mustang84

It looks like Hyundai brought the 1983 AMC Eagle back to life.

I think the interior materials are absolutely amazing, but the design leaves something left to be desired, IMO. The center stack looks a little cluttered and Star Wars-like. The exterior could be a lot better as well...it seems pretty derivitive of typical German luxury design.

Absolutely stunning! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let the concept translate to production nearly 100%. This will be a smash hit if it stays the way it is.

I'm genuinely impressed by some of the new products I'm seeing come out of GM and Ford. I really like how they're avoiding the quirky looks that normally ensue with hybrids (Civic's moon-rover hubcaps/rims, Prius's egg shape). They are giving me a lot of hope for 2006. 25% better gas mileage sounds great!

The roof is extremely cool, but the exterior does say "Toyota concept" a little too much for my liking.

I found this interesting: Personally, the design is a little less "Edgy" than I was expecting, but it does seem like a good effort from Ford that will probably appeal to people. The 250-hp V6 is definately appealing. The interior seems a little lacking though....I just don't really like the way the center stack sticks out so far. The overall dash is kinda barren.

Try 62%. Here's the link again for anyone interested. Click on mid-year new vehicle fleet registrations under general statistics at the top of the page to open the PDF with all the data.

Link

The university has it's own laptop repair place for the lease laptops, so I just take it into the guy and he usually has it back by the next day or two. The only time I had to ship it to Dell was last summer when the motherboard died because school wasn't in session. Actually, I didn't even ship it...I just contacted Dell, and then two days later they sent a guy over to my house to fix it since it's still under warranty, so you get pretty much next-day service. I was impressed by that.

I have a story too. When I was a freshmen in college, we had one day where it snowed really hard. Well, outside of our dorm there was a huge snowball fight between us and the dorm building across the street...I'd say maybe 150-200 students were out there. Some of the rowdier ones began throwing snowballs at cars, and a few of the drivers got really pissed off, threatening to do harm if they threw any more at them. Anyway, it kept going on until one guy threw a snowball that was more of an iceball, and the guy in the car called the police from his cell phone. Campus police came by in a Crown Vic and began threatening to arrest people who threw any snowballs at passing cars. One knucklehead threw a big one at one of the cop cars and the cops went over there and handcuffed him. While the cops were distracted by those that were still throwing snowballs, a couple guys from my floor went over to one of the CV's and started building three snowmen on the roof. Then they proceded to build some...obscene parts on the biggest snowman in the middle. They got them all built before the cop got back to his car, and when he left he didn't even bother pushing them off. So as the car pulled away, here are three snowmen on the roof, with one of them exposing himself.

Ugh...my Y key on my laptop just broke off, so now everytime I want to press it, I have to fumble around for the little rubber nob that it originally stuck to. Pain in the ass. I'm really tempted to take a tiny dab of superglue and put it back on myself, but since this is a lease laptop, I should probably just do it the correct way and have it taken in to get fixed. You'd be amazed how often you use the letter 'y' and don't even realize it. Oh well, at least another vowel like 'a' or 'e' didn't break off, otherwise I'd be even more frustrated. Ironically, the y key broke off when I typed the word "Camry" in my last post. Damn you, Dell. I've only had this for a year and a half and already I've had to replace the motherboard, replace the volume buttons, get new rubber feet put on the bottom, and now fix this Y key.

The only reason the Camry is the best-selling car is because quite a few go to fleets. In strictly retail sales, the Honda Accord is America's best selling car. Actually, I can back it up somewhat. Going by that mid-year fleet sales page for 2005, the Honda Accord only had 3375 fleet sales (2.1%) while the Toyota Camry had 24,524 (14%). Honda Accord's retail sales were 160,522, while the Toyota Camry's were 150,635. So while Toyota ended up with 12,000 more sales in the end, it was only because they fleet out more Camrys. You can bet that Toyota doesn't want to lose the title of best-selling car in America for the Camry, which is why they probably have so many of them in fleets.

Ford has been making this monster for a while as well.

I can't remember if we already had a thread about this, but I did a search and couldn't find anything. Anyway, here's some unordinary police vehicles: 2001 Lincoln Navigator - Nebraska State Patrol 1999 Chrysler New Yorker in Boyd, NE 1993 Plymouth Acclaim - Compton, CA Community College 1990 Ford Probe - Arizona Highway Patrol 1997 Dodge Intrepid - Ranchester, Wyoming 1993 Eagle Vision - Lyndhurst, NJ 1980 Mercury Zephyr 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis - Grove, NE 1979 Mercury Cougar sedan - Missouri State Patrol 1976 Pontiac LeMans - Missouri State Patrol

I'm so glad they went with the current design rather than this one from the link BrewSwillis posted. The front is end is way too trucky and Charger-like. Great find!

It's amazing how your topography in PA completely randomizes the street layout. Here in Iowa (and a good portion of the plains states), everything is a grid. And even out in the suburbs where you have curvier streets and cul-de-sacs, they are still within an overall grid of major avenues. Our grids are normally north-south oriented, although in some smaller towns that were built along an angled railroad, they'll line them up with the railroad instead. And even in rural areas, all roads are 1 mile x 1 mile grids. Hell, counties are grid shaped. :P The thing about grids is that even though they make it easy to find your way around, they can be inefficient. Most of the roads in the Eastern US go directly from city to city...here you usually have to go a certain distance east or west, and then a certain distance north or south if you want to go to a city that is at an angle from where you are at. If there was a road that went directly to ISU from my hometown, I could probably get here in an hour and 15 minutes. But instead, it takes me 2 hours because I have to go east, then north. Here, streets originally oriented with the railroad, but now they align with the north-south axis

I love this view. This is indeed a 21st century SUV. The headlights do a lot for giving it a modern edge.

GMC's have always had a tough and aggressive image to me. This is not tough and aggressive. I like the other GMT-900s, but the Yukon's face fell off the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. It looks like it has brain damage.

Personally, I like the thin horizontal lines that the chrome trim creates against the black paint. The way that have it now though, it doesn't look right. I'd say maybe delete the chrome trim on the window, but add some that follows the door trim on the rear fender and meets at the bottom of the taillight.

I don't really like that grille...it almost seems blacked out, although it could just be the photography. The front end isn't very sexy.

I bet it'll be older than that...I see more 45-60 year olds in Scions than I do college age kids. Actually, I'm a little surprised...I don't know about other parts of the country, but around here it seems like older people are trading in their Buicks and Oldsmobiles for Hyundais and cheaper Toyotas like the Corolla. It's probably just a regional thing since we have fewer import buyers here, but I've been noticing it more and more over the last couple years.

That's too bad to hear...luckily he lived. Falling 20 feet and landing on your head is probably brushing pretty close to death.

Yes! I have missed full-width taillights. I hope they make a comeback.

No, it just shares the same overall shape and similar front end with bug-eyed headlights. To my eyes, it looks like a jazzed up Camry, just like Mercurys to some people are just jazzed up Fords. Put the two next to each other, and I'm sure any competent person could see the similarities.

I'm conservative...I have to be. I spend probably $1000 each year of my own money just on supplies for my arch projects. I wear nice clothes, but I only buy new ones two or three times a year so I don't spend money on clothes very often. I also like to buy CDs, but I never pay more than $10 for one anymore...I usually buy them used from thrift shops for $3 a piece. I can't believe that I used to spend $19 per CD back in high school...that was a big waste of money. I'm pretty good about saving money, too. I work long hours in the summer and make quite a bit, but I only spend a fraction of it so that I'll have enough left over for tuition, food expenses, etc. I still drive my beat up Lumina and probably will for another two years. It runs fine....that's all that matters. My sister, on the other hand, burns though money like none other. She'll spend $80 here, $65 there...on all kinds of things that she really doesn't need. She really needs to learn how to save before she goes off to college, or else it's going to be Ramen night -- every night.