Recent Comments:
Oscar Pistorius fails to qualify for the Olympics {Engadget}
Jul 19th 2008 4:51AM He's not Chinese so the Chinese can't put him on anything...his own country's Olympic team has to do that.
Hyundai offers scorching deal on Genesis leases {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 9:17AM Never say never...back in 2004 Chrysler was doing Pacifica leases for $150 a month with $0 down for 24 months, although you had to have an employee in the family (although extended family counted). Pretty much no chance in hell you could have bought a fast-depreciating new Pacifica and beaten the lease. Just the taxes would have been as much as the lease, lol.
Hyundai offers scorching deal on Genesis leases {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 9:10AM XJ, I was mostly just surprised to find out that the Azera had a lot of features they dropped for the Genesis (like power folding mirrors) to cut costs. Not exactly what I was expecting from the new flagship-to lack features from a cheaper car in their lineup!
Then again I kind of suspect the fact that the Azera is an electrical nightmare might have lead to some of these things being dropped just to keep the Genesis more problem-free. Who knows.
The wealthy concerned about gas prices? Merc S-class sales fall {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 9:03AM I don't know if you're really giving the best example of living within your means. Yes there are people who borrowed money to buy nonsensical crap, but at the same time the government taxes plenty of your income so 47.5K doesn't leave so much that buying a used luxury vehicle (which, while cheaper than buying a new one, comes with very high maintainence costs and repair costs compared to a regular car) is really the most fiscally responsible thing. Investing that money would probably make a lot more sense long term than buying something that is guaranteed to depreciate and rack up high insurance, maintainence, and repair bills.
That's not to say that you shouldn't buy the A4 if you enjoy it as a car guy, but it's a little silly to make it sound like a model of fiscal responsibility. Unless, you already think you have enough money to pay for your retirement, your kids' college tuitions, and whatever myriad of expenses you think you'll have coming up. You might not be saving negative money like the average American (a really sad fact), but you're not saving as much money as you probably should either. Unless you already have the equivalent of 20% of your lifetime post-tax income (plus interest) saved up already.
Toyota cuts global sales target to 9.5M vehicles {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 8:42AM I think it's because Toyota may feel that being #1 in profits is somewhat more important than losing tons of money while being #1 in sales. While it sounds funny, it's also true, since Toyota could ruin their own profit margins and crank up production to dump cars into fleets, or cut their prices down to sell more at retail. But neither of these make a lot of sense if you care about making money instead of just being #1 in sales.
And quite frankly, I'd personally rather make the #1 most money amongst my peers as opposed to having worked the #1 most hours or something.
Toyota cuts global sales target to 9.5M vehicles {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 8:38AM While Toyota is also idling the plants, they're refitting them and keeping everyone on payroll (they're sending all the workers to quality improvement training). No, Toyota didn't see into the future and do this ahead of time, but it's still nice that they're able to convert the factories to build other cars (they're bringing Prius production stateside to take up plant capacity since demand is so high). Also convenient that they can kill 2 birds with one stone with the quality training.
But mostly it's nice because they haven't fired anybody.
Leaked slides preview GM's future {Autoblog}
Jul 18th 2008 8:15AM they should release a buick model actually just called Sedan. In fact, it'd be kind of interesting if Buick was just one model.
VIDEO: Garage419 split-screens the ZR-1 and GT-R 'Ring laps {Autoblog}
Jul 14th 2008 9:59AM Side by side it definitely seems like the GT-R would be easier to drive competently, and that the Corvette was being pushed a little bit more.
It definitely seems like the Corvette is gaining mostly on the straights where it seems to accelerate noticably faster.
I don't know exactly how the turbos in the GT-R are set up, but if the boost limit can be raised with a new ECU flash that should help speed up the straightaways without adding any weight, so hopefully the tuning companies will be able to fix the one weakness it may have (although, it's not really a weakness so much as that these cars are all insanely ridiculously fast).
HUMMER H3T starting at $31,495, sales begin September {Autoblog}
Jul 14th 2008 9:42AM I've gone fishing in a Sentra so I don't entirely see why a Prius can't drive you to go fishing.
Now if you mean you were towing some sort of fishing boat then maybe you'd have an edge on the Prius but I'd say that the vast majority of people don't tow boats when they go fishing.
Lexus cancels next-gen SC, Toyota cancels next Avalon {Autoblog}
Jul 14th 2008 8:42AM BTW I *HIGHLY* doubt the Avalon is going away. And really, if it does go away and is replaced by a stretched Camry...well, that's really not going away so much as being renamed the Camry L or something.
Personally I want the Avalon to remain...it's probably the the best non-flashy large luxury vehicle you can buy. That said, I suppose it probably eats into more profitable Lexus sales all the time since anybody who doesn't care about RWD or flashiness would probably just save the cash and buy an Avalon.
