One really retarded cost-cutting feature shared with the Opel Astra - no temperature gauge.

Fuck the TV, look outside, there's a whole world out there.

That thing's actually really good to drive.

If it gets chrome heads, it becomes an Alfa.

This one's based on the Focus. Still van though.

We call them - monospace.

Oooh, the white van - the truck of Europe.

You're not being rude at all. As I said I am uninformed. I do however think that we have to get out of this big companies stranglehold on governments: they keep being badly managed, and they keep threatening the governments with job loss, and keep getting taxpayer money - not only in the U.S. but in Europe also. As…

Chrysler was liquidated, and then sold off - it's now FIAT. My (absolutely uninformed) point is that: once you break those big, mis-managed, companies into small pieces, entrepreneurial investors will scoop them up and make something of the factories and of the know-how. Competition and development will follow,…

like, um, somebody got a leg-up.

I was thinking about this the other day. What if they'd been liquidated, all those factories would've been bought up, and probably the people would've been re-hired. Or maybe it'd given start to 2-3 other new auto makers. Bad management is a disease you cannot root out, like bad cancer.

GM just might be the safest automaker in the near future, nobody will want to buy their produce after this fiasco (for some time).

Now that VW owns Italdesign, they should get those Italians back on it.

The was c70 handbuilt in sweden.

Dacias run on previous gen Renault tech. No R&D involved, production lines in place. A formula that's proven really popular and profitable for Renault.

I learned something new. Thanks :)

What motivates the systems on modern military aircraft : do they have electric or some other way of moving the control surfaces?

Modern planes have hydraulics, old school planes have cables, pulleys and muscles.

I'd go with french cars. Had a 97 Renault Mégane, good car overall, but every time something needed to be done, my mechanic friend was swearing like crazy. To get to many components you'll need a ton of different tools, 4-5 of which are different (philips, torx, hexagon and even a three blade star type) screwdrivers,…

wow, american (for the time) safety regs hard at work. The original had a quite decent looking front, for its time. It looks like a completely different car.