I’ve been a fan of the Crown until now. This one just looks so generic because it lost the classic upright profile and replaced it with the not-really-fastback that everyone else is doing.

That’s what Team Rocket is for.  To prepare you for trouble.

“Movie has limited appeal in foreign country with different culture.”

Car companies selling feature count, consumers thinking that they bought something that hits above its class, it’s the oldest marketing trick and a race to the bottom (each desirable feature added to a mainstream car will spark efforts to lower its cost, eventually resulting in it becoming standard equipment, see…

Luxury is by definition a perception.  Luxury goods have no practical or functional advantage over mainstream equivalents.

I think the prices of cars have somewhat outpaced inflation and salaries.

Yeah, but as long as you have thin skin and want to be seen with the premium brands, they still want to milk you of your money. There’s nothing we can do about that but be honest with ourselves and our own choices.

More than ever, luxury cars cannot rely on feature count to sell.

This is roughly analogous to a T-shirt that says “It’s okay to date a Nice Guy(TM).”

NP if you have the means to maintain a $100k car. You bought it at $16k because they made so many of them as lease fodder, but you’re still maintaining $100k of ageing powertrain, brakes and suspension.  That the previous owners have likely skimped on maintenance is just more for you to catch up on.

This just depends on how you define “luxury.” Yes, an $88k F-350 is a luxury car because nobody needs an $88k F-350 (or an $88k anything, for that matter) and few can actually afford something that expensive. But I would be quite a funny guy to attempt to compare it to an $88k Benz S-class in terms of design, features…

This is pretty easy. First, define “luxury goods”—at a basic level they are goods that average people are typically unable or unwilling to purchase.

Yeah, a while back I figured out that when people mouth-breathe about the Second Amendment, it actually only applies to white males who subscribe to white supremacy and the fundamentalist right wing.

Interesting, thx for the info

I understand that reproductive plans are a sensitive and sore issue for nearly everybody, but then is anything the business of an interviewer on his/her job? I mean, T’s career plans are also nobody’s business until the next album is released or concert scheduled—how dare I question her career ambitions? Or choice of…

McDs in Asia is awesome. In fact, the entire McCafé premium roasted coffee concept began in Australia in the 1990s, and spread to Europe and Asia, before it finally reached good old ‘Murica in 2014.

A perfectly legitimate question, and a perfectly legitimate answer.

It’s a very successful attempt to clean up / commoditise the hole-in-the-wall HK cafe. My parents acknowledged it to be a generational shift from the “cost is king” mentality that Chinese have been known for. People are now openly willing to pay more for the exact same ingredients, in a cleaner place, with better…

I believe various routes are still restricted to 300 km/h operational max. My speculation is that this was a side effect of the scandals (the 2011 accident occured at less than 100 km/h) and was more of a precaution against potentially stretched design margins.

You can probably fish around and find the actual laws.  I’m guessing that you can’t smog cars to past standards.