When I was a teen driver, my car was $600. Thanks for reminding me I suck at picking parents.

Nobody rolls coal in Manhattan or Brooklyn! Which are kind of the only places you'd want an iQ. And there, you might really want an iQ.

Because in a place like New York, Philadelphia or Chicago, nothing is enjoyable to drive.

I don’t see why an iQ owner should be forbidden from bringing her bike with her, I mean, once you get where you're going, if you can't find a spot where the car plus carrier will fit, just take the carrier off until it's time to go. On the other hand, who thinks "oh, I'll just put it where I'm breaking the law if I…

Weren’t even socialist then? When FDR was the president, the government was the only customer for almost all durable goods, and told every manufacturer what they could and couldn't make, and most consumer goods were rationed?

Ends innovation of internal combustion engines? Seems right on time to me.

So instead of doing a ground-up design, take something from Honda or Toyota that's already been debugged for years.

I didn't have stuff fall off my Bonneville so much, but I did apprentice for two years to keep it that way, and I did have to budget about a hundred bucks a year for lightbulbs.

Ok then, what instead?

Gas engines are winding down; innovation for consumer crap like CR-Vs and RAV-4s is pointless for that reason and because the people who buy them don’t care. Retooling isn’t that a big deal because the smart approach is to flip a coin to decide whether everybody gets a Honda engine, or everybody gets a Toyota engine,…

Oh yeah, I remember the Yugo's 2 liter turbo 4.

Maybe, but for God's sake don't let it be a BMC.

So just do it with a well established model with a solid track record. Toyota or Honda would be the obvious choices.

There’s less than 20 years left for mass produced gas engines. How much innovation will we be missing?

Short cut around that: everybody just use Toyota engines. Problem solved.

What’s the point of spending years developing innovative gas engines when nobody will be making them after 2035? And did Torch say he wanted generic 2 liter turbos in Königseggs and Aston Martins?

I’m sure GM had some trepidation wondering if Olds buyers would reject Chevy 350 V8s and demand Olds 350 V8s. Olds is gone of course, but I don't think that's why.

For the length of time that ICEs have left in the mainstream, there's no point in innovating anyway, and Torch is aiming this idea at the people who don't give a shit what's under the hood as long as it doesn't break. The rest of us can keep driving Humbers and Isotta-Fraschinis like we always have.

Nobody’s making anybody buy a new car with a generic engine. I’ve been buying cars for 37 years and never bought new. Had a 13B rotary, a slant 6, a Caddy 429, a Rocket 455, and a couple of VW flat 4s. And they all had 3 digit prices. (My Toyota pickups and Scions went to 4 digits, though.) Embrace old.

They have buyers trained to pay these prices, why blow it now?