The reality is that Saudi oil is the most abundant on earth (thanks to Venezuela’s collapse) and costs about 3x less than getting oil from fracking (the method that allowed the US oil production boom). All Saudi Arabia has to do is open the taps and prices fall.

It used to be that you knew it was going to rain every afternoon but it didn’t affect plans or anything because you also knew the storm would last maybe 15-30 minutes. Now the rain doesn’t stop for days at a time and one heavy storm can frequently flood streets and cause damage. I don’t know how anyone can deny that…

One factor in me leaving Florida was witnessing the increasingly more intense afternoon thunderstorms. They’ve always been part of Florida summer, but over my life they went from brief afternoon thunderstorms to intense monsoons with enough energy to blow down trees and cause pretty intense flooding. It’s also raining…

This is the problem with the dealership model in general. They are the actual customers to carmakers, and the more they buy the bigger the discounts they receive. The whole system incentivizes dealers to buy and turn as many cars as possible until their lots are too full. Then the manufacturer kicks in ever increasing…

Yes, right now. It was a general question about incentives if you order a vehicle. Knowing that outside of this temporary chip shortage is good if you decide to wait until production is back to normal. Despite the fact that manufacturers claim to hate stacking money on cars they seem to love high sales figures more,…

I recently had a new loaner for a couple of days that gave me that new car bug but the dealer only had a handful of cars on the lot and of course there are no deals to be had now so it was pretty easy to resist.

You can get the manufacturer incentives when ordering but you miss out on the manufacturer to dealer incentives that are typically applied to models that are stacking up on lots that can get you the biggest total discounts. Who knows if those days will ever return though. Ford said what everyone else is already…

The Japanese pioneered that throttle trick to make their cars feel faster than they were since the days when they were woefully underpowered. Mazda is the worst offender IMO. If you daily a car like this and get into a Porsche it’ll feel crazy slow at first because of their much more linear throttle. You have to…

From what I’ve read around it looks like each company is having to pick and choose where to use the chips they can get. Seems like they are cutting out some low end options so far but I can imagine getting a manual saves a lot of basic chips that would be needed for the automatic.

Dropped my car off for service today and they said they were down to just ten new cars on the lot, ten total for all models. They normally have 100 or so.

This being Tesla the trucks would have likely been delayed anyway, but the chip shortage is real. I dropped off my car for service today and asked how bad they’d been affected. Service guy said they were down to ten new vehicles on the lot. Ten. They also had several new cars that couldn’t be sold yet because they…

I’ll make everyone mad by saying that I agree Hyundai is going too far with styling, but Mazda is just as terrible on the other end of the spectrum. They are utterly boring, outdated cars to look at, and they all have a very cheaply made quality about them that I can’t put my finger on.

The ability to open/close the top at neighborhood driving speeds alone is worth having a power top.

I decided to list my house for 23% over what it’d been appraised at a few months before (I’d had it appraised thinking about selling/HELOC etc). It was also high for my neighborhood at the time. Sold for full asking price in 3 days and ended up appraising. A week after I was under contract my neighbor two houses over…

Not to mention there are now several states with more job openings than unemployed people, so they literally cannot fill every position.

Unless this has changed with the 2020 MY and newer BMW will definitely sell you a base model with vinyl seats, a very basic stereo, no driving aids, basic headlights etc. Their base models are much less well equipped than most non luxury brand base models.

Could it not still be in transport mode if he’d jumped in it right after it came off the truck?

Agree completely. The first Millenia had a much more luxurious look than this redesign and are still beautiful today. This one looks fine but more generic, and too much like the awful last 626 that soldiered on for way too long.

The last 929 was such a gorgeous vehicle I’d much rather find one of those in good shape (as much as I like the Millenia S). This car came out as Mazda was facing financial doom and had already left their glory days in the past. I’d be a little worried about what costs were cut at the last minute on this (which is…

Isn’t the same guy responsible for the dumb name changes at Caddy and Infiniti? I’m pretty sure it is. Caddy should’ve debuted dramatic new models with any of the famous names they’ve used in the past instead of just changed to another dumb alphanumeric system that no one will ever understand or care about.