Well, I hate to break this to you and ruin your rant, but most people in Metro Detroit - DON’T WORK IN THE AUTO INDUSTRY.

My ex-wife bought a 1977 Mustang II Mach 1 with the 302 automatic - it really wasn’t a very good car at all - and it ran like CRAP!

No, the bean counters had nothing to do with it - the TECHNOLOGY was not ready and they did whatever they could to meet the emissions standards.

My ex-wife had a 1977 Mustang II Mach 1 - same 302 engine, but automatic.

No, I don’t think you are looking at the real facts here; you appear to have some outdated bias going on.

You’re way off base about GM.

SW and electronics are already huge parts of vehicles.

Neither are the automaker OEM’s, the three parts you mention are all built by suppliers.

Yeah, I have had several cars with them.

I have only seen two in the wild - but the first one sticks out - it was beige paint and top and looked like a giant breast rollling down the road. Remember the Woody Allen movie that did just that?

Buick LaCrosse eAssist with every option except heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise and cooled seats. So it has lane departure warning, blink spot detection, collision warning (you can set the distance the warning comes on at), back up camera and rear parking sensors.

I had a 2001 Olds Aurora that was absolutely a great car and had a ton of standard features - the usual subjects, like dual temp control, heated memory seats/mirrors/radio station favorites, it even put the station and volume driver 1 was listening to after driver 2 listened to that rap crap. No back up camera, but…

So far no issues with any of the sensors other than the backup camera getting salt spray covering the lens - two years in SE Michigan, so yeah, its not an issue.

What is this TMPS you mention?

Wow that’s great!

Quick - contact the NHTSA and have them recall all the birds!

My wife resisted at first too - we bought her a compact with 5 speed stick just prior to bringing our first kid home. When kid three came along, she wanted a midsize car. I got a van for a company vehicle and we started using that every time we went out with the kids, plus room for Papa.

The development of the previous gen Cruze was done when funds were very tight at GM.

The RS has always been an appearance package - see Camaro RS SS.

Oh, the hard work is already done for this chassis to be VERY entertaining - see Opel Astra OPC - its ridiculously expensive in Europe, but there is a lot than can be done for less to make a very attractive and competitive hot hatch for this market.