Drew Dowdell

Enter yourself on "Queer eye".

Sales of hybrid vehicles. Vue, Aura

Uh... around here we call that Toyoguy.

Yeah... you're an ass... You know what gay guys do to asses.... right?

Small cars. The new Aveo, cobalt sales are increasing, pursuit will be joining us soon. They'll be doubling their entries in the affordable roadster market.

Honda, Audi and Saab have them now too.

What is with this new style of the lights on the trunk being 3/4ths the height of the lights on the fenders... I don't get it....

size queen

So should a Rainer be a GMC, Chevy, or Oldsmobile? A Rendevous should be a Pontiac. Mini and Rolls Royce Phantom should be BMWs. Things get really scary over at Ford.... is it a Ford, a Lincoln, a Volvo, or a Mazda?* *Hint: Crown Victoria, Mustang/Thunderbird, Five Hundred, Fusion

There are skip shift removal kits out there.

In my experience driving the Roadmaster over the mountians 345 ft/torque @ 3100 RPM means you don't need to downshift nearly as often. Remember, it's not a vette, it's an Avalon competitor. <in purpose it's purpose> My point is, have a huge amount of torque, way down low in the RPM band, and the number of gears become less important. 23mpg out of a V8 1957 Buick with a 1 speed dynaflow is fairly impressive. I've often wondered what the result would be if someone developed a modern dynaflow since it is really just a CVT from the 50s.

I agree that skip shift, as it's currently set up, isn't a really graceful solution. Would a 1-3-5-6 shift pattern work better do you think?

If the 6th gear is a taller overdrive gear, then that'd be great. As it is the 5th gear is usually 1:1 and the 6th gear is a standard ratio overdrive somewhere around .79:1

That I'll agree with....

Oh geeze, they're mostly performance cars. All in the penis wagging segment. The fact that the Supercharged Riviera and Buick Roadmaster with the LT-1 are both sub 8 second cars with huge curbweights while using low<er> horsepower, high torque engines with 4-speeds proves that you can have great performance and still have a 4-speed. The Roadmaster and Riv were both good for about 27mpg. They were both designed in the early 90s. A CVT is a tranmission with an infinate number of speeds. That makes them great for an engine with a poor torque curve. Remarkably they're also only cars with low torque because of durability issues.

Not too sure of the top speed was but the top speed was Chassy/tire limited rather then drive train limited. Ever try to drive a car with Bias ply tires over 65 miles an hour? Any cop that didn't know better would pull you over for drunk driving. As far as the mileage, I don't know about new, but in 2004 we clocked 23mpg on a trip from Pittsburgh, PA to Richmond VA and back. We both felt that was remarkable for a nearly 50 year old car. The Corvette and CTS-V are performance cars and need every bit of speed advantage they can get. You'll notice that both of them have that skip shift feature to help them with fuel efficiency, effectively turning them into 4-speeds under normal driving. What we're talking about here is excessive number of speeds for a pair of sedate family sedans. I highly doubt that either the Camry's or Avalon's performance would suffer that greatly by having a 5-speed rather then a 6-speed. The transmission war above 5-speeds is just a penis wagging contest.

All it means when you have a transmission with 6 speeds is that you have a car with a crappy torque curve. A 1957 Buick with a Dynaflow 1-speed transmission and no overdrive could do 0-60 in the mid-7s.

ABS = necessary... even in dry weather. LSD = very nice performance luxury. For $195, it won't make much difference in your payment but it will make a large difference in the performance of the car. It would be the very first box I checked after the ABS.

Good to hear...... now we just need some E85 suppliers. 1 person driving an Avalanche 12,000 miles a year and fueling exclusively on E85 would save 13 barrals of oil. Start multiplying things out and one can see how the petrolium savings start to add up fast on a national scale.

WMJ, you still don't get it do you?

As for #2, that can be done via Bluetooth. What I would like to do, is look up an address on maps.google.com and sent it to my car. I would like to syncronize my Outlook contact list <consequently my cell phone contacts> to my hands free dialing in my car, and I would like to send some Mp3s to the car's hard drive for my trip. The best part... all this exists in current cell phone technology. I can do ALL of the above with my current cell phone.

Heh, in my household I have RWD, FWD, and 4WD. Each have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the top cars in my "dream car" list is a '66 Toronado. So I obivously can't hate FWD.

Why is anyone complaining?

It seems though that people are more interested in the fluff of an interior rather then the functionality and ergonomics of the interior. Sure they'll complain if the interior is uncomfortable, but if it looks good they'll sometimes overlook that. knock them all you want, but the W-body Cutlass, Intrigue, Regals and Grand Prix, were the most comfortable cars I've driven. The CTS is way up there to. When I sit in a W-body or a Sigma, everything just fits. The controls are all easy to reach. The headliner is mouse fur? What does it matter, I'm not looking at it while I'm driving. The radio is "GM green"? Ok? So what? They were easy to read 20 years ago and they're still easy to read today. The dashboard is hard? I'll write a complaint letter after the next time I sleep on it. Cars that I've found issues with that the interiors are usually praised: The Civic: 1. No I don't like riding with my knees up my nose. 2. Why did you put the cruise controll off switch on the left side, away from the rest of the cruise controll buttons? 3. Why did you not put the sun roof switch in the center where the passenger might also reach it? The Passat, my partner and I currently own one: 1. What were you thinking with that cup holder placement?.... really, you put it directly over the cigarette lighter, and right in front of the shifter. 2. The lever for the parking brake. Who's idea was it to make it so it hits the armrest when engaged. BMW 1. iDrive Toyota 1. Where did you get that clock.... Big Lots? Notice that none of my complaints are asthetic. To me, a interior can be great looking, but if it doesn't work functionally, it loses me. I much rather mouse fur and a hard dash in an interior that is functional and comfortable. Then a pretty looking one that is neither. There are interiors that are both: Aurora Audi A6 GTO BMWs without iDrive

To me, the supercharged Monte Carlo is kinda like a Riveria lite..... and that's not a bad thing.