I’d love to see Honda find a way out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into here. And they’re clever enough to do it.

According to the seller, this is one of 22 U.S. S4 Avants to have been coated in Pearl White paint in the 2001 model year.

We’re already seeing it in Western Canada. The past month has been brutal.

I love this car irrationally, and I honestly want this one badly, but not $22k badly. Too much.

Infamously, this led to an attempted class action lawsuit from the buyers of the ‘76 “Bicentennial” Eldo convertible, which had been promoted as the last Caddy drop-top. They saw this conversion (particularly since it was an official Cadillac offering) as wiping out the collectible value of their cars.

The Airflow was always a placeholder. This isn’t surprising at all.

Yeah, I get the conservatism. I also get that Toyota has more expertise on hybrids than anyone else, so no wonder they feel protective, but their pessimism may be their undoing.

I find that whole mid-80s to the early 90s at GM interesting. They made a legit effort to remake the traditional American sedan with transverse FWD. This Park Avenue might look ridiculous by current standards now but compared to its RWD predecessor this was amazingly trim and clean. And provided comparable performance…

That harkens back to the 60s and 70s when the LeSabre was physically smaller and more clearly mid-market. By the time they got to the late 80s, though, there was far less call to build with distinctly different bodies and it really came to be more like a different trim level on the same car.

It’s easy to hate on dealerships, but... they provide local employment, and for a purchase as hefty as a car it’s great to have a physical location to go back to if you need support.

All fair, just saying that we shouldn’t need lithium for them at all.

I’m envisioning coastal facilities with nuclear plants to desalinate, harvest the salt for sodium batteries, and maybe even a little electrolysis for hydrogen production. Why not?

I think we’re going to wind up with a range of battery chemistries depending on the market. Sodium for the low end and for stationary storage batteries, LFP for “mid-mass-market” vehicles, and Li-Ion (with silicon cathodes) for the high end.

Sodium’s pretty good and is now starting commercial production.

Toyota’s been claiming they’d have a solid-state battery on the road “in five years” starting in 2016. I have limited faith in their claims.

CATL is already bringing sodium batteries to market later this year. Less energy-dense, sure, but for things like utility storage that’s not an issue.

LFP batteries already dispense with cobalt. We may still need it for premium applications but we won’t need cobalt for every car.

On top of this, sodium batteries are beginning production. Sure, they’ll mostly be in low-end cars and stationary applications, but they’ll displace lithium in these batteries and free up more for the higher-end auto market.

Insanely smooth and quiet. Loved details like the parallelogram door hinge that let the door open wide enough to get out without having to swing out from the body too far.

I’d vote for this, too. Adored this car, and in my brief stint in auto sales I got to drive one that had come in on trade.