I’m not sure that Rolls Royces are old money cars any more. The true old money car, according to Top Gear, is the Subaru, since they were originally sold at farm machinery dealers in the UK, minimizing the chances of bumping into the general public when car shopping.

In Canada we did not get the RWD E91, but I agree that probably would have been much better.

Too expensive, particularly with that rust, which as others have commented suggests some kind of past accident damage to that area of the car. Also, these cars are just not that great. I had a 2010 manual E91 xdrive. Yes, there is a novelty in having a manual BMW wagon, given how rare they are in North America, but…

Porsche probably does over-engineer everything, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have reliability / durability issues. This generation of engine is known for the IMS bearing issue (although apparently a failure is actually pretty rare) and bore scoring issues. With a car that has been modified and potentially driven…

It also can’t be considered to be that nice either. I’m sure the engine sounds great, but what other qualities does it really have? An ancient interior with I’m sure the same squishy, unsupportive seats that are in your average rental 300? Isn’t the chassis essentially that of a 1990s E-Class? Low rent dealer network?

Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. It got lots of flak when new for being ugly relative to the 456 it replaced, but I still love the idea of four-seat Ferraris with v12 and manual option, and this is the most modern iteration of that concept you can get.

Yea, I guess they want to avoid blowback from people who just bought an S or X.

There will probably be a future option to unlock more range for $$$. I think the short-lived 40 Model S was like this - identical to the 60 and could be turned into a 60 with a software update. Sound like a way of clearing out inventory at a lower price without the appearance of price slashing the existing models.

I’ve just experienced this in a non-Tesla EV. Yesterday I did quite a bit of highway driving in my Ioniq. At higher speeds, the remaining range readout would often drop by 2 km or even more for every km driven. Today I’ve been driving around town with the climate control off, seeing the range drop as little as 1 km…

Well perhaps you don’t understand how “investment costs” work, since your argument does not make sense. At this stage in its production volume, Tesla had positive gross margins (in excess of what many mature car companies have today). Gross margins are not affected by the costs of plant and property, except to the…

Ten years ago, virtually zero per cent of vehicle buyers were thinking about getting an EV. There was a survey of 20,000 vehicle owners by EY a few months ago that showed nearly 50% of those in the US were planning to get an EV within 24 months.

I doubt they like their margins, given that they are still at -68% gross margin (compared to Tesla who were at +20% gross margin by the time they got to 50,000 units / year). And they lost $1.3 billion in the last quarter. Put simply, they are still selling vehicles for massively less than the direct input costs, let…

First gear: I’ve also started seeing way more Rivians (including the odd R1S) up in Canada recently. A slightly smaller vehicle with similar styling elements would be pretty appealing, but the R1S is just too big and ungainly. Somehow it manages to look much bigger than the R1T.

I wouldn’t say that the McMurtry is set up specifically for drag racing, and it’s recorded a sub-8-second quarter mile. That is really the impressive thing about these ultra high performance EVs - they can beat most road cars in a drag race, even if those road cars have been obsessively modified for 1/4 mile times.…

In that case, just get an older 911. For me the 997.2 is the peak anyway. Small, with a much more analogue feel than the 991 / 992, helped of course by the amazing hydraulic steering, but still modern and reliable enough to drive daily. Even the base 997.2 is an amazing car, and probably depreciation proof at this…

is it so much to ask for them to make a 911 thats focused on fun and not about lap times that a reasonably wealthy individual can afford?

Yes, Porsche lets you delete the Porsche lettering on the side, and the number, all at no cost!

In the scheme of things, it’s not that limited. For example, North America only got just over 500 991.2 GT3 Touring models, so let’s say about 1,200 globally if the ratio is similar to other Porsches. The 991.2 Speedster was limited to 1948, and it turned out not to be as crazy popular as Porsche thought, at least in…

Serious question related to First Gear: Does Stellantis have a single vehicle across its 14 brands that is a true leader in its category? Of course they skew to sub-prime credit because their vehicles are, across the board, less desirable than the competition. People are picking Stellantis vehicles because they are…

The crazy part about the MX-30 is they managed to make it weigh more than the original base Model 3, which has nearly 2.5x the EPA range. The Jalopnik story about the MX-30 being the EV for American Reality has aged even more poorly than I expected.