ZL-1

Will that trickle down to the A8? Expression 'trickle down to the A8' reads kinda funny, being that the A8 is Audi's flagship sedan

Cayenne's + Q7's + Touareg's platform. As long as it doesn't look like the concept they showed before it will be nice......

Another 3-series fighter... Interesting...

If it's a tall wagon kind of CUV it might work out well in the end...

zoom!

Exactly... Land Rover builds pretty much the whoel spectrum of off-roaders, from the practial Defender to the luxury Range Rover, so... I don't really get this one...

Latest Volbeat album, called "Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies"

It's an image thing. Purely that.

Alfa Romeo Spider (the 159 / GM Epsilon based generation); BMW 6-Series convertible; Aston Martin DB7...

Opel sells rebadged Fiat and Renault vans over here IIRC...

This car was the coupe version of the Opel Senator. There's a relation to the contemporary Holden Commodore, but not with any US product of that time that I can remember of... Oh I'm 99% sure search engines filter by your IP address location...

They used the name of the old Opel Monza https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Opel_Monza_GSE_vl_white_TCE.jpg

No, no ,no... I meant as perceptions being of diesel being frugal but not the sporty choice...

Interesting... If VW sends the GTD to the US it might change US perceptions regarding diesel engines

Impressive porsche numbers indeed, and not only because of pricing (i.e. brand image), but also because a lot of development costs for the Cayenne (and the Panamera as well IIRC) can be shared with other VW Group brands... GM does not have that luxury today, as the spaces occupied by Buick and Cadillac will take a while to organize. GM is on a good track, but not quite there yet... Which begs the question if GM wouldn't be better off by getting to those economies of scale from using Alpha to a bigger extent (i.e. underpinning a NG SRX and a smaller Cadillac crossovoer, in addition to at least a ATS convertible)... But I have a sneaking suspicion that's another part of the current GM story that time will reveal as either the best or the not-so-best option...

Any uphill driving? Driving in flat terrain is, I'd say, a diesel's best friend: keeping the car at fairly low rpm (i.e. at the bottom of the quite fat torque plateau turbodiesels have nowadays) = fuel economy heaven...

46MPG (US) = 5.11L/100KM; nice! What kind of driving? I'm getting 5.5L/100KM (42.77MPG US) on my Renault Megane wagon, 50/50 between morning/afternoon traffic (not too dense aroud here) and highway driving with cruise control set at 80MPH to 90MPH...

Happy 4th of July!

EDIT - Wonder if it'd be easy to set up a 'specialty' assembly line, focused 100% on the highest levels of manual input and assembly quality, for such a model alongside the other Alpha+Omega models...

ouch

Haven't gone through the 2 links in detail, but... Could it be they decided not to do a uber-sedan above the LTS but will instead look into other alternatives? There's that concept drawing of a coupe, isn't there? New Eldorado as the flagship (i.e. 'halo') model, maybe?

Yep. People don't seem to realize that even though you do find quite a few S-Class taxis in Germany, the model has a huge luxury image that makes people spend EUR 20K to EUR 30K in optional equipment alone in many of the cars sold to private costumers...

Well, Cadillac has made that statement already by having the Escalade as its pricier model... Pretty sad when a dressed up Tahoe is your flagship. That needs to change. On the other hand, selling a dressed up Tahoe for 60 grand does generate a lot of profit... But yes, the Escalade needs to be set further apart form the Chevrolet and GMC, even if it keeps sharing a platform with them.

x3!

Well, Cadillac has made that statement already by having the Escalade as its pricier model...