How am I wrong in saying that Land Rover is making a big profit with the Evoque because it’s development cost was shared with Ford when they were developing the Mondeo and other Volvo platforms? I am not saying that’s a bad thing, I am just saying Tata Motors is making a nice profit off of the shared platform.

You’re right, I was exaggerating with my Passat quip. Also looking at the cars based on the PL71 platform it look like PL71 platform was originally built as a luxury car platform and then slightly priced down for the Touareg. Still though a price range of 40,000 to 100,000+ dollars for cars built on the PL71 platform…

This rests on an Audi platform right? Which means it’s basically a lifted Passat. Wow, in terms of R&D and manufacturing costs vs MSRP these small luxury SUVs must be the most profitable things ever made. Take the Range Rover Evoque for example, it’s built on the Ford Mondeo platform which is comparable to the Ford…

Interesting... Looks like the designers took a number of cues from the real life helmet for the F-35.

Evidently extraction workers are miners and oil rig workers, resource extraction, though I don’t know why loggers don’t also fall under that umbrella...

That’s about what I expected, jobs where you have to deal with unpredictable extreme weather, heavy industry and high places are very dangerous and can be deadly...

Where did they even get a first-gen iBook in the first place? And why/how is it running a knockoff version of Windows 3???

Downtime and vacations are a dirty word in corporate America and despite how busy we are, we still aren’t the most productive workers in the world.

- Margaret Atwood

Is the term Millennial still a synonym for Gen-Y? If so I think thats where the problem lies, people born in the 1980s through the early 1990s most likely have Boomer parents while people born in the late 1990s through a few years ago most likely have Gen-X parents. For some inexplicable reason though we are still…

A lot of people who are not working in the military industrial complex don’t like the situation either, but if you want a realpolitik answer as to “why?”: Paying for our partners and allies security gives us a lot of leverage in terms of international relations.

Yeah, I don’t know where this trend of needing to sound insulate the hell out of non-luxury cars. It it for millennials who grew up in the back of BMWs and Mercedes who now refuse to buy a Mustang if it doesn’t have Bentley sound insulation?

I think what red014 means is that it’s just another useless gimmick that companies like Toyota put on cars so that they can add $2,000 for a “Sport” trim. You can downshift your auto just fine by putting the shifter on the floor in the 2 or 3 position.

Fortunately this trend is finally starting to go the other way, see ND Miata vs NC Miata.

Volkswagen Beetle v. MOM HE HIT MEEEE!!!

I think the point of the photograph was to say that the 12 year old girl in the photo has been through and seen as much shit in here 12 years as many of us in the west see in 20 years.

I thought of that 3rd combination too when writing my first comment. I think the key thing there is “acceleration”. If you have your foot on the clutch and the throttle then you may still be moving, but you are no longer building up speed and momentum making your already panicked situation even worse. So in a…

I don’t mean to sound like yet another manual transmission fanboy, but there just isn’t a panic state with a manual that can result in unintended acceleration. With a manual when you perform a panic stop you stomp your two feet down on two pedals, the brake and the clutch. This will result in you stopping your car…

Oh, I thought you were using the modern informal definition of ‘protectorate’ and not the official international law definition. Because the US started its empire building (now called sphere of influence) late in the game we have been hesitant to make the nations that we have a lot of influence in official…

Yeah, I think now we are pushing Egypt to become a “we give you military aid, do what we say” type ally in the guise of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This arrangement has it’s own huge problems because these countries our only our allies when it is convenient for them.