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Comments
I think I will enjoy the comfort of the new EX V6. That right armrest is supposed to be huge!
1. I have such fun because most of them handle so well.
2. When I come back home to that first roar of the 545i and that wonderful comfort seat, I get on my knees and thank the lord I can afford to lease a 545i!
BTW, If I'm not mistaken, it usually wins every C&D annual radar detector comparison.
TagMan
Wow a huge right armrest?
That will resolve all those elbow conflicts between passenger and driver. Especially for those who shift their own gears.
Thanks for the suggestion. The ticket I got today was where the police radar was ontop of a hill around a corner. I dont think a radar detector would have worked in this case.
Also they are illegal in Ontario. I would have to hardwire it to the car.
Despite that it is certainly worth my while to read that C & D article espcially in my situation.
I said "dislike", not "hate"; hate is an intense form of dislike. It most certainly is possible to dislike or hate a company but respect the vehicles that it produces and/or its overall contributions to the automotive world; I feel this way about Mercedes-Benz. MB has made a staggering amount of contributions to the automotive world and markets a wide array of dynamically excellent products - but I still dislike MB and will not buy one anytime in the near future.
There is no witchhunt involved - I simply resent your repeated jabs at Lexus using inaccurate data. The only thing that is "ridiculous" is your desire to stoop to such sophomoric behavior on this public forum.
We will certainly move forward, but please be more careful in the future. I know that you would not be too happy if I indulged in the same behavior in regards to MB or Audi - just look at the impassioned defense that you mounted for Audi around the end of July.
That is a good question Dewey. The U.S. EPA now lists the Accord as a "Large Car", as in the company of the Avalon, Azera, 300, Taurus, et al.
The interior measurements are said to be biggest of the Asian offerings, with a 19 cu.ft trunk only outdone by 21 in the Taurus.
The few tests that I've read have said that even through all of this, Honda was still able to leave some of the sporting nature of the car in tact while making it safer and more powerful.
That really irked me and you later admitted to doing this to provoke a reaction out of some of the forum members - you were resoundingly successful at doing so. You had already taken a few jabs at Lexus in prior posts, so that act simply represented the "last straw" and I felt compelled to proceed. I do not give the benefit of the doubt to posters of NEGATIVE information because the poster obviously did not have completely good intentions in posting NEGATIVE information that makes another company, product, or individual look bad.
Do you notice that I do not post any information about MB unless I am provoked (usually by an MB enthusiast that posts trash about Lexus)? Since I have made it quite clear to all that I do NOT like MB, I would NOT have completely good intentions if I proactively posted unsolicited negative information about that particular company and I would NOT deserve the benefit of the doubt if it turned out that the information that I posted was NOT correct.
Just so you and others understand, I do not conduct "witchhunts" or regularly attempt to "call others out"; I just get really upset about the spread of inaccurate information - both in real life and on internet forums. Anytime someone posts both INACCURATE and NEGATIVE information about a company, product, or individual that I admire, I will zealously defend the injured party against such an offense - just as many of you have done for BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Porsche, among others.
You would be amazed at the early warning the valentine one will give you! Eventually you'll realize after a little research, and then the first time it saves your butt, you'll be thanking me by sending me a case of my favorite beverage!!
TagMan
I look forward to these discussions, as well. Although we do not always agree, I find you to be a sensible and honest poster and it is both easy and enjoyable to hold conversations with you.
It is interesting that you have experienced first-hand what we discussed a few weeks ago. Dynamic handling at-the-limits is not much of a selling point (versus the competition) if there is no place to take advantage of these enhanced capabilities. That is why dynamic handling is not particularly important to me when shopping for a vehicle; all of the vehicles that we discuss on this forum can handle the suburban "jungle" with relative ease.
You need not give up on purchasing BMWs if you are looking for a more conservative vehicle that is a better value than your 545i, unless you require a V8. The 528i is reasonably priced at $44,300 and, if you are not caught up in horsepower ratings, represents a respectable value versus the competition. You get more power with the competition at that price point, but not necessarily more luxury. You will still be tempted to drive hard, but won't be as tempted to drive fast.
As you would expect, BMW currently has a competitive lease special on the 528i:
link title
Ha ha! You and I both know that he would be miserable in that vehicle.
I hope that he will stay with BMW since he is so happy with them and evidently has a good relationship with his dealership.
Florida is okay but I believe having them is a no-no in Virginia.
If I buy an EX-L V6 Accord, it will get a Valentine One.
BMW has good deals on the 328i as well. If I decided on a BMW, it would more than likely be a 528i or 328i, not only for the good leasing deal, but to deliberately take the power excess out of my hands. The 545i desires to go much too fast. I would love to oblige ... but, unfortunately ... no can do ... unless I find a track which will oblige me.
I wonder how many rapists, robbers and muggers got away while those and many other Ontario officers were taking the time to write you and others those summons?
If they can drive fast and safely in Europe, why are we restricted from doing so in North America? :confuse:
Are we talking about too much power in our vehicles that we can't handle??!!
Have we all lost our self-control??!!
We don't want that performance any more??!!
I think I'm going to be sick... I've got this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach... Uh-oh...all the wonderful performance and power in our vehicles is slowly fading away... all I can see now is a white light... gosh, have I died? :sick:
I hereby leave my Porsche to my son to drive when he is of legal age... he "understands"!!
TagMan
Truce?
B.
What I am saying is that I am frustrated in not being able to use more of its power. I bet I only use 50% of its potential at max. (and that has been pretty exciting!)
Why must I always be looking over my shoulder like I am doing something wrong?
Why should any of us need a Valentine One? I believe C&D produced a legitimate study a few years back (Patrick Bedard in one of his columns?) indicating that there are no more statistically significant fatalities on European highways with no speed limits than there are here.
It's time the speed limit laws catch up to the increasing power of our vehicles.
That's all I'm saying.
I may lease one for a spare. I don't think you can see those tail lights while you are driving.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
I recently expressed that one of the most exciting things about my Carrera S is knowing that no matter how fast I push it, it has an even greater potential I'll never truly experience. Wow, what a feeling!
Compare that to a car that can max out and hit it's dead end.... no thanks!
The Valentine One is self-defense... one of our constitutional rights, IMO.
No one says you MUST speed in a powerful car, but acceleration is a wonderful feeling in and of itself. And, with reasonable restraint, there are those brief moments where HP and a great suspension are all worthwhile.
Also, passing maneuvers is another reason to have power under the hood. Who wants to be stuck behind another vehicle and be unable to power your way passed it?
I absolutely LOVE the Carrera S, and I admit I have taken a few risks, but generally I am very careful, and I just can't say enough good things about this Porsche. I will NEVER regret this 997... it's absolutely without question the finest Porsche 911 ever built.
As far as the GTI goes... I could have purchased a Honda Fit, a CR-V, or a number of basic economy cars... but I'd have lost out on all the fun and excitement of the GTI. I still get the four doors, passenger comfort and cargo capacity, but I also get a "pocket rocket" to accomplish those things. And, BTW, I just installed a Valentine One in the GTI.
TagMan
Truce?
Sure! :shades:
I am really glad for you in those regards. Now you don't have to worry about finding hairbrushes or lipstick scattered around your feisty little pocket-rocket.
I have never used a radar but I know very well the all the spots from my home to Austin and Houston (work trips) that the THP likes to hide. 110mph just last week. :shades:
I hope you are enjoying your new vehicle.
My son-in-law has 6 vehicles (2 drivers). I don't know if he has any detectors. Probably not. He lives in well-policed Nassau County in NY where just about everyone is afraid to go over 65. A shame.
Mickleson made 50 out of 52 putts inside of 7 feet. What the heck is he drinking? :surprise:
Just after I moved from CT to MA (I needed to pay more taxes, didn't want to get too comfortably wealthy!), CT made detectors legal, but significantly raised speeding fines, in exchange (as a friend told me).
I remember from years ago an article (maybe in C & D?) noting that it was illegal to make radar detectors illegal. In that they are simply receiving non-restricted public radio waves. Same frequencies as garage door openers, e.g.. Which ain't illegal. I also think a radar detector fine was overturned using the "Paul Revere" defense, a citizen's right to early warning...?! The article writer suggested that if you had sufficient funds, you could successfully overturn state laws regarding detectors. Don't know if that's what happened in CT or if any of this would be applicable in Canada. Or if it's correct! But, I like the "non-restricted public airwaves" theory.
'21 Dark Blue/Black Audi A7 PHEV (mine); '22 White/Beige BMW X3 (hers); '20 Estoril Blue/Oyster BMW M240xi 'Vert (Ours, read: hers in 'vert weather; mine during Nor'easters...)
Well I am glad to hear that the new Accords sportiness remains intact. But I have a hard time accepting the bigger is better philosophy that prevails in the auto industry today. Many BMW models are becoming far too big but at least the 1 Series will be here soon.
Yes if the warning system works well then it will defintely be worth a case of your favorite beverage.
So which one is your favorite beverage:
Canadian Club
Black Velvet Canadian
Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey
Molson Canadian
Couldn't agree with you more.
Yes, and hiding a wonderful 300 hp twin-turbo engine under the hood... something our Canadian friend is so lucky to be quite familiar with.
TagMan
Count me in also.
Maybe there are no cowboys or rednecks in Europe to screw it all up? :surprise:
TagMan
LOL... I'll take one of each, please!
However, seeing that it must be Canadian... do you have any clean Canadian water left up there? To get clean water down here, it must be purchased in bottles, and it's more expensive than diesel. :surprise:
edit:
Canadian Club
Black Velvet Canadian
Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey
Molson Canadian
Gee... could THOSE be the reasons for all the tickets up there? :shades:
TagMan
Also there is a great chart on the fatality rate for drivers of various models of SUVS and cars.
Enjoy!
link title
Ok in that case I will get you a box of Canadian tap water with a Aquafina label :shades:
I immediately found myself in need of some of Dewey's Canadian beverages.
link title
warning to Porsche and/or German car fans: May cause post tramatic stress syndrome.
TagMan
I'll keep the Porsche AND the GTI!!
TagMan
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
In the history of the automotive industry, few things have been quite as unexpected as the rise of the S.U.V. Detroit is a town of engineers, and engineers like to believe that there is some connection between the success of a vehicle and its technical merits. But the S.U.V. boom was like Apple's bringing back the Macintosh, dressing it up in colorful plastic, and suddenly creating a new market. It made no sense to them. Consumers said they liked four-wheel drive. But the overwhelming majority of consumers don't need four-wheel drive. S.U.V. buyers said they liked the elevated driving position. But when, in focus groups, industry marketers probed further, they heard things that left them rolling their eyes. As Keith Bradsher writes in "High and Mighty"—perhaps the most important book about Detroit since Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed"—what consumers said was "If the vehicle is up high, it's easier to see if something is hiding underneath or lurking behind it. " Bradsher brilliantly captures the mixture of bafflement and contempt that many auto executives feel toward the customers who buy their S.U.V.s. Fred J. Schaafsma, a top engineer for General Motors, says, "Sport-utility owners tend to be more like 'I wonder how people view me,' and are more willing to trade off flexibility or functionality to get that. " According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills. Ford's S.U.V. designers took their cues from seeing "fashionably dressed women wearing hiking boots or even work boots while walking through expensive malls. " Toyota's top marketing executive in the United States, Bradsher writes, loves to tell the story of how at a focus group in Los Angeles "an elegant woman in the group said that she needed her full-sized Lexus LX 470 to drive up over the curb and onto lawns to park at large parties in Beverly Hills. " One of Ford's senior marketing executives was even blunter: "The only time those S.U.V.s are going to be off-road is when they miss the driveway at 3 a. m. "
The truth, underneath all the rationalizations, seemed to be that S.U.V. buyers thought of big, heavy vehicles as safe: they found comfort in being surrounded by so much rubber and steel. To the engineers, of course, that didn't make any sense, either: if consumers really wanted something that was big and heavy and comforting, they ought to buy minivans, since minivans, with their unit-body construction, do much better in accidents than S.U.V.s. (In a thirty-five m.p.h. crash test, for instance, the driver of a Cadillac Escalade—the G.M. counterpart to the Lincoln Navigator—has a sixteen-per-cent chance of a life-threatening head injury, a twenty-per-cent chance of a life-threatening chest injury, and a thirty-five-per-cent chance of a leg injury. The same numbers in a Ford Windstar minivan—a vehicle engineered from the ground up, as opposed to simply being bolted onto a pickup-truck frame—are, respectively, two per cent, four per cent, and one per cent. ) But this desire for safety wasn't a rational calculation. It was a feeling. Over the past decade, a number of major automakers in America have relied on the services of a French-born cultural anthropologist, G. Clotaire Rapaille, whose speciality is getting beyond the rational—what he calls "cortex"—impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, "reptilian" responses. And what Rapaille concluded from countless, intensive sessions with car buyers was that when S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious. "The No. 1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give," Rapaille told me. "There should be air bags everywhere. Then there's this notion that you need to be up high. That's a contradiction, because the people who buy these S.U.V.s know at the cortex level that if you are high there is more chance of a rollover. But at the reptilian level they think that if I am bigger and taller I'm safer. You feel secure because you are higher and dominate and look down. That you can look down is psychologically a very powerful notion. And what was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid. That's why cupholders are absolutely crucial for safety. If there is a car that has no cupholder, it is not safe. If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it's soft, and if I'm high, then I feel safe. It's amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has. " During the design of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, one of the things Rapaille learned was that car buyers felt unsafe when they thought that an outsider could easily see inside their vehicles. So Chrysler made the back window of the PT Cruiser smaller. Of course, making windows smaller—and thereby reducing visibility—makes driving more dangerous, not less so. But that's the puzzle of what has happened to the automobile world: feeling safe has become more important than actually being safe.
I guess this is due to his personal safety.If his name was disclosed then he and Salman Rushdie would be in good company .
Well said, Dewey!
I agree, but I honestly see a shift in thinking here. The interest in side curtain airbags and vehicle stability control systems has finally become more mainstream.
On another perspective, almost no one will believe that a vehicle like the "Smart-for-two" will be one of the safest vehicles on the road. It completely defies logic... and that logic makes us think that a bigger vehicle is always the safer vehicle... and that when two vehicles crash, the bigger one is going to survive better than the smaller one... even if it isn't necessarily true.
TagMan
I guess this is due to his personal safety.If his name was disclosed then he and Salman Rushdie would be in good company
LOL... no doubt... especially since he has committed a crime of epic proportion!!
TagMan
Double sure!!
"The only time those SUVs are going to be off-road is when they miss the driveway at 3 AM." Ain't that the truth.
A stock 2002 Lexus GS 430 with the 17" wheel/summer tire package. I have never ventured out to test drive a 3-series or 5-series, but I will be the FIRST to admit that it cannot touch either of those vehicles in high-speed or at-the-limits handling (based on reviews and test data). However, it has an amazingly tight turning radius, super brakes, and it marvelously handles suburban-style curves and my measly little 5-mile commute to the nearby park-and-ride public transit center.
I love high-performance cars just like nearly everybody else on this forum, but my driving conditions simply do not warrant (or even allow for) the acquisition of a higher performance vehicle. Nearly every single morning I am greeted by a traffic police officer ready to give out speeding tickets; consequently, my vehicle speed barely tops 40 MPH for 4-5 of the 7 days in a week.
It's just too bad, because a healthy and invigorating drive on a daily basis may even improve your cardiovascular health and add years to your life (alright - that is a stretch, but at least it will put you in a good mood for the rest of the day)!