Stick a Fork in the US Auto Industry

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by Tuckerfan, Apr 26, 2018.

  1. Diacanu

    Diacanu Comicmike. Writer

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    *Googles the release year for "Roger & Me"*
    '89, yeah, that tracks.
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  2. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    IMO, designers need to work out a visually appealing front where a grill is no longer necessary. The blank face fronts aren't doing it for me.
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  3. ed629

    ed629 Morally Inept Banned

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    My current fault driver is a Grand Marquis, yeah I know it's a grandpa car. I'm averaging 20mpg, and that's with driving to work most of the time in morning and evening traffic. When taking trips out of state, on the highway I average around 25mpg, usually going 75-80mph. I've gotten as high as 28 on the highway. It's been comfortable as a highway cruiser, and can hold a LOT in the trunk.

    All of this...

    IMG_20211025_084257.jpg

    Was able to fit in here...

    IMG_20211025_085414.jpg

    There's actually more in the trunk picture than the picture above it.

    For it's size and weight it has decent acceleration, no problem getting on the highway and getting up to highway speeds, no problem in accelerating and passing cars when needed. Also handles surprisingly well. Drivetrain is pretty bulletproof, can easily go 200k plus miles or more. 300k isn't uncommon.

    My baby is one of these though. I've had it since'97. Only 110k miles on it.

    fl0117-267620_1@2x.jpg

    I've also had an another Grand Marquis, Explorer, Civic, Chevy Impala, Oldsmobile Aurora, Camaro, Lazer.

    The previous Grand Marquis bought at 110k, died at 250k (paid $3000), Explorer I bought in 2001, a 96 model. It had 50k miles on it, died at 250k miles. The Civic had 50k on it, bought it and then sold it two years later at 70k for what I paid for it. The Impala bought with 60k miles, died at 180k miles (only paid $3000 for it), the Aurora was given to me, it had 90k miles on, died at 210k miles. The Camaro had 20k on it, sold it with 60k on it (it died on the dealer after me about a month later, traded it in on the Mustang at a dealer, they contacted me expecting me to take it back and give the Mustang back). The Lazer had around 60k on it, died at around 140-150k.

    For me, I've had better luck with Ford vehicles than GM\Chevy, so has my sister. The worst cat my sister had was a Mercedes 500SL that her ex-husband had bought for her, it had 30ish-k on it, she sold it at 50k, that car had all sorts of issues with it. Her Civic was used, and she got about 50-60k out of it. She traded it in on a Ranger, the car died at the dealer lot. The dealer ditched it at a parking lot, she was contacted by the police since it was abandoned. Her Ranger had about 20k on it, it has almost 300k on it now. She had a TransAm bought new, she sold it as it was giving her issues.

    My mom had owned two Mercury Sables, and now is on a Focus Hatchback Titanium. The two Sables each made it to around 200k.
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  4. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  5. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    I drove my 2012 Mazda3 five speed manual for eight years before I traded it in 2020 for a new Mazda3 (yeah, I like 'em). The 2012 had about 45,000 miles on it when I traded it and I thought "somebody's gonna get a nice car for a good price if somebody at the dealership doesn't buy it." It wasn't anything fancy, just basic transportation with good A/C0 and heater. Decent radio, I never had any repairs, just routine maintenance. Anyway, less than a year later I got a registered letter from a wholesaler in Nampa (about 20 miles outside Boise) saying that the insurance company had declared "my" car a total loss. After the initial WTF? I called the place and it appeared that 1) someone had wrecked it, and 2) the dealer had messed up the paperwork process of transferring the title. Anyway after being in the hands of someone who really liked it and took proper care of it, some dipshit bought it and wrecked it and off it went to big scrapyard in the sky. Yeah, it wasn't fancy, but it was a good car for someone who's needs are simple. Instead some asshole bought it. This kind of assholery makes me channel my inner Uncle Albert. :brood:
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  6. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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  7. The Original Faceman

    The Original Faceman Lasagna Artist

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    No. Everyone has to buy super expensive EVs. Corvette EV brand huh? Soon there won't be anyone able to purchase new vehicles.
  8. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    I think an electric station wagon makes sense to focus on. With all the DIY stuff, and people having families the extra room comes in handy when driving local. Save the gas when you are doing shopping and lugging the kids around.
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  9. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    The sedan as a body type is a luxury item.

    And over >80% of these ‘SUVs’ aren’t actually SUVs (meaning trucks: body on frame, traditional engine mount and RWD). They are “Crossover (meaning cars: unibody, transverse mounted, FWD) SUV”s.

    AKA Station Wagons that have been lifted 6” and made to look manly.

    The death of cars has been greatly exaggerated. The car companies just made their cars look like trucks and told men they were trucks and now they are the most popular segment of the American market.

    But yeah. Sorry. The Sedan is dead or at least a specialty now. Hatchbacks and C/SUVs are where it is at. For good reason. Why waste all of that space behind the C Pillar? Aesthetics over practicality? There is a word for that: Luxury.
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2022
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  10. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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    I saw two of those mustang SUV’s on my way to work today, both blue. Ugly as fuck.
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  11. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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  12. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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    I don’t want the weight in the back of a FWD or the view/accessibility into the trunk. You lose half the square footage (except in the few cases (Bolt FTW here) where you have multi-level storage), and you don’t actually get any extra cubic footage cause you can’t let anything stack higher than the cargo cover or it becomes obvious there’s shit in your trunk to steal (assuming having the cover deployed at all isn’t an invitation to get your window broken in the first place. Spoiler: it is.) And I sure as hell don’t want the lift or the wider wheelbase. Just makes it harder to get into parking spots or make tight turns.
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  13. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  14. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    D8F2B336-715A-4E38-8A0F-0E065B0FACC7.jpeg
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  15. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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  16. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  17. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    GM continues to fuck themselves. GM plans on ditching the Android Auto and/or CarPlay features from their upcoming electric vehicles. Why? Because they want to use their own proprietary software. Officially, this is because GM says that on EVs, things like the infotainment systems and navigation systems are so deeply intertwined with the car's systems that they can't use Android Auto or CarPlay in them.

    In reality, this is bullshit. The simple truth is that they want all the personal data on owners that they can get (and then resell), so if you can just use your car as a larger screen for your phone, and have all that stuff be stored in someone else's software, they don't get any of that. And while GM will tell you that since the system that will run their cars is based on Android, you'll still be able to run all your favorite apps, this is also bullshit. See, because GM will have its own app store, where you get your apps from, so even if you can log in with your Android info, that doesn't mean all your apps will be available to you. Because they have to be submitted to the GM app store and flagged for use in cars.

    The average age of a car on the road is 10 years. The nice feature of things like CarPlay and Android Auto is the stuff that hooks into your phone is little more than a glorified monitor and sound system. So, it doesn't matter if your car's a few years old, you can still run new apps and updated software, as they're all on your phone. GM says that they're committed to supporting some of the software on their system for 8 years. Imagine the resale hit you're going to take on a car that can't have its software system updated. Imagine if your car won't let you use your favorite app because it's either not in their store or because the hardware in your car is too old to run it.

    Tesla has been able to get away with using their own proprietary system since if you wanted an electric car, they were pretty much the only game in town. That's changing. Unless GM manages to come up with something lightyears better than CarPlay and Android Auto (dubious for any car maker, IMHO), I think they're going to get clobbered in the market place.
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  18. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    I agree, it sounds like a way to force a car to be obsolete. Of course, they seem to be learning that from the recent switch to cars with smartphone compatibility. My nephew actually would not drive the old ford pickup his father's family gave him because it had no connectivity with his phone. They thought he was going to be thrilled with the big old tonka truck because he needed to man up some with his friends. None of them wanted to be in that old beater because it did not have any computerized gadgets.

    Anyway, I think I fell in love with toyota after my last car.
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  19. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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    They tried to do this before, like 10-12 years ago. The developer experience was laughably bad, even when they were taking what I'd consider heroic measures to market it. Just getting access to SDKs and documentation was behind like 3 layers of bureaucracy. And that's when they were sponsoring hackathons and sending sales engineer types to them with whole dashboards and stereos. I think of ~60 teams at one of those, only one or two were able to actually get enough access in time to do anything with it, and the level of access to the car offered was pretty pathetic. While I'm sure the documentation situation won't be as bad (because you can always use Google's Android docs), I don't imagine the rest will go any better.
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  20. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Historically, automakers have been bad at computerizing things. There's a large swath of cars from the mid-to-late 80s that were just absolute garbage because automakers didn't understand computers. GM offered an 8-6-4 engine that was an absolute disaster. (The engine was supposed to be able to "turn off" cylinders to better improve fuel economy. While the idea was sound, the execution was anything but.) And for a decade or more, Chrysler told anyone who had problems with the computerized transmissions in their cars to buy an aftermarket chip for the transmission as the aftermarket company had solved the problem better than Chrysler could.

    I can't see any of that changing unless GM's managed to hire a bunch of ex-Googlers, etc. to develop the stuff.
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  21. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Yeah, about that.
    The supervisor at one of my previous jobs bought one of those new, generic-looking, Jeep Wagoneer or Grand Wagoneers, I don't know which, and all-told it was $100K. I was like, WTF? It looks like every other ginormous SUV on the road. And if Jeep is getting that much for theirs, the others can't be that far behind. WTF can afford something like that, and if I was going to blow almost as much as the house I was born in sold for in the mid-90s, it damned sure wouldn't be on something like that.

    Then he died about a year later from pancreatic cancer and I was like, "Oh, I get why he didn't care how much that thing cost. He wasn't going to have to worry about paying it off!" Still not something I'd buy if I knew I had less than a year to live, but yeah, I suppose if I knew I didn't have long, I'd probably buy some overpriced POS to have fun in while I still was on this Earth.
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  22. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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    Huh, I had no idea partial engine shutoff was a thing so long ago. Interesting that it hasn’t become more popular to improve MPG. It’s only on, what, a dozen models nowadays?
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  23. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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    Some friends of mine had that feature on their SUV and they felt like whatever you save on petrol you end up giving back on new starters. :clyde:
    Last edited: May 9, 2023
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  24. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Both the '15 and '18 MINIs I've owned had that feature standard, but truthfully, the best thing I did to save on gas was to move to a city where I didn't have to do 90 on my commute every day to keep up with the flow of traffic :bigass:
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  25. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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  26. Order2Chaos

    Order2Chaos Ultimate... Immortal Administrator

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    It's still an SUV, and we have no idea about its range or price. I'm not thinking about it at all.
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  27. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    Somewhere around here I have a copy of an article from a WWII magazine like Popular Mechanics that told folks how to do that with their cars to save on gas during the war. It wasn't something you could switch on and off, but it did let you turn your V-8 into a 4-banger. Things like top speed and acceleration were far from spectacular, of course. I mean, when you're starting with a 60 HP engine to begin with and you take away a couple of cylinders, you're not exactly going to have a speed demon vehicle.
    That's a slightly different feature. That turns the engine off at things like stop lights. What I'm talking about is when you reach cruising speed (say 65, on the highway), the engine stops sending air and fuel to all of the cylinders in the engine. Instead, it only provides fuel and air to some of them.
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  28. Jenee

    Jenee Driver 8

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    I'm about 30+/- miles from work. If I take the interstate, going 70 - 80 mph, I get about 30ish mpg. If I take the... main streets, going 40 - 50 mph, I get about 40 mpg.
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  29. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    One of our newest fleet vehicles at work is a Ford Escape has that. I've driven it a couple of times in recent weeks while my regular SUV was in the shop.

    That stop light feature is annoying as fuck. :brood:
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  30. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    The older of the two Mercedes Metris vans my station has uses the feature. It's fucking annoying considering how stop and go box to box delivery is, and it kills the ac every time the engine cycles off.

    My route had one of the two brand news ones... Then the van bagged a fucking deer while I was returning to the station a couple weeks back :brood::(

    :salute: