Opel was experimenting with transparent aluminum in a nod to a Star Trek movie that hadn’t been made yet. There’s your magic.

Oddly enough, the Gremlin’s fuel tank was nearly 1.5 gallons larger than the Matador/Ambassador’s. Have to wonder why.

“. . . like most Internet car people, tends to use British slang and terms frequently.”

“We intend to deepen the emotional bond between our customers and the brands they love.” — Mamatha Chamarthi, head of Stellantis’ software business.

Definitely not for me but I guess I’m supposed to look at it objectively. Fine. It’s a twenty-one year old stretch limo that only seats four paying passengers, maybe five in a pinch. The fact that it’s a Mercedes just means my maintenance costs are going to be higher, the styling from that era of Mercedes isn’t going…

The EPA test cycle doesn’t include burnouts or 150 mph top speeds. If it did that MPGe rating would be a lot lower.

Yup. People in 1957 were paying in 1957 dollars, not 2021 dollars. 

What do you expect for $55,000? Kia level quality??

Asking price ≠ selling price.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” — Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Co., South Bend, Ind.

Private party sales are always “as is”. It goes without saying. But, yeah, the fact the seller feels it necessary to include that reminder . . .

There’s a twelve step program for everything. Surely there’s one for people who don’t know how to drive stick.

The only truck-like chore these trucks ever have to undertake is to make their suburban owners look like cowboys. That’s asking a lot of any vehicle.

Cheap cars are bought by cheap people. Case in point: the Yugo. The service interval on timing belt replacement was 40,000 miles. Given the cost of the service how many Yugos out there ever had their timing belts replaced? (And, sure, some of them didn’t make it to 40,000 before blowing up.) 

Forty-five minutes of Demuro waving his arms in the air would make me dizzy.

No problem. Whether I was correct or not, it is obviously true that a very large number of cars are purchased at a price below that of the average of all cars sold. It is also true that the new car market is nearly devoid of EV offerings in that price range. To approach a goal of fifty per cent market penetration…

Perhaps so but manufacturers build cars to satisfy market demand as it exists, not as it ought (in your eyes) to be.

Read my post more carefully. I said “about half of all the money spent on cars is for cars costing less than $45,000". The figure of $45,000 as the average transaction price of new cars comes from Kelly Blue Book and applies to new cars sold in September of 2021. It is a figure that has been widely quoted since it was…

The Bolt and Leaf are small four-door hatchbacks. Families are looking for compact and midsize crossovers and SUVs. As things currently stand an EV like that typically costs around $50,000 and up.

Point well made. Investing in EVs makes more sense for companies that sell cars in the $50-60,000 range and up. But if the average transaction price in the U.S. is around $45,000 then about half of all the money spent on cars is for cars costing less than $45,000. Some manufacturers operate mostly in that part of the…