Here’s an example:

You’re missing the point - the control system doesn’t monitor rpm, because rpm doesn’t tell you squat about the load on the engine. It won’t spool the turbo unless it detects a load requiring the turbo. You don’t think its constantly running the turbo when you’re cruising down the highway, do you? However, if you…

Yep - we’ve had plenty of Camrys in my extended family - all of them babied. The 87 was terribly unreliable by today’s standards, but Toyota stood by it well outside of warranty (as in replacing the engine twice outside of warranty). The 96 was dang near bulletproof. The 98 I drive has been good, but rattly compared…

The Pontiac Aztek:

They last a long time - but at 100k+ miles replacement becomes more and more likely (remember, while hybrid batteries can lose a lot of their capacity and mpg can still stay high, this is not the case with plugins) . And ~$8500 for a C-Max Energi battery is a heck of a lot more than ~$2300 for a Volt battery. The…

The control system works via pressure and temperature - which can be traced to load. You can say rpm and load come into it, but the control doesn’t monitor rpm or load - it measures the exhaust conditions and reacts.

The turbos simply do not spool with rpm. You can go well past 2000 rpm without spooling the turbo.

Here’s the insanity of consumer reports : Take a look at some recent Ford models - solid above average reliability (half red or red) on quite a few in every single category for multiple years. Then a solid black (much worse than average) for audio system (ie, MyFordTouch). Their overall reliability rating? Solid…

It can spool under 2k. Spooling isn’t controlled by engine rpm, however. It’s controlled by pressure and temp... Managing the acceleration allows you to get above 2k and not have the turbo spool.

I drove a Fusion with the same engine - and EASILY beat the EPA numbers. It wasn’t even close.

LOh, please.

The key for mpg is not letting the turbo engage. I recently rented a Fusion with the 2.0L Ecoboost. It was rated 22/33/26. On highway trips, I managed 38-47 mpg. In the city I got 28. Overall, I got 32 mpg combined over a few hundred miles.

It isn’t hard to beat the EPA sticker. Just keep out of the turbo.

That’s a hell of a low price. I’ve seen high mileage C-Max Energis for $11-12k, and those seem like a good deal, but their batteries are expensive. The catch here is that a Volt battery is stunningly cheap nowadays - about $2300 for a new one from GM. So even if the battery had to be replaced, the price wouldn’t be…

Evil helicopter saw things are real:

Ummm... New Horizons cost over $700 million. That’s closer to 2,000 of these monstrosities.

Yes. Every day. $#@!#$ Camry.

But I’ve had other vehicles with base engines that were actually quite good - equalling and bettering the 1st and 2nd gen Taurus SHO or the Nissan Maxima of that time... cars people raved about for performance.

Oh, hell. The base engines on most vehicles are more powerful and give you a faster car than the high end engines of 10-15 years ago. It’s all relative.

I’ll have you know that the fern I’m looking at is very real, thankyouverymuch!

Yet he’d be worth significantly more and be “responsible” for employing far more people had he just invested his inherited fortune in the S&P 500....

You’re concerned that the president of the UAW, an organization with 390,000 active members and 600,000 retirees makes $151,030 per year? Seems like a bargain for such a massive organization to me...

Is it fair that they have demanded subsidies from local and state/provincial governments? No, it isn’t. I’m sick and tired of seeing special deals cut for companies - especially with the size they’ve reached and the unequal application of them. Take Georgia, for example. They gave Kia $410 million in subsidies for…

Romney claimed that Jeep would be closing factories in the US and importing from China, and that it would cost American jobs.

In reality, they were not going to import from China - and China puts such hefty import tarriffs on imported vehicles, Jeep wouldn’t be able to build in the US to sell in China. So they had to…