And lose that income? Highly doubtful. Take a look at the taxes that california pays into the federal budget and then see what it gets from it. It’s not even close.

1970 MB 250C (coupe). Sure it needs a bit of work, but it's gonna sell for under 2k. It already has some rust and some damage, but it's a gorgeous design.

Ewwww, he touched it.

CA is the 5th largest economy in the world and is currently subsidizing most of middle America. If CA left, the remaining states would be pretty fucked.

Settles weren’t required until I was 6 or 7, and I’m sure as hell not gonna let someone ride in my car without one on. I also hate people who won’t wear them in limos or town cars because somehow those are supposed to be safer.

Right, but I think you’re missing my point. When you’re in that price range and you’re a car reviewer, you’re probably not a Luxobarge buyer. There’s a giant difference between spending 100k on rare lotus and 100k on a S-class with massaging seats. It doesn’t make the S-class or the Tesla bad cars, they just aren’t…

I don’t really know the cars that the reviewers own but it doesn’t surprise me that they don’t buy one. It’s still an expensive car. An expensive luxo-barge at that. Those same reviewers probably also don’t buy 7 series or S-classes either so I see it more of a sign of the type of car they want, not a Tesla vs. the…

Then I would consider that a failure. Concur?

Does it feel more luxurious than the current Phantom or Mulsanne?

To each their own I suppose, but if that’s what you got out of it, you may be the first. I don’t drive one, nor do I want one (I have a lovely AMG that I wouldn’t give up), but I did drive one for a week and it’s a fantastic car to drive. If the toys bother you, I guess that’s why you missed the rest of the car that…

Car reviewers don’t generally buy every car they test (aside from Consumer Reports) so I fail to see the logic there. Maybe you should drive one first and try out that ridiculous giant iPad before you make accusations that have zero grounding in reality.

At least Mexico isn’t on vacation all summer. Italy is infuriating when everything is shut down during random hours of the day.

Totally agree. Part of the beauty of buying a BMW or a MB is how easy it is. The salespeople aren't newbies, they have some years in the industry and know how to deal with other humans. You can still negotiate with them, but I find them to be polite, willing trade partners.

You don’t have to believe it, you can read all about it in Google’s earning reports if you like. Their profit is still massively driven by non-maps search ads. The reason that Google loves maps so much (which incidentally started as a side project for an early employee, just like gmail) is because it gathers metric…

Depends. I much prefer to fly Virgin America, so I’m forced to fly out of LAX if I want to do that. The positive side of that is that T3/Virgin America @ LAX is actually really pretty easy and usually quite empty and fast. Now, T4/American - that is hell incarnate.

The first-gen Maser Quattroporte. I haven’t driven the newer ones, but the first gen had so many fucked-off controls in weird-ass places with icons that meant nothing to me. It drove me insane.

I actually JUST ended my lease on my 2013 E550 last week (and I leased a new CLA45 yesterday which is fantastic but unrelated to this convo). When I bought that car, it was almost impossible to find one, they only make up about 1% of all E-classes. And I don't think I've ever even seen an E550 wagon (too bad because…

Why be penalized? Because the point of those rules is so that the engines have to be at least somewhat reliable. If they are grenades and only last one race, then you lose points. They do it both for money saving reasons and to even the playing field a bit.

I was talking production years, not model years, but for the wagon in specific I think there was only a very small period in 2010 (production year, of model year 2011) where they made them. Would be interesting to see what the #s are for those that are 6.2 wagons actually.

It did indeed have the 6.2 back in 2009/2010 and was replaced by the TT for the 2011+ MYs.