the_yellow_dart

Oh... maybe it wasn't JDM then. I just saw the steering wheel on the wrong side and the Japanese style rear view mirrors and assumed.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/02/car-plows-right-through-house

At the gas pump beside me, I saw a JDM Datsun pickup that I've determined through Google search to be a Datsun 620. It had those strange fender-mounted rear view mirrors and right-hand-drive, and was also white like this picture... The thing looked so tiny, especially when the 6' tall driver climbed back inside. He had some kind of upgraded exhaust system fitted, and it sounded like a sporty motorcycle when he pulled off.

LOL check your metric conversion there... Oops, thats what I get for doing it manually... should be 12C (52F)

I thought the problem with the Shweddy Balls flavour was that it had liquor in it...

None here, in fact I went mountain biking today... 12C (72F) outside!

It is slightly Porsche-esque. Other than that, I credit Toyota for an original design. Which must mean the end of days is coming.

Depends on your city.

I don't seem to have the option of pulling my avatar from Facebook anymore.

Everything seems to take up more space in this new version... not liking it so far.

People still buy the 300? Really? Next you're going to be recommending PT Cruisers...

yeah, but you shouldn't skip gears if you're trying to accelerate fast. so... what it's called is "goofy" No, you guys are misunderstanding me - that's why I drew that graph above. I'm not skip-shifting until I'm done accelerating. Normal city cruising gear is 5th. When I accelerate quickly, I reach city cruising speed in 3rd, or maybe even 2nd, at which point I shift to 5th and stop pushing.

OK... then what is the word/phrase I'm looking for? Basically I'm doing what an automatic would do - when you accelerate harder, you stay in lower gears longer.

Maybe it's not lag so much as just long gearing and not much power down low.

In with the 2 thumbs up.

Odd. I only skip-shift on low speed limit roads when lazy... In the Firebird, it was usually 1-2-5th. When driving aggressively, I have to hit all the speeds to keep the engine in the powerband... skip-shifting would slow the works down. I realize it's a bit backwards to how it would normally go - but the turbo changes things. Lag means that I want to stay in each gear longer for better acceleration. Here's an example of how I would accelerate to 65km/h (40 mph) for city streets.

Let's do it this way (and I'm skipping the real exotics, because I don't think thats a fair comparison, and it's also too long of a list) Also I'm doing NA market only and grouping by manufacturer. 2 thumbs up: Mazda, BMW, Subaru 1 thumb up: Nissan/Infiniti, Volkswagen/Audi, Daimler, FoMoCo neutral: Honda, Hyundai/Kia 1 thumb down: Mitsubishi, Suzuki 2 thumbs down: Toyota/Lexus, ChryCo

I only skip-shift when accelerating aggresively. Usually I hit every gear.

Will try it, but haven't noticed anything like that yet. The major bane seems to be steep hills on the highway which required a shift to 3rd in order to maintain speed. However, if you're not in a hurry, you can do 1 - 2 - 4 - 6 shifts without difficulty and still accelerate at normal traffic speeds. In the hard urban cycle I'm driving now, the DIC is displaying an average 32mpg. but I've also unloaded the trunk too. Never had to downshift in Ontario. We don't really have hills. I thought the hills I drove through in New Brunswick were steep when I had to downshift to 5th... can't imagine highways steep enough to necessitate 3rd! (Interstates or back highways??)

ps. Just to open people's eyes about how long the Eco gearing is, that speed was reached in 4th.

Max I could hit was 195 km/h (121 mph)

1. American "Midsize" = European "D-Segment". Something doesn't line up between the article and your thread title. 2. I think the Hornet concept turned into the Nitro.

Shocked to see the Grand Vitara nubmers so low. Bet it sells a lot better in Canada.

On a side note, I can't believe the GM Canada website is still wrong... It shows Cruise Control as not even being optional on the Eco model. Almost turned me off the Cruze completely when I saw that - and I worry it may be driving other customers away. I've told them twice already about the error and they never fixed it.

That depends on whether or not you get the Connectivity package, which includes the uplevel DIC.