If that actually happens, someone is definitely getting lunched by a propeller like that bald Nazi in Raiders.

It actually makes a lot of sense. Ceramic is a very popular material for high-end watches, and anyone who owns a $260,000 SUV with reclining rear seats definitely has at least a few Rolexes with ceramic bezels.

False. There hasn’t been even a decent-looking 7 since the E38. It has quite literally been over two decades since you could buy a new 7-series that wouldn’t make passersby violently ill.

Richard Burns’ 2001 WRC driver’s title followed by his death from brain cancer just four years later.

The emissions compliance issue is the big one here. The emissions penalties for high-performance ICE vehicles ramp up really dramatically in the next few years, to the point where it soon won’t make sense to make them at all.

Entry level sports couples?

The actual article states that the Miata is not held to the same profitability goals as the rest of Mazda’s product line, and is treated as a branding exercise rather than a normal model. In other words, it doesn’t really sell, but Mazda has decided to be okay with that.

Come on, put something into it!

Seriously? The old WRX went out of production in late 2021 and there were virtually no cars available anywhere in the country for the entire first quarter of 2022, hence no sales. 

This is what happens when your CEO is a massive rally fan.

The GR-FOUR badging is almost definitely the side skirt, under the driver’s door. The cutline just above it would be the trailing edge of the front fender meeting the leading edge of the door. It wouldn’t make sense for the front bumper to have a cutline like that.

The HR-V’s biggest problem is that it’s based on the Fit, so it feels tinny and cheap and underpowered. The Fit roots do pay off in other ways, like the fact that it’s relatively spacious inside for its overall size. But it just feels like a cheap car that’s been lazily upsized into a crossover to fill a market…

They’re both sequential manuals. This one is just shifted by clicking a WRC-style paddle rather than pulling back on a handle like on the Dakar version.

Also a very important subtext for all of this. You’re 100% right about the buffer zone between NATO and Russia, and there’s little doubt it is a major factor in his thinking.

Great points.

Anyone who wants to have their mind blown, and understand a lot of the context around the Russia-Ukraine war, should spend some time studying the Eastern Front in WWII. There are a ton of great resources out there, but my person favorite is Dan Carlin’s “Ghosts of the Ostfront” series as part of the Hardcore History…

This. This is critical, and most people don’t understand how the economics of building cars affects the market.

I don’t doubt that the Cooper S is a great car, but we’re talking about the brand here and whether it needs to exist. At the time it was launched, the idea of a FWD BMW was sacrilege. Today, that chassis could wear a BMW badge and nobody would think twice about it.

MINI was relaunched as a way for BMW to make compact front-wheel-drive cars without bastardizing the BMW brand.

Huge fan of the Rocky Horror reference.