I get how the Germany thing works in theory, but I think it's one of these things that works best in the mind of the PR guy who came up with it. I think the bigger problem is that many Americans in the market for an expensive car are very status conscious.

Doesn't really make sense to me, either. "European" doesn't have the same luster and intrigue it used to have. Bush managed to pull amost of the conservatives to the side of "Europeans hate freedom", and they've stayed there ever since. Liberals increasingly view Europe as tired and angsty with a diversity problem and…

To be honest, I don't quite know why Cadillac is so hell-bent on conquering the European market. They've always been the quintessential American luxury car, they have zero brand equity in Europe, but everybody in the US knows what a Cadillac is supposed to be. The model that comes closest to that traditional idea of a…

I think what Cadillac needs is a serious diesel option. Something with 2 liters or less displacement, maybe 150-170 hp that gets an honest 35-40 mpg. Nobody really buys engines with more than 200hp in Europe, because either they just don't have the money, or where they do, i.e. Germany, it seems to be considered…

I think the problem used to be that you could either get a big by European standards V6, with gas mileage that was acceptable for US market, but pretty hefty for European buyers, or an even bigger V8 which was really out of the question for anybody but the rich and extroverted. They've somewhat improved the situation…

Oh yeah, like I was saying, it's impressive how the Cadillac engineers (or rather the Oldsmobile engineers, since they were the ones that designed the whole FWD package) were able to make an FWD car with that big an engine without any issues.

I know if I were to do a spurious test drive for my own amusement, I'd pick the sweetest ride they have around. A loaded Camaro perhaps.

Now if only I had "under 30,000$". The list for me would be "the best performance cars someone on Craigslist would be willing to trade for a '94 Trans Am that's getting tired".

This is a question as old as cars, but I say it's irrelevant. Much more interesting: how much power is enough?

The Caddy is actually quite renowned for having no noticeable torque steer. They accomplished this with some super neat joint between the axle shafts that I'd be hard pressed to explain now.

It really depends on where you are, I find that police vary wildly in propriety depending on the state. Having lived in Georgia all my life, I can attest to the fact that if you find yourself coming up on a cop car on a rural highway here, you're potentially fucked no matter what you do. If you pass, the cop might be…

It's in Studio City, CA apparently. I think the movies just sort of happened for her. Seeing how she holds six black belts in various disciplines and a 7th degree black in Tang Soo Do, I guess she definitely spent most of her time on martial arts for their own sake.

It's too bad really. She had - and still has - the martial arts chops to be a great lead for beat 'em up flicks. Her acting and screen presence was mediocre but some of the great martial arts heroes weren't exactly thespians either.

Her and Richard Norton were like a team back in the day. Played the European villains in lots of b-movies from HK. Rothrock is mostly remembered for starring in "China O'Brien" which sadly sucked, as was usually the case when Americans tried to copy the HK formula.

Rothrock was/is definitely one of the "realest" female martial arts actors. Yeoh is undeniably a legend, but she's a more of a stuntwoman really (not that it makes her any less awesome).

"Mazda wanted to mess with my cutting phase so badly, they sent a whole tin of delicious cookies right to our office."

Numbers don't tell the whole story, but they are a useful yardstick for performance. And I think we all can agree that in today's traffic 0-60 in significantly more than 7 seconds is a chore.

Some of them were decent, some even surprisingly good handlers by the standards of the time, if optioned right. Mopars generally did quite well on the skidpad, as did Oldsmobile's 442 and surprisingly, the Buick Gran Sport. But others... well, lets just say when a late-60s American road test criticizes the roadability…

While NASCAR racers had a lot more in common with production cars then than the silhouette racers of today, make no mistake, they were extensively modified. Like, all-new suspension and stuff - stock Mopar suspensions of the time are notoriously difficult to adjust, especially if you want to set any kind of positive…

Which is kind of understandable given that Duchovny was a huge egomaniac who had his eye set on Hollywood from basically season 2 onwards, and had to be coddled like a baby (they let him write and direct, even moved filming to LA from Vancouver) and paid vastly more than Anderson to sweeten the deal for him enough not…