Posted on 12/01/2023 6:53:15 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
No thanks. Don’t want a problematic American shytbox.
Recalling the commercial (maybe BMW, maybe Mercedes, not sure) which showed a few dozen mini SUVs waiting in the after-school pick-up lane. All were silver in color except the advertiser’s vehicle which was black. All the kids came running out looking for the right cars except one kid who went directly to the black one and hopped in. And as it pulled away, the voiceover said, “Stand out from the crowd.”
Haha, they had to paint it a different color to stand out.
Two years ago we went shopping for a new midsize SUV for the wife. Looked at and test drove five different brands. All looked alike, drove alike and were only available in black, silver and white and cost about the same.
We bought a new boat instead and are quite happy about the choice.
What? That makes it a classic!
I was raised in a family that had either pushbutton automatics, or three-on-the-tree & four-on-the floor sticks. I remember the first time I saw a 1955 Plymouth with the lever for the PowerFlite automatic sticking out from the center of the dashboard. It just seemed... wrong. Decades later I got into a new minivan that an organization wanted me to drive, and saw the pathetic, vestigial excuse for a gear selector on an oddly placed dash/console. It also just seemed... wrong.
I got dizzy looking at those dots.
If you're talking about one of those little spinny-knob gear changers on the dash, like the car I once rented...I hated it (can't remember the breed of car). It was just unholy. I'd buy a 1965 Chevy Corvair with a dashboard stick shifter before I'd buy a car with a spinny-knob. Spinny-knobs are for car radios.
Another vehicle that I can’t afford to buy. Why look or care?
Dodge pickup trucks had the spinny knob back in the early 2000s. We had one at work and it was awful. The problem is it doesn’t give good feedback about what gear you’re selecting. The designers gave it a lockout system to keep you from putting it in an unintended gear, but that gets counterintuitive in certain situations so you’d wind up fighting with it. It really made me appreciate how perfect a good old lever on the column is as a gear selection interface.
The push buttons was a factor for me to pass the Tahoe. I think they brought back a column shift on the new one.
“The problem is it doesn’t give good feedback...”
That was it...very little “feeling” you were selecting the right gear. I think it actually frightened me a little worrying about tearing out the transmission.
Yep, exactly. I never developed a good feel for driving that truck and always avoided it.
Before my latest car, a Buick La Crosse, I had a 20 yr. old Buick Park Avenue. Those are very good cars & reasonably cheap to own. Everything that Buick replaced it with is not as good.
Agreed. I had a ‘95 Regal. I was driving it with 225k on it and still getting 30 mpg. I replaced it with a 2008 Lucerne. Not a bad car as it’s got 212k on it but it only gets about 24 mpg.
It seems efficiency is going backwards.
It's kinda cool watching the entire process from when the steel panel is first inserted into the draw die then watching all the other processes till it goes thru the final parts assembly and loaded onto the racks and shipped out.
All suv’s look like suv’s. All other cars look like olives with wheels. I sure miss the good old days of walking to the Ford or Chevy Dealer’s showroom on the way to school to see the NEW style the day it came out. Now the new style is the old style with different electronics.
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