I remember cruising the Japanese Mitsubishi webpage years ago and looking at the sharper edged Galant and Legnum VR-4 models and just waiting for the day they'd find their way over here.

It's not necessarily that they are patently unreliable. It's more that things that are moderately expensive to fix or replace on more pedestrian cars are astronomically expensive to fix or replace on luxury vehicles. I used to work at a Carmax parts department so I can provide a couple perfect examples:

That's a good point, but you can get the maintenance done at Carmax at a highly discounted price and only take it to the dealer for repairs at the price of the deductible. As long as there is record of maintenance from a shop that offers a 6 month/6K mile warranty, the warranty will stay intact (from what I recall).

I purchased an '06 SE-R Spec-V with 33K miles on the clock and they handled all the repairs with a $50 deductible until it was totaled in December. If they couldn't fix something or diagnose it, they sent it to the local Nissan dealer. No muss, no fuss.

Named exclusion vs. named inclusion. Most warranties from other dealers will tell you what they will cover leading you to believe they cover a lot of stuff. Carmax's warranty is a named exclusion type and they give you a list of what is not covered so instead of getting informaiton overload on what they do cover, it's…

They will cover wear items if they are damaged by non-wear items though. For example, brake caliper seizes and destroys the pad, they will replace both the caliper and the pad. Or the alternator dies and kills the battery, they will replace both the battery and the alternator.

I have much more recent edition of the hard cover books, I had the theatrical DVDs. Later purchased the Extended Edition DVDs and then triple dipped for the extended editions set on Blu-Ray. It was then that I decided I would not buy any of The Hobbit movies until the final collection was released. Can't believe I…

I have to imagine the vhs version are theatrical only?!?!?! I'm just assuming the extended editions wouldn't fit on a vhs tape.

More likely a technology they'd have to pay for that might slightly reduce their astronomical profits.

Yes, I know it's from Wikipedia:

I don't think all automatics should be pigeon-holed into a small box. Lexus ISF for example uses an 8-speed automatic and no one every really complained about it.

It started when the FCC allowed the cable operators to encrypt basic cable.

I'll pay 8-12 dollars, but I'm wholly opposed to the $20 a month for the cable companies DVR box to sit there sucking down my electricity. Those things are power hogs of the worst design and they literally heat up your house.

Not to mention Aereo's antenna placement was pretty much flawless! You never had to worry about not getting access to a particular channel because of geographic restrictions even if you are in the broadcast area for a particular channel.

Except almost every company is now encrypting their QAM feeds making it impossible to access local tv over the feed without a cable company supplied decoder set top box of some sort conveniently charged monthly to your bill ad infinitum.

I wonder if they could continue to house their antenna farm and provide a hardware solution for the DVR that sits at your house and charge you $8/$12 a month for DVR rental?

Well, no, of course they don't just charge for the hell of it. But they also have monopolies in their respective markets, and so they get to charge whatever they want.

Not to mention the hills. Some of the roads in Gloucestershire...I'm not sure an automatic would cut it with the small displacement engines in use.

I drove a "3 on the tree" once after driving a 5-speed floor shifter for years and thought that it was very disorienting.

I see what you're saying, bug I think it's kind of a big deal just due to the fact that there are other countries, where if you don't specifically take and pass a driving test with a manual transmission, you are not allowed to drive one on public roads. I do feel that underscores the importance of the skill a little…