A fix for the Black Hawk is already underway - look up the ITEP program. New engine with more power that should claw back the payload it’s lost over the years. Pair that with some new rotor blades and a fly by wire system and it’ll be much better than before.

Now that actually makes some sense.

Oh I know, I have one. Super disappointing. It’s got decent passing power but off the line it almost feels slow. My A4 2.0T felt faster with ~220 hp.

True, but I didn’t think that had to do with the performance aspects. The knocks against the old Vs seemed to be things like the interior and dealerships.

I understand the desire to compete more directly with the Germans, it’s the choice of using V for that I don’t get. They spend 20 or so years building V as a legit contender for M/RS etc at least from a performance standpoint. Why confuse customers by making it a totally different thing? Didn’t they already have…

So they’re really doing it - throwing away any credibility the “V” cars have gotten for what reason, exactly? So someone can claim they drive a V but only has to pay 45 grand? 325 HP is what you can get in Fusion for god’s sake.

I don’t think it’s the emissions from the race itself, but rather the construction to get the track up to safety spec.

This tech is actually being worked on, though I doubt the production version will be able to jump. Look up a company called Clearmotion.

I have a Fusion sport...it doesn’t work very well. 1 flat and a bent rim from potholes in 2 years (separate incidents).

Slightly off topic and a good bit less serious - not me, but my wife called the cops on a school bus driver who was pooping in the woods a few houses up from us. She saw the bus pulled over in the middle of the day, nobody in it and got suspicious. As she drove by she saw the driver squatting next to a pond on our…

“were you unaware that the intent was to produce a desirable motor car, you would likely have interpreted as the most eloquent argument in favor of the abolition of the sense of sight ever recorded by the hand of man.”

This goes back to my inner 10 year old. I remember watching one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies and at some point his super high tech invisible Aston Martin cleared its windshield by...the same boring wipers as any other car. I thought why hasn’t anyone come up with better tech to clear water from a windshield?

It was something to do with a regulation about the roof height over the back seats. There’s some minimum headroom requirement that the CRZ didn't meet.

As someone who’s actively shopping something like this right now, I agree with you. The wagon sounded good in theory, until I really started comparing things. You can get a CUV with the same or better cargo space and very similar fuel economy for the same money. And because CUVs sell in much higher numbers and there’s…

*checks avatar*

That might work, or at least be worth setting up a trial. I’m curious to see what sort of power you could generate, how close to the cars they would need to be mounted, variables like wind from a truck vs. a prius, etc.

Do you mean to catch the wind generated by passing cars?

My guess? The market for big coupes is pretty tiny these days, and those that want a 100k cruiser instead of an SUV don’t think of Lexus as their first choice. BMW now has the 8 series out, and I bet that ends up taking the majority of this niche market. It’s a shame because this thing looks fantastic.

starred for “TrackSparrow”

Fair point, but they’re both wagons so I imagine the ratio of volume to surface area is going to be the same for both. Neither of these are stubby SUVs with useless ceiling height.