The turned front wheel - the only way to get at the oil filter without A) burning your arm on a hot intake manifold or B) taking the damn wheel off. I loved my NB, but the oil changes were a hassle.

Seeing how much smoke these things are putting out, it’s a wonder any of them made it 100 miles.

DC-9s and their derivatives will be flying until the end of time.

This. The Chinese market has been slowly cooling all year, giving all of the automakers time to adjust their production and sales strategies and keep their profits up. The bottom dropped out of the market late enough that it shouldn’t have had much of an effect on Q2 results.

My Focus has a strip of steel in one of the tires. It’s about 6 inches long, a half inch wide, and 1/16” thick and embedded edgewise. It doesn’t weigh enough to throw off the balance in the tire and it didn’t penetrate enough to cause an air leak, so I’ve been ignoring it and the thrumming it makes as I try to eek a…

At this point, it might weigh the same as a S-10.

Crap! I figured I was missing something. I stand corrected.

Have you ever had issues with the diff or transmission? I remember looking for one of them used a few years back and all the forum posts I read mentioned driveline problems.

You’re missing out that Ford F-150s are still massively heavier and physically larger than the comparable GMs, as helpfully pointed out on Oppo the other day.

1st Gear: Suck It, Analysts

Soon...

Don’t forget the short and trouble free development of the F-22...which everyone forgets about now that the F-35 is in the limelight.

Call me when they come out with the Norris Packard version.

The launch edition should have a full plaid interior.

I’m curious how much this has to do with the extended production run of the 2014s, many of which were no doubt discounted, versus 2015s on the lot for full- or near-full price.

Looks like the Russians have finally caught up to the Rebel Alliance in helmet decoration.

I think it’s the Costco/Walmart version - more size, more speed, more payload for less money. Whether ‘more’ is actually ‘better’ is up to interpretation.

The turret in these is unmanned, right? So you have three men sitting in the front of the hull?

Nothing good comes from the trending topics feed. It’s the worst when anything from Jalopnik winds up there - the flood of out of touch, obnoxious comments by the Gawker commentariat is awful.

I generally agree with your points. Isn’t technology wonderful?