riviera74
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Everything posted by riviera74
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Once upon a time BOF SUVs were the thing. It seemed as if everyone wanted one. Then came 2008 and the recession AND the oil price spike to $149 a barrel. Gas prices marched to $4 or more per gallon. BOF SUVs were out; hybrids and small cars were in. It was all about MPG rather than comfort or MPH. I wonder how long that loyalty to SUVs and CUVs would last in an era of $4 for a gallon of gas.
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I had forgotten that homologation was a racing term. The first time I saw that word was a Car and Driver article some years back that concerned racing engines and those same engines available in street-legal cars. Homogenized is a better word for what I described.
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Homologating engines did not kill GM in the 1980s. Homologating cars did. Remember "Keep it cheap, keep it common" from Roger Stempel, I think. GM screwed up because they tried to sell the exact same car across multiple GM lines (usually 5 and sometimes more). Honda and Toyota and Nissan often only had ONE CAR (per market segment) to push, at least until Acura and Lexus show up. In too many cases, the differences between Buick, Olds and Cadillac were vanishing right before our eyes. Chevy and Pontiac had the same set of problems, all because GM corporate kept making them cheap and common. VW on the other hand never made that mistake here or in Europe. There is nothing inherently wrong with engine sharing. It is terminating the unique selling point of the car marque that is inherently wrong and self-defeating.
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Yes it is a strange dichotomy. Then again, if the car is not sold here, why would anyone care? There are a lot of cars meant for JDM or EDM that will never see the dealer lots here in the USA. What annoys me is that they keep showing models not available here on commercials all the time. BMW and now the Jaguar F-Pace are the latest examples of this. Chances are the i30 will show up in the US as a model we already have selling here. I think we can all be patient about this.
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We are. So the power plant market in the US has shifted to natural gas replacing coal in a lot of cases. That is a good thing. More importantly, replacing diesels with EVs will shift the pollution profile away from autos to power plants and steel plants. That is even better, especially given the acid rain problems Europe apparently still has. Thirty years ago, the Northeastern United States had a serious acid rain problem. The cure was shuttering a LOT of steel plants and other heavy industry and the significant reduction of coal burning over the last two decades. Europe will need to deindustrialize in order to fully enjoy the lack of acid rain in their forests like we have in the United States. Volvo's efforts can help with that.
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Wow. As I suspected, the F-Pace keeps Jaguar relevant by being their best-selling vehicle. Now they release a little brother to the most popular model in the lineup. An E-Pace starting around $40K puts it just above Buick Envision territory given the similarities in size. In this increasingly crowded luxury CUV space, I wonder how the E-Pace will stand out these days.
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Another Chrysler plant bites the dust. I wonder how many other Chrysler plants have bought the farm since 2007.
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Ah well. Big cars made for the US market are not really meant for European roads made over 2000 years ago and Europeans do not exactly like cars this size. It's like putting a Chrysler 300 or Dodge Challenger over there. 50 sales is no surprise since it is not meant for over there. If Hyundai wants to succeed in the UK or Europe more generally, they should send the Accent or the Tucson there instead. Almost anything the size of a Mini Cooper would be wildly more successful there than any Genesis.
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Hmmmm. It seems like Ferrari wants to chase Porsche and Jaguar in the CUV race. I suspect that both the Cayenne and the F-Type are the best sellers for their respective car marques and Ferrari is jealous of that.
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For some reason, European regulators thought that diesel would solve all sorts of issues with emissions. Now that this presumption is not the case, the crackdown (thanks to VW) has truly begun. The march to EVs will certainly go a very long way into solving the CO2 problems that bedeviled regulators in the first place. I suspect that many if not most European cars will be EV within the next 15 years or so, just because of CO2 regulations alone. EVs will work wonders (against pollution) in our smoggiest cities such as LA and Beijing.
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^^^^ Which BMW is that one? Looks like a 5 series, but I may be wrong. As for the original post, it dawns on me that William has a point. The 2008 Lucerne I currently have is all well and good, but it may be a little too long for me these days. While an Impala/XTS sized car would be great (and a CT6 would be near ideal), I am looking at the midsized crossovers because there are times where improved maneuverability (such as in tight spaces) makes the Lucerne feel like a 1980s land yacht. (And historically, I really like large cars.) While it makes sense for you to downsize to a Cruze if you can fit in it, that is not the case for me, at least not at my current size. It is certainly true that the big savings are in smaller cars because of the demand for crossovers that now exists. It reminds me of the SUV craze of the 1990s, only more so. Buying a car for need rather than for extreme is great advice. Now all of us need to execute.
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Think of why any carmaker would switch to electric vehicles: fewer parts and a reduced need to service said parts. There would be no ICE to repair or cool, no transmission to maintain or fix at all, no gas tank or transmission fluid or motor oil or coolant. In theory, an electric vehicle, once current battery limitations and range are overcome or scrapped, the need for crude oil will be so dramatically reduced that both oil majors and OPEC itself will be in serious dire straits. Tesla may have done the rest of the industry a favor by roadworthy electric cars not only possible but actually viable. Car dealers will have a few issues adjusting, given that a significant portion of their revenue and profits come from maintenance and repair of current vehicles. But for the car-buying public, electric vehicles may well be the biggest development in this industry since at least the model T. I can't wait for this revolution to actually come to fruition and see that electric has displaced ICE and we get closer to true energy independence.
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Honda does NOT make trucks. The Ridgeline is a rebodied Odyssey. It is strange that Honda only makes the CR-V, the HR-V, the Pilot and not much else other than cars and the Odyssey. Yet in this CUV era, Honda does continue to sell just fine as if they were unaffected by anything. It is rare that Honda sells anything to fleets at all.
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Are Chevy and Cadillac supposed to go CUV and SUV only? If so, be careful. Before the last recession (and big spike in gas prices) there was talk of Chevy going trucks and SUVs only. $4+ per gallon made that idea look really stupid. Cadillac could use a smaller version of the XT5 pronto. Chevy already has three; I doubt they need four CUVs.
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I would probably prefer the Envision over the Regal TourX if the former was not smaller than the XT5 or Equinox/Terrain. Then again, if I wanted this model, I would simply go top of the line and keep it for several years. I do hope that this model sells well, despite the fact that crossovers are nowadays the best sellers.
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