This is what I like about GM and Ford’s approach. They are doing all their testing privately with U-Michigan and Michigan State (because its close to home for them) rather than just spawning it on the public for beta testing like Tesla and Uber.

Now that I can’t unread this article, I’m spraying a little gas in a cup and smelling it to make sure its not diesel from now on. THANKS KRISTEN

Documentary: Car Guys vs the Bean Counters would be a good documentary.

I could get a good look at a comment by sticking my head up a Jalopnik’s ass, but I’d rather take the Star’s word on it. 

Yes, but but I think designers are caught between a rock and a hard place with safety standards requiring everything to be big and blocky, and there is no way to make something with that base eye-catching without it being at least fairly ugly.

Very interesting. Thanks!

https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/793849277/overview/

Just about everything near me went from Crown Vic’s to Explorer’s or Caprices. For some reason I’ve hardly seen cop-spec chargers around Chicago.

Civilian/Detective-spec are at the top of my list if I can find them for the right price. 

For reference, this with the spotlight removed is what I’m talking about.

Thank you for the responses, everyone! The responses here seem to be balanced the following way. My responses follow them.

Question for the class: In 2020, are you still an asshole for driving an old police cruiser? I mentioned the idea to use one as a commuter to my friends and they all immediately snapped back “Oh so you’re gonna be THAT guy who screws with people by looking like a cop? Dick.” Do people still think that even though…

Yes, but Union vs. non-union is not exactly binary. Take it from an employee of a union contractor who has worked in multiple states. The simplest way I can put it is: Building a non-union factory in Texas is probably far less punishing task than building one in a non-right-to-work state.

Fair point! But if you play by their rules, this building will go up faster than anything in Cali or Nevada, and the factory will be more productive (again, at the expense of the worker, but hey, its the standard down there).

Yup. You essentially have two options in 2020: Either a luxo ride with more screens than they have information to put on them, or some rental-spec garbage that makes you want to die.

4th Gear: Oh lord. Elon is going to build a gigafactory with Texas labor laws and Texas taxes and by the time he’s done, he’ll wonder why anyone does literally *anything* business related on the west coast. Ever.

I actually daily a ‘16 GT with the manual, and while I love driving stick, the gearing is wildly short. Even if you are pulling away from a stop at a relaxed pace, you need to row the hell out of the gears just to keep it below 1500 revs. 

Again, “controversial” was an overstatement. I thought the update stunk at first but since then, my position has softened to “ok.” But that still is a step backward, from the ‘15-’17 which was universally preferred to the ‘18-’20. Personally I think the ‘15-’17 is one of the best looking cars you can get for <40k.

Agreed. I like the look of the new one off the bat more than I did the last gen, but I also think its still a few small tweaks away from going from “OK” to “good”