Basically they’re just flexing that they can own so many cars it doesn’t matter if one of them is eye-wateringly expensive and eye-searingly ugly.

Can’t you just get an RS Q8 and get nigh-on the same car at a deep discount?

That’s in Phoenix where surface streets are six-lanes wide, road signs are well-marked and lines brightly painted, and street lights are distinct and easily read by a camera. Complete night-and-day from SF where things are much messier and dynamic at all times (cable cars, double-parking, shitty road markings, unclear …

Americans consider anything that isn’t Ram 2500 sized ‘little’. I called my XC70 ‘big’ here once, wouldn’t you believe ‘iT’s AcTuALly nOt bIg aT AlL’ according to some of the commentariat.

I don’t understand why they didn’t just bring over the petrol version too so that it could be cheaper. Oh, wait... Powershift

Agreed, surprising the Nissan got it correct right out of the gate considering the appalling small-overlap the outgoing Quest had. Maybe they actually learned a thing...

Foxconn has moved on. Their car is coming to production under Luxgen, Yulon’s home-grown Taiwanese car brand.

I mentioned Fessia as a peer of Issigonis, but really, no original Mini? WTF? That little thing basically laid the groundwork for all transverse FWD cars today, popularizing it in a way that really took advantage of such a small power package.

Rented a ‘Corolla or equivalent’ for a weekend in Portland, got tossed the keys to a new Pacifica. Regardless of if you have minivan stigma issues, that 3.6L Pentastar and 9-speed ZF is a way more fun combo than the Toyota 2.0L with 1+CVT (which, to be fair, is a great CVT). Took it all along the coast and even…

I don’t think that’s true. This 3.4L shared dimensions with Ford’s DOHC Duratec and was purported to be somewhat related design-wise. The Volvo engine was specced by engineers in Gothenburg and displaces 4.4L. Wikipedia says this:

The same year Maxima (which was generally considered top-of-the-FWD-family-sedan-segment in terms of power) had 190 hp which, to be fair, scooted it to 60 in around 6.6s. My 2012 XC70 has 325 hp and does the same thing because it weighs 1200 lbs more.

God, I can’t imagine if these sorts of people ever get in an Uber along I-19 in Arizona.

Soooo...Nissan is gonna become the ‘budget’ brand? The justification for not bringing back Renault was always that Nissan was the group’s mainstream offering on this side of the pond and they mostly shared parts and platforms anyway. I guess Mitsubishi is good as dead, Nissan can go downmarket, and Alpine can be their…

It’s dead. Only the original Mitsubishi lives on. Turns out Europe and the Middle East aren’t exactly big markets for midsize utes.

We were discussing aesthetics, not driving dynamics...

Dorky, yes, but at least it was genuinely cool and interesting.

Might have been wacky looking, but widely regarded as excellent.

Nissan was taken over (well, ‘equal alliance’ but same thing) by Renault in ‘99 which coincided with a major cost-cutting and rationalization push by Ghosn. Prior to that they were pretty much up there with the best of the ‘engineering-first’ automakers like Honda, Lancia, or Saab.

Isn’t the Malibu dead, too? seems more likely they’d just call it a ‘Corvette’

For a brief period in the mid 2000s Infiniti had it. The G35 and M45 were winning comparisons and beating the Germans at their own game. Then they got lazy and completely dropped the ball.