Drew Dowdell

actually, that kinda explains it.

Here Here! Years ago, just before Ford bought Volvo, Volvo came up with a coating that acted as a catalyst that would break up certain harmful compounds as air passed over it. They were going to coat the radiators of their cars with it so it would act as a mobile air filter. I don't know what ever happened to that technology, but when it comes to controlling emissions, few have the auto industry beat for inventiveness. We need to focus on the larger picture of emissions. Of all the combustion processes we use today, modern automobiles have to be on the cleanest end of the spectrum. With all the development money thrown at cars to reduce emissions, think about the following: 1. Construction equipment: All those bulldozers, steam rollers, back hoes have virtually no emissions control at all. They usually just have a muffler sticking up out of the engine compartment. I walk by a construction site for a skyscraper downtown and every day there is a diesel generator there running with just a pipe sticking out for the exhaust. 2. Lawn equipment: Every week millions of lawnmowers are fired up trim the nation's lawns. I'm going to bet that 98% of those are flatheads with no emissions control at all. Only recently have push behind lawn mowers moved to OHV <I have one> and OHC <Honda of course>. While they still have no emissions control the OHC and OHV engines are at least slightly better than the flatheads. 3. Coal and oil fired power plants: Sure they're cleaner than years ago, but what is that orangy red smoke coming out? Sulfer usually. Just go visit one and look at the stacks... just don't stay too long or they'll call DHS. 4. Old furnaces in poorly insulated houses: Gas is cleaner than oil, but what does it matter if you're heating the neighborhood. Those of you with electric heat don't get a free pass, see item 3. 5. Jetliners: Jetliners have actually become much cleaner in recent years... it's a shame the Airlines haven't updated their fleets much. American and Delta, two of the largest fleets in the US, have average ages of around 13 years old. The fleets sizes are 699 and 434 respectively. The youngest fleet is also one of the smallest. Jetblue has a babyfaced 97 airliners with an average age of 2.8 years. Why is this so important? Jet liners deliver the pollution directly to the upper atmosphere. When 9-11 occurred and all jets were grounded for about a week there was a measurable change in atmospheric pollution. How about we direct our spite at some of the larger offenders in the pollution problem today?

make it stop! I want my C&G back.

Apparently we are using more than our allotted "slice" of processing power on the server. The search function exacerbates the problem.

aaaand.... end of thread.

from my unscientific testing. yes. I don't know if you remember about a month ago I told the board I wanted a Toronado Caliente and a pony...... well, there as a small bit of information I got from Fly combined with a suspicion I had about the cause and I basically narrowed it down to the search function.

I almost want to join up just to tell him what a dumb &#036;h&#33; he is. I wonder if he piped his ass back into his mouth if it would make him any smarter?

Whoever is trying to use the search function is hereby sentenced to drive an '89 civic with a bad clutch for the next 10 years.

One thing I noticed while I was in Europe was that even though the exchange rate might be different. The numerical values for things stays fairly close. If you make 50,000 dollars for a particular job here in the US, it's likely you make about 50,000 Euros for the same job in Germany. Same thing seemed to be for housing. If just looking at numerical value, Cologne really isn't much more expensive to live in than Pittsburgh. That said, a Focus starts at 14.975 euro.

They seem to be doing quite well. They keep winning the "battle of the bands" contests that they participate in. I would imagine they will still be performing next time you're here.

No, I think it would be slightly higher than the current version... and with good reason. Plus then the Fiesta can slot in underneath it.

Duplicate the tooling and put it in whatever plant the focus is being built at now. The car doesn't have to be imported... just the design.

I think EMD as a hybrid trimline would work nicely. The first think you think of is a locomotive <powerful>, EMD was founded by GM <heritage>, and EMD can stand for Electro-Motive Drive keeping it in hybrid context AND would fit well with the ESV and EXT suffexes for the other models of Escalade.

Buying a GTO and trying to tune it for fuel efficiency is like buying a Civic and trying to tune it for speed.

Fixed. Had Ford brought over the Euro version, it would have been a substantially closer contest.

I think Cadillac needs to come up with it's own "brand" for it's hybrid vehicles much like Saturn has it's Green-Line.

ah, different Levittown than I'm thinking of.

I can't imagine you drive all the way to Levittown just to go to a gay bar when you're at close as you are to Manhatten

If I were the customer, I'd make the dealer fix this before I signed my name on anything. If I were the dealer, I'd be embarrassed to even have that on the lot like that.

pfft.... just get a Type-R sticker for your rear quarterpanel... that's good for at least 10-15 hp.

Can you imagine how hot a piano black finish with a raised Cadillac emblem on the LCD lid would look?!?

it's was actually fairly tame. Friends are having a party for me on Sunday since a wednesday night thing usually isn't all that fun. After work I went to the Carnegie Music Hall to watch CelloFourte perform. Just prior to their start they snuck in a happy b-day on their cellos. They also gave me an autographed, framed, picture of the album promo shot coming from their next album in January. Afterwards I went out for drinks with a friend... then home.

I have that Ferrari. Typing this post with it. Have the mouse too. It's been a very good machine and always gets comments if I'm out and about with it. I'd take a Cadillac branded one..... in black of course.

Replace the 1.8 with a 2.0 litre turbo diesel and watch revs go down and milage go up.

it's like they tried to use every Toyota design "cue" in one car. I see Prius, Echo, Camry, Yaris at least......