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Drew Dowdell

Editor-in-Chief
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Everything posted by Drew Dowdell

  1. Drew Dowdell
    You must not have gotten the memo. Every brand needs 14 crossovers with only 2 inch difference between them in size
  2. Drew Dowdell
    CT6, second gen Lacrosse. It doesn’t have to be RWD to get the nod. The only one at Ford I would give such a trophy to is the latest Explorer, Navigator too if we’re not considering budget. None of their cars though.
  3. Drew Dowdell
    If there is one thing I've learned over the last however many years of watching politics is that someone, somewhere, will always have an issue with what you do as president. People complained about Obama ordering brown mustard! It's all just pettiness. It's no secret that I don't like Trump, but of all of the issues I have with him, his owning a bunch of Rolls Royces isn't one of them. I don't even care if he buys a new one tomorrow.
  4. Drew Dowdell
    Chevy absolutely needs to catch up with Ford on this one. They needed to go IRS on the current generation.
  5. Drew Dowdell
    I actually did some of that... picking up stocks that Warren buys. Anyway, I see no issue with Trump being a Rolls fan... he can like what he likes and I'm certainly not going to argue with that. If I were to become President, would people give me crap for continuing to own a car from a brand that no longer exists? The tariff is incredibly short-sighted though. "All-American" Buick is anything but.... Only 2/5ths of its lineup are built in the US. Encore - Korea Regal - Germany Envision - China Cascada - Poland Enclave - U.S. Lacrosse - U.S. Toyota? Corolla - Canada Camry - U.S. Avalon - U.S. RAV4 - Canada Highlander - US Tundra - US Prius - US Hyundai and Honda are much the same. And again, he's not going to get around NAFTA for the Canadian and Mexican built vehicles. This is targeted at EU, Japan, Korea, and Germany.
  6. Drew Dowdell
    give it a 0.33 inch lift, slap some cladding on it, Matrix Returns.
  7. Drew Dowdell
    It wasn't FCA at the time and none of those parts are still in use today. The suspension has been completely revised since the first generation. Transmission, engines, rear-diff are all replaced. Even the stupid MB cruise control lever was replaced after the first gen. There might be some random power window motor still shared, but parts like that get shared among manufacturers all the time. We don't call the Escalade based on an F-150 just because they share a transmission.
  8. Drew Dowdell
    There is almost no Benz left in this car, if any. I had one of these as a rental for my trip to Detroit for NAIAS, though mine was RWD rather than AWD. It is a fantastic roadtrip car. I don't know what kind of wheel bearing they are using but the 300C/S rolls better than nearly anything out there.. and I say that in while in the past week I've been at the helm of CT6/LS/G80. 80mph is way too easy. It's comfortable. It's big. It handles well. It goes fast. It has road presence. It is everything a big American sedan should be. On top of that, it is efficient and the infotainment system works well. My long distance trips at the aforementioned 80 mph have yielded 27mpg. Ya'll keep it under 70mph and you can get it over 30 on RWD models. If there is any letdown it is in the quality of materials in the interior. The S and the C Limited do fix some of that, but not all. This is one of my favorite vehicles on the market right now.... not because it is the best at any one thing, but because of the blend of things it does so well. I would absolutely drive the one pictured above and be very happy with it.
  9. Drew Dowdell
    It would be difficult for him to get around the NAFTA agreement for now, but I think this is largely directed at China and Europe anyway. The Chinese want into this country sooooo bad.
  10. Drew Dowdell
    Euro 6 applies to any diesel built after Sept 1 2014.
  11. Drew Dowdell
    That really saddens me. There is a Model-A in my family for probably longer than that which will eventually come to me.
  12. Drew Dowdell
    Sure, if you let the car sit in the Arizona sun for about 4 months. There just isn't enough surface area on the car to collect enough energy to do that.
  13. Drew Dowdell
    Cool. Just thought it would be a good familiar option for you since you already have a G37
  14. Drew Dowdell
    The only thing the solar panels that are on hybrids/EVs do today is keep the interior cool on hot days so that the main battery isn't drained by HVAC. But even then, it only runs while parked.
  15. Drew Dowdell
    nope
  16. Drew Dowdell
    Infiniti Q50 Hybrid - 360hp / 400+ lb-ft of torque. All wheel drive available. 26 city / 32 highway EPA rating (RWD model), but I see reports of people doing a lot better than that when switching to Eco mode, like 36 mpg highway. CPO ones can be found in the mid $25k range The downside - tiny trunk.
  17. Drew Dowdell
    Solar panels are not an alternative to batteries.
  18. Drew Dowdell
    Exactly. Even ignoring the potential rare earth mineral shortage, they are trying to get better energy density from batteries and it most cases that seems to be entirely different chemical compositions.
  19. Drew Dowdell
    GM has always way over-sized their A/C compressors, and it is purely a guess that is what is going on here. The Encore will freeze the nipples off Satan if I turn it low enough. My Toronado is the same way, as was my old Caprice, and my Avalanche, and the Roadmaster I drove for a while. My old Continental I don't recall because it had one of the best automatic climate control systems I've ever used even though it was from 1985.. set it to auto and 72 and it managed the rest. I find I have to fiddle with modern automatic climate control too much to really be called automatic. The Honda? We run that pretty close to max cool just to stay comfortable.
  20. Drew Dowdell
    They've already got R&D underway to replace it.
  21. Drew Dowdell
    Yeah, that's why I think something is wrong.... however, A/C compressors take a certain amount of horsepower to run. Sure they vary in size for the vehicle, but not by that much... so if it takes 3 hp to run, 3 horsepower is a bigger percentage of available power on my 138hp Encore than on a 250hp 2.0T of whatever make. But it's clear... A/C off and highway travel, the Encore will get 33mpg. A/C on, I'm lucky to get to 30. The Honda is the same way though, but that A/C compressor is relatively new. I had it replaced a few years ago. Nail meet Head. It was the marketing of the TDI that got people upset. People bought the diesels thinking they were another clean, high mpg alternative. So if you didn't like the looks of the Pruis (I can understand that one), but the Jetta looked good to you, the TDI was an option.
  22. Drew Dowdell
    Fine, but that wasn't what he was arguing about. His argument was about diesel efficiency v. hybrid efficiency. And the Volvo S90 PHEV sounds really good... more like a 5-cylinder than a 4... not sure how they did that one.
  23. Drew Dowdell
    The problem is that while the doors may be 8ft tall, the openers hang lower than that.
  24. Drew Dowdell
    I have... they're yuuuge. I am wondering if a common complain is the inability to get them in garages now due to height.
  25. Drew Dowdell
    Jaguar is an odd bird. Some way, some how, they manage to get by without high volumes.
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