16 plugs in them Hemis...expensive iridium plugs at that. No thanks.
Drove my Dad's pickup again...I like it less and less every time I drive it.
16 plugs in them Hemis...expensive iridium plugs at that. No thanks.
Drove my Dad's pickup again...I like it less and less every time I drive it.
An it harm none, do as ye will
Approximately 79% of statistics are made up.
I have had the opportunity to drive a new Suburban and Yukon (somewhat) in the past few weeks; both on some of the Earth's most straightest roads, and dirt roads. Sadly, I am not talented in writing reviews, nor as many of you have learned, gracefully typing the English language on a digital page. A review may be coming.
A Grand Cherokee I rode in around today felt small compared to either.
Rental base level Camry.
It's about 5 metres of car.
Really, the only bad thing is the sodding gearbox that is either in 'eco' (sluggish and laggy) mode or flick the lever over to the 'sports' bit (which is set up backwards) and have it respond reasonably nicely. Though it'll 'reset' itself to 4th every time you do it, which means it will use no higher gear untill you pull the lever, swear, then push it three times to 6th. Which on a motorway is kind of annoying, so I ended up pushing into slug mode while the cruise control was on and pulling it over when I wanted to pass someone.
Also the cruise control is not linked to the eco mode thing, so it does the same thing as my right foot.. presses down, nothing happens, press down more, nothing happens, press down more, drop two gears and jerk all your passengers back and look like an idiot.
Life's too short to drive bad cars.
Audi Q2 35 TFSI STronic (that's the one with the 1.5 litre turbo, in case you are not familiar with Audi's silly naming conventions).
The most curious thing was how low the seat can go despite being an SUV. Oh and the gearbox insisted on going everywhere in 7th. Other than pretty uneventful...
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Names are getting too long. SUVs are getting too familiar.
On a tangent: I read an article of Top Gear magazine and was stunned by how many 3 cylinders are prevalent in the UK/Europe.
I roll in a 6.2 L Ford Boss V8 for field work and it at times feels kinda weak.
What a time to be alive.
Canadians (of the French kind) are an interesting bunch; they seem to drive either the most decontented and punitive shitboxes or massive $100,000 US ($9.999.999.999,99 Kebekwa franc) pickups with leather, and towing packages, and nav, and ...
Anyway, in the last year I've rented the following for work (usually a 1-2 week duration) with brief synopses of each. If you guys are interested in more detail I can, though some are a bit fuzzy in my memory:
2019 Subaru Outback
Underwhelming and very agricultural; too many buttons, weird CVT, middling mileage, and weird suspension tuning. Ground clearance an AWD were of some dubious benefit on the ~20 miles of dirt roads that I drove on. My car had the sunroof left open in the rain which allowed water to trickle down and short out the amp under the passenger seat, so I can't comment on the infotainment too much other than to say that the interface is not very nice. It has the same birdshot approach with buttons as the dashboard. Adaptive cruise control was not particularly smooth.
2018/'19 Mazda CX-5 (2x)
Competent and pleasant in every way, hampered only by the fact that it is, unnecessarily, on stilts. Infotainment and active cruise definitely above average. If only Mazda made this car in a sort-of lowered and sleeker form...
2019 Chevy Malibu (2x)
Turbo smaller than my fist (I have weenie little Trump hands). Surprisingly-good midrange, nothing at the top. Otherwise, everything is GM-spec with all that entails. Definitely an improvement on the previous 'Bu, but still feels like a car designed only for fleet work. No active cruise.
2018 Nissan Altima (CDM, y0!)
Ghosn's goonies aim low and score a direct hit! I had a decent-spec car with leather and all the filigree, but it did not feel like quality product. Decent turn of speed in a straight line, but incredibly numb in pretty much every way.
2018 Volvo XC60
Nice car with most of the things that the S60 lacked. Model refresh seems to have restored the pep in its step, designwise. User interface and active cruise were by far the best that I've sampled; Volvo seems to have gotten all of the gains to be just about right. Less-engaging to drive than the CX-5, but it would be equally improved by lowering it and shrinking the wheels/tires.
2017 Volvo S60
Somewhat disappointed with this one; I really wanted to like it because I like the idea of a world where Volvo makes cars. Everything about this car seemed to be showing its age by the time I got my hands on it. The interior lacked the unadorned Swedish elegance that I like in Volvos, maybe, again, because it was dated.
2018 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
This is a horrible vehicle. If you do anything other than crawling over rocks, it is a noisy, crashy, bump-steering, and inefficient pillbox of a vehicle. I think if I squint my mind's eye, I could see how the two-door Jeep might have some charm, but in four-door form it is almost-entirely without merit. A sad day for Italian-Canadian cars built in Ohio.
2018 Ford Fusion Hybrid
The pint-sized engine is assisted usefully by the electric motors and the car generally feels well screwed together. Integration between hybrid system and the active cruise control is quite poor. They could work together to make driving the car a much-more seamless experience.
... and the following for other reasons:
2015 Honda CR-V
Boring and competent.
1998 Corvette Auto
This was a bit of a letdown. Though I wouldn't say that they're my type of car, I can be credibly accused of being a Corvette apologist. I appreciate the amount of performance that it can deliver for the price and, in my mind, that equation really starts to put you in the black with the C5. The previous models, even from afar, are so obviously crude and unfinished that they exist in something of a kit-car space; fast and loud, without refinement. Unfortunately, my experience in this C5 indicate that this crudity extends into the C5. Perhaps the shitty four-speed automatic was what pushed it over the edge; that really sucked the joy out of the car. It was also modified in a way that wasn't to my tastes, which didn't help. I have yet to experience a C6+, the C6 Z06 is still the ultimate of the breed in my eyes, so I will withhold judgement on those and continue defending them.
I work in control systems, which means that when I have a car with active cruise, lane departure, sport mode, automatic 4WD, etc... I like to test them both functionally and from a user control perspective. There have been a couple recurring themes that I've noticed. The most-prominent is the poor integration of the many computers and their accompanying physical systems onboard.
In the case of the Fusion, the gains were so aggressive on the cruise control that if a car pulled from out in front of you it would engage the electric assist to accelerate, blow through the assist, and switch to ICE-only before slamming on the brakes (and going straight through the regenerative-braking zone). This jarring process renders the gross of batteries and motors dead weight.
The CVT in the Outback would also trip over itself, always in the process of making up its mind when the cruise control decided to accelerate or decelerate and would not flatter an already unflattering engine. The cameras and sensors in the system have the range to be able to calculate one-step-ahead, so there's no excuse for this poor level of integration.
The final example is in the Mazda: I could put the shifter in manual, downshift to first, and set the cruise control and it would it would just drive around zipping off the limiter trying to reach my selected speed. I really like that Mazda honors the driver's wishes and doesn't shift on its own in manual, but it should prevent the driver from either setting the cruise or entering manual mode in that type of situation.
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"
The Smart that I sometimes drive is a turbo triple. It sounds amusing.
They are indeed popular here, in the case of Spain the ones below 1000cc fall in the lowest road tax bracket.
I want to like modern Volvos. I just want to. But I can't.
I am more a Saab Turbo sort of person, but the world is a better place because Swedish cars exist.
I desperately want to like them, but they say nothing to me.
I remember when I tested a brand new A220 (a car I cross-shopped with the 1er). It had lane keep assist warning-o-matic. It was hopeless, aggressively yanking the wheel to keep you in the lane when you got somewhat close to the white lines... I hated it.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Interesting that you mention the A220... The control system I work on is included in a slightly faster A220.
If you're into that sort of thing, which neither of us are, I hear that the XC90 is quite good at what it does.
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"
Last edited by Kitdy; 11-01-2019 at 07:55 AM.
The A220 test drive stems from the time someone told me it was time to replace the Alfa, I though the sensible thing to do was have something with a little bit more power and better built and my family had a good relationship with the local Mercedes-Benz dealer. Much before I decided that... **** it all and go with the straight six-engined monster.
The test drive lasted for about 30 minutes, during which I tested it (mainly) on a motorway doing highish speeds (because most of my miles used to be high speed motorway driving). The first time the lane keeping bot-o-matic intervened caught me off guard and really rather startled me. Then I was just provoking it and discovered that while it would detect thick white lines separating the road from the ditch it would not detect the discontinuous lines separating the lanes, so you could cross them without activating the indicators. It is as if the system knew it was in German car and prevented you from getting killed to death but not from acting like a dick.
I wanted to find the button that disabled it... but unfortunately, this being a modern Mercedes, there weren't any. It was all covered in touch screens and haptic movement multimedia devices. So it was hopeless.
My car has cruise control and I rarely use it, even in situations where it most definitely could be used.
I do find practical the speed limiter though. I use it far more often than the cruise control.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Speed limiter sounds like a fantastic feature. I always wanted irz and did not know it existed.
It is.
I use it on ring roads with heavy but flowing traffic. They are heavily laden with speed cameras and do not where all of them are.
In these conditions a regular cruise control is annoying (as the variable speeds will make you engage-disengage it constantly or else you will crash into the Corsa in front of you) and you can inadvertently go above the speed limit following other cars. However with speed limiter I can follow naturally the traffic flow without paying attention to the speedometer knowing I will never be caught speeding.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
Is now the time to say that I don't like the way AMG V8s sound? *ducks for cover*
While America cannot top the illustrious 718d, we do have the 3800. I know some love the messed-up sound of a 90° V6, I do not.
Speed limiters!? What an age we live in... Lane-keeping assist is another of my bugbears; it works poorly on the potholed cash-strapped roads of post-secession-vote Quebec and I'm sure equally-poorly on the squiggly and valued-added "artistic" lane demarcations of tax-rich Europe.
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"
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