I’m not really sure who it’s for anymore - the only people with nostalgia for the original T1/T2 is going to be in their 70s and won’t likely need that big a car, and anyone who is starting a family and wants a minvan alternative hasn’t seen VW sell a van in the US for 20+ years, so it’s not a special option.

Bought a new Mk7 GTI SE in 2016 for ~$29,000. My payment was around $541 a month, and that felt like a lot, even making good money. I cannot fathom how some people pay double that.

They seemingly all decided it was a great idea to start with electric pickup trucks and other massive motors, until they didn’t quite take off as expected. Now, Ford is backtracking on this drive for big EVs and will reportedly redirect resources to develop smaller, more affordable electric models.

I love the outside look of the Polestar 2, but I cannot fathom why the interiors are all monotone black on black on black. It’s so depressing that they didn’t have a few splashes of color (beyond the seatbelt; I can’t see that when I’m driving)

Without any real experience, a teen driver is almost guaranteed to crash their first car, so you probably want to get them something with airbags, anti-lock brakes and stability control. And considering how many fender benders take place in school parking lots, a backup camera or parking sensors are probably a…

IMO Tesla - mainly Model 3/Y - now fill the same role as the Prius in 2008: they are so common that you barely register them. They’ve become so mass market that there’s no one identifiable group of people buying them.

At this point, drivers are even skeptical of semi-autonomous features like automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assistance.

Exactly this. As soon as the OEMs offered apps that could show you where your car was and things like whether the windows were down or how much fuel was left in your tank, this is just the very logical, very small next step.

That seems like it was just pressure from Toyota, Nissan, and even Hyundai who owned the casual “I just want to haul my bikes and some plants a few times a year” crowd

I honestly don’t know why we haven’t put a cap on truck size for non-commercial use. Don’t own a business or ranch, etc.? You don’t need a full-size truck. If you do need to tow or haul heavy shit regularly, make it so you can’t buy and operate a truck without a CDL.

Also at the beginning of the saga, Android 20 ripped out this carbureted 4-cyllinder from a car that’s so detailed they must have had a reference model.

I’m all for the style and their love of actual colors, but also immediately thought of the 1991 Golf Country:

$5K just for parts and how much more in time and labor to install? That’s not worth doing on a 5-10 year old car that overall is probably only worth $10-20K.

In form and spirit, perhaps, but the original 2-door Insight ended production a year before the start of the 2nd Gen Fit and 5 years before the CR-Z, so those latter two were more contemporaries than either was to the Insight.

This makes sense. In Japanese mirai (ミライ) means “future”, which not only explains the futuristic Ride Pokemon’s name, it also fits with the long-shot hydrogen-powered Toyta Mirai fuel cell car that they keep trying to make successful.

Same - I always thought the ELR was to the Volt what the Honda CR-Z was the Fit - same underlying car, just made coupe-y and for a much more niche audience.

Just had a friend buy an old Volt and cannot find a replacement for the worn out batteries in the thing - he’s down to just 8-10 miles before the generator kicks on. Just as a fair warning to anyone considering that the cheap price comes with biiig asterisks.

This. If you don’t like airplane noise, you can look up if a house is in a flight path of a busy airport, or at the very least home buyers should have paid better attention to the noise before moving there.

Yeah, but with that rectangular belt line and a smooth aero roof, it has the weird “roof from car A glued onto car B” just like the Jaguar I-Pace

I know I’m the CRZ guy, but 1000% to the interior discoloration on the Volvo. It took me months to find a used CRZ that wasn’t stained like crazy. Something about that mid-2010s gray cloth does not perform well at all