VAG has certainly made a science of building cars that are nearly Lego-like in their modularity, and that surely is an innovation, and a very cost-effective one at that, but I stand by the last two clauses of my previous post.

Your argument is valid only as long as you ignore the fact that VW has indeed reduced platform diversity in comparison to model offerings vs. what would have been the case 30 years ago. is 30 years too long? Oh right, you mentioned it right there

Bugatti: One. it's expensive, old, and well amortized at this point.

Oh, no, actually I *OWN* a BMW motorcycle. I do have to give the Motorrad division credit for being relatively awesome, though still, in the long term quite risk averse. And again, profit margins come into play. And shall we take a quick look at exactly HOW MANY bikes BMW builds on the same basic engine/trans…

/steps to the center

truth.

The reasons they stopped making them? (prepare for mini rant) The same reason US labor can't compete in the global marketplace and planned obsolescence is a bigger problem than ever DESPITE automated manufacturing improving average quality. The same reason that wall street is getting richer and the rest of the country…

My buddy the Porsche mechanic has an itemized bill for that. it's long. it has trailing zeros. plural.

Sadly the Kurds, as righteously bad-ass and deserving of a hearty "Good on ya'!" as they are, are poorly equipped, outnumbered, have little to no political backing and are semi-surrounded. Jordan is a (relatively) cohesive country with solid political ties, a (relatively) modern and well-equipped military and a…

Is it possible that VW and BMW are quoting SUSTAINED HP, and not PEAK HP (with overboost). This is the reason the US market FieSTa has "more" HP than the euro model, NOT becuase the engine is different, but becuase in the US they can quote peak HP with overboost in advertising litterature, even though that power is…

Love me some E-1xx. The fact that they are mostly newish and tend to be clean a bright inside helps too... A couple years ago I rode one that still had new-plane-smell.

Previous Foci have had the rear fog integrated with the tail lamp assembly though... unless theres a new reg I'm unaware of that requires a center location...?

aw. I want a mode dial :(

Low 3rd brake light? Because Racecar.

Oh yeah, the USB port in the center console under the armrest was kinda annoying... but I thought you were talking about what appears to be the drive mode controller dial ;)

It will be. It HAS to be if they're gonna make money on it.

Thank you Ford, for bringing these to the attention of the American car-buying public and equipping almost all of your vehicles with them.

Per my Girlfriend:

An acquaintance of mine has a 2004 MazdaSpeed Miata. it's nice.

The same, but orange.