I drove manuals through three years’ of godawful DC traffic. Yes it sucked, particulary with a peaky modified small displacement turbo engine, but it was enjoyable enough elsewhere that I didn’t care.

Of course no one follows the rules 100% of the time. You can’t ever fully eliminate the risk of contracting the virus other than staying at home and having zero in person human contact whatsoever. If you want to do that, fine. If you have pre-existing medical conditions that put you at especially high risk of a bad…

Good points. I think a distinction needs to be made between “transferring to a workplace with active, uncontrolled Covid-19 outbreak” and “transferring to a workplace where people aren’t showing up for fear of getting Covid-19".

“People are just more practical with their money these days, and tastes have changed” = “Upper class tastes in the 21st century are boring-as-shit social media fueled conformity.”

This has been a problem with the Germans’ lineups for some time IMHO. Part of it is a strategy to poach sales from mainstream automakers (A/CLA/GLA/GLB), but further up the line they all seem to follow a reactive “monkey see, monkey do” strategy. Each time BMW or M-B or Audi release some new product filling a…

Jalopnik writer: posts news about some extreme high performance car

Not sure I see the point of going down this route. Putting a spacious 4-door cabin would kill bed space on a vehicle that size unless there’s an Avalanche-style mid gate system in place. I’d conceivably be in the market for an affordable truck, but it would need enough bed space to do real work.

Stephen A Smith on ESPN says some ridiculous shit sometimes, but I thought he made a great point on this topic: if we knew this would JUST last a year, then fine - bag sports for a year. We’ll deal. It’s the uncertainty that spooks people though. Human beings hate being in a bad situation with no clear way out. We…

This is why all sports leagues have mandated testing so frequently. It gives league officials ammo to shut them down. Otherwise they’d do exactly as you mentioned.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m totally done- the new M5 is pretty awesome, cars like the M2 are close to BMW’s roots, etc. - but on the whole their decisions to ape other carmakers’ strategies (especially Audi) and de-emphasize their driver-centric heritage in favor of other priorities (green cars, electro-gadgets,…

You know what else is impressive? The fact that Tesla’s cars - the first truly excellent mass production BEVs, a historic leap in automotive innovation - are practically a sideshow at this point. It’s a testament to the public stupidity circling around the company - “helped” in no small part by Elon, Tesla fanbois,…

The truck criticism was less about 1st Gear in particular and more about the overall tone Jalop uses when addressing the subject. They can’t resist endless owner stereotypes and political potshots, coupled with shots at the manufacturers who make them; they even slip a couple in 2nd Gear today. It’s like a right wing…

I don’t own a truck. Never have. Just getting frustrated with the increasingly myopic stuff going on here.

Never claimed they were any good. Argument was about the contents of their lineup, not how well they were executing on said contents...

Correct. V8. Or at least the ATS-V’s old turbo 6. Not the watered down V-Series cars on the market. Cadillac is rumored to be releasing a CT5-V “Blackwing” (or some other badge) with a refreshed LT4 in it. Should fix the problem.

Caddy (and every other brand looking to turnaround sales) claims that about almost every vehicle they release. I didn’t interpret that quote as anything more than marketing spiel.

1st Gear: We get it. Jalopnik hates the current Silverado, hates big pickup trucks, doesn’t much like the people who buy them, and doesn’t like US automakers either.

I’m skeptical of their approach too, but this is a poor argument for two reasons:

This. The butchering of basic statistics by the media is appalling, as is their failure to give any context beyond headline figures. This is a serious situation as it, but the media insists on exaggerating it to score political points.

The problem seems to be adapting a CVT to the wide range of operating conditions faced by a car. It’s not a problem on a snowmobile, where you work within a relatively narrow range of speeds. Cars OTOH need to accelerate smoothly around town, run at neighborhood speeds, crawl in traffic, accelerate briskly to merge or…