No hard data, but when I think back to my more-or-less middle class 70s/80s upbringing I feel like things were more basic. I mean it’s silly, but not every house had an electric can opener on the counter and that $19 kitchen accessory from the Sears catalog seemed like a bit of an extravagance. I can still hear my dad…

Given the relative lack of R-class sales/passenger van sales in general and japan not selling luxury vans over here, this doesn’t seem to cater to anyone but the uber rich that actually would be caught dead being driven around in a minivan

I don’t really see this revolutionizing the auto world. Seems like they are mostly look to sell this as a high end shuttle or taxi. Will probably be out of most people price range and be passenger focused.

A typical household might have been paying the phone company $50-100/mo plus more for additional lines and fees for more services (call waiting - extra, and dont get me started on per minute long distance charges).

While the smart phone and internet obviously weren’t available for purchase, do you have any actual data that people weren’t making tons of frivolous purchases 30 years ago? They still had store catalogues getting mailed out, door to door salesmen, and the home shopping network to buy random stuff from. McDonalds &…

Does this mean Mercedes will be bringing back a “Metris” mid-sized commercial van to the U.S. ? They were a very useful size for hauling stuff in the city...

AI wrote the article? No one with a brain did a sanity check on the numbers? There’s a KBB article that makes the same mistake, quoting current used car values as original MSRP.

False. It takes 2.3 seconds to say “split tailgate”. Meanwhile, the average transaction time for a new Expedition is 5.9 hours.

I think it says more about the car than Tom.

Intensifies 

I’d argue that what ails Nissan today is all the technical and brand-equity debt they incurred under Ghosn. The “Alliance” bled them dry, and they’ve not come back from that yet (and may not ever, given how unforgiving the market is). Ghosn’s overall “vision” was all about cutting corners - lots of flashy concepts,…

I fit the profile,  apart from the new Frontier I don't have any interest in Nissan’s current lineup and am far more interested in either discontinued models like the Xterra or 25 year old JDM stuff.  

OK - So I’m an outlier. We just bought our 4th Nissan. Had a 97 pickup, 16 Murano, 16 Rogue and now a 23 Pro4x.

Frontier is ok, thankfully still NA for those that want to avoid turbos like in nearly every other midsize truck. Z is cool and attractive but too expensive, should slot right between Ecoboost and V8 Mustangs, but is closer to V8 money. GT-R is legendary, but Nissan should have killed it off after a decade of…

To me this is pretty simple. In full disclosure I do not condone nor know any of the finite details however I feel after they ousted Ghosn in 2018 I believe because of Japanese culture, a power move and accusations of corruption (again not sure of all the details). Nissan no longer has a leader with a overall vision…

Well, when I saw the new Frontier, I thought, “I could buy that”. Except I looked at them and there are three issues.

Nissan really shit the bed on the 3-row SUV craze. They tried to get the Armada to command Suburban level pricing without Suburban size. The reliability of those V8s was truly the only value they had in that class of Monster SUV while trying to get the price of much better options (the same with Infiniti and other…

What happened to the days of my ‘88 Pulsar NX? That was a cool little car. Nissan used to be 90% of the quality of a Honda or Toyota at 80% of the price, so a good deal. Now I can’t think of a current-ish model name other than the Altima, Z and GTR. Existentially does Nissan still exist?

My buddy’s parents had this exact minivan...1989 maybe 1990! Such a sleeper. We could smoke Berlinetta Cameros (not a high bar) and felt we were invincible!

Haha yeah - my grown sons still talk about our Turbo Dodge Caravan and the stoplight drags where we’d pinch off cars who’d pulled alongside us at the stoplight, figuring they could holeshot the dad in the old minivan before the merge point ate their lane...