complain at the pricetag however.

Shame on you. You know better than to compare similar displacement engines of two different valvetrain configuration. The question you fail to ask is, "How much more displacement would be required for the pushrod to out perform the DOHC?". The 3.5 is a tiny engine in terms of packaging. In place of the 3.6, GM has already shown they can go up to at least 5.3 litres of pushrod and in some cases up to 6.0 litres. The 3.6 litre tops out around 300hp without the help of forced induction. At 300hp, the 5.3 litre is just getting started. The 3.6 doesn't stand a chance against the 6.0. Of course, there's always the 3.9 that you could have compared with which is only marginally larger than the 3.5 yet smaller than the 3.6, but that wouldn't have served your purpose.....

I'm getting ready to change the graphics to the site to eliminate the words "greatest fans". When fans on a fan site get shouted down for, you know, actually liking the product and defending the product from slanted and biased attacks.... well, then the site doesn't deserve to use those first two words. The consistent negativity towards some of the best products GM has produced, ever, has kept me away. and the terrorists win.

buzz is more like it.... but it's not a function of the valvetrain layout. If GM threw the development money at pushrod V6es as it has at the LS engine I'm sure they'd be more competitive. Now, I'm not saying that GM should keep the pushrod engines and develop them more. They should use the HF v6 across the line. It's simply Accord matching. Since the automotive rags have declared that everything must act, sound, and look the same as the Accord, GM must throw out everything and duplicate the Accord Chinese style if they ever hope to compete. Those of us that actually like the grunt of a pushrod be damned.

The devil is in the details. 4 cylinders are lighter Smaller packaging, I know someone, somewhere, stuffed an LS1 into an Aveo, but get back to me when he needs to change the spark plugs. Minor tweaking to this package would allow it to run on E85 and allow the turbo to be cranked higher for even more horsepower. HCCI up to 55mph allows for substantially higher fuel economy than an LS1 could ever hope to get. You can't put HCCI on a pushrod. Making the LS1 into DOHC makes it...well... not the LS1 anymore.

but we do have wealth generators.... Haliburton comes to mind...... and isn't Toyota an American company now? that's how the people who buy Camrys often justify their purchase....

X 90% of those people couldn't tell you what a cam was much less why their car has two or more.

Perhaps I need to run a "Best of Oldsmoboi's suggestions" thread or something. Calling me a hardcore loyalist and not recognizing the need for change is to ignore the other half of my posts. I've advocated dropping all the pushrod V6es and standardizing across the HF line. I've since updated my position and now hold that the 4-Cylinder turbo BAS-II should replace the 3.6 on everything that has it sub-Cadillac. I've wished for the Atlas I6 replace the 4.3 V6 in the trucks. I've said that the Lucerne should be taken from Buick, restyled, and replace the w-body Impala over at Chevy. And the Chinese Park Ave restyled more to Buick's current look and brought over here. I've called for a pull ahead of Delta II I said that the latest Lacrosse looks like it was beaten with an ugly stick. I've asked for the 2.9 litre diesel and a mid-level V8 be made available for the CTS. I emailed Lutz directly about the diesel and got an answer which I posted here. I long for the Chinese SLS, an Alpha based Cadillac sedan, and some large Eldoradoish like coupe. I'm ok with the death of Hummer I think Saab is salvageable if done right, but otherwise kill it. I don't quite know what to do with Pontiac, but whatever it is, they're doing it wrong. I mean really.... to say that I'm a hardcore, oldschool, appologist, fanboy, unwilling to accept change is just silly. It's not like I'm out there harping for the return of b-pillarless, BOF, RWD, V8, manual transmission cars or anything..... ...and I wasn't actually targeting you.

I don't pretend to have any knowledge of the board. My comments are car specific. I'm surprised any of them still has a job, but that's corporate exec level job security for you. I'd be canned if I lost a laptop much less however many billions of dollars they've lost.

It's not even opinion. The people who generally yell about the federal funding of Amtrak usually forget that all of the airports and highways are build with tax dollars. Amtrak has to maintain all of their own stations, Amtrak exclusive tunnels, bridges, and track, and still pay a fee to the freight railroads for trackage rights. I hope you enjoy it. A lot of the fun of going by train is the journey itself. It really makes air travel feel like you're being crammed into a generic transportation pod.

yes

Nearly every post of yours regarding the Volt.

Size matters of course. How big are we talkin?

as I said, you are in the minority.

There is business smart, there is car smart, and there is short term shareholder ultimate return smart.....