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Comments
That is good news about the car, and it being as you wanted, and waited for...Just for fun see if the mapping thing will show you it`s trip from the factory....Mine had all the stops etc, and I had a hard time getting them out of the machine...In fact I`m not positive they are gone
I am sure your S5 will be one sweet ride. Couldn't think of a better car to drive especially right here in my snowy residence.
The R8 was Cancelled because of a divorce? Here's the sequence: First the mid-life crisis, then the sports car, then the knock-out vivacious blonde and finally the divorce. What a pity this fellow had to pre-maturally divorce right before getting his Audi R8. Couldn't he wait. :surprise:
Excellent choice, and best of luck with it.
TM
After driving it for a while, please provide some feedback. I would love to hear all about it.
TM
So many new cars here. The influence here is a bit overwhelming. No wonder I am going to trade in my BMW after only owing it for a little bit more than two years.
But when I do get a Prius I promise you all I wont be passing out cigars since they are bad for the environment. Instead expect granola bars.
I believe that it is a very wise choice.
TM
OK, then follow your dream! I still think the Lexus HS250 sounds like it may be an easier transition for someone coming out of a BMW 3-series. Do you think you will at least try it out?
HS250
Spent the better part of 45 minutes in the garage last night,after my quick post,to find & lock in the perfect seating position for myself.
Unfortunately, I've yet to see it in the daylight. Picked it up at night, it was in the showroom under UV light for me too do a thourough inspection. It was still dark outside when I got to work today.
Pictures should be plenty. My wife took a ton at the dealer & will be taking more after work today should the sun be shining. She shoots at a resolution that shows life on Mars, so I'll load them up into a carspace album this weekend.
& yeah, the divorce forcing the cancel of the purchase of the R8 does indeed seem like the worst of timing. He could have just taken out a nice policy...
Congrats on your new cars
My apologies as I meant Q3. The Q5 is indeed based on the MLP Audi platform.
And to LG's point, what sense does the Tiguan make? I've seen one optioned up at 35 big ones. This vehicle is supposed to compete with the CRV, Outlander, RAV4, and Rogue. You have to really strech to get these cute 'utes to 30K. And it is as useless as a box of rocks. It rides like it has bricks for shocks.
The GLK is pretty sweet though.
Sorry to hear about your 335 woes. Hopefully you don't lose too much when unloading it.
You truly are a "wiseman" because it does do damage over the long run. Those short trips and quick start-up/shutdown cycles wreak havoc on the emissions systems on cars; carbon buildup on valves, pistons & combustion chambers, unburnt fuel in the catalytic converters and exhaust, insufficient oilflow through the engine, etc. It's bad stuff...
I completely agree with you and Tayl0rd's well-detailed reply. You may, however, be the first to directy point out that benefit.
It reminds me of a cute "Lucy" moment when my wife had started to drive off in my daughter's Escape Limited Hybrid, and she rolled down the window and yelled to me that the engine was "dead", and wanted to know what she should do.
I couldn't help but laugh, which caused her to give me a lightning-bolt look, until a few seconds later, when I explained that the hybrid system was operating on battery power alone. She got one of those smiley "oops" looks on her face and has since only remarked how strangely quiet the vehicle is when it runs only on the battery.
Anyway, wiseman... another well-pointed out benefit of the hybrid. I am doing everything I can to convince my wife that a 2010 Prius would be a very, very smart vehicle to own.
TM
Rock, I hope your beautiful car is still so beatiful in the morning! De noche, todos los gatos son pardos :P
Regards,
Jose
'At night, all the cats are...something.?
As long as pardos <> lemons, I'm feeling pretty good.
Took the office out to the lot @ lunchtime to show her off. Decision was unanimous, the car looks wonderful in the bright sunshine!
At night all cats are grizzled. Meaning all look alike.
I'm glad you see it beautiful in daylight!!
Regards,
Jose
The review crowd may think Americans have been turned off on all luxury hatches due to the 318ti with its anemic performance by late-90's good economic time standards, but the Mini hatch from the same company is now doing incredibly well for selling a premium hatch.
The Mini isn't exactly a conventional luxury hatch. It sells because its a Mini, not a hatchback. Integra buyers have moved on to conventional coupes. The Audi A3 and the Volvo C30 are already more lux hatch than there's a market for. They sell in NYC or LA, but middle America has absolutely no interest in a luxury hatchback.
Speaking of electric vehicles... quite some time back I posted about nano technology and how it could revolutionize the electric car if it could be successfully applied to batteries.
It might just seem that the big breakthrough is upon us. Here is an interesting article about nano technology and batteries.
SSC to build new electric-powertrain that recharges in 10 minutes and provides 200 miles
Awesome.
TM
Hatchback popularity goes in cycles. When the economy is running on all cylinders, people buy big tall hatchbacks, called SUV's. People down-size in tough times.
Also, luxury branded cars are bi-coastal phenomena. The middle of the country is mostly Camry, Accord and F-150 :-) Income level has a lot to do with it. Even more importantly however is the population density. The combination of lower population density and lower average income makes owning a rare car untenable in terms of dealership distance. It's a bit chicken-and-egg issue.
I'll second that. I really love mine. I never thought I'd look forward to driving an SUV and I still haven't figured out all of the electronics on this thing.
I think he got the GLK though.
Are you noticing the huge oil and gas inventory build-up each week. Another big one today. I think we have a price collapse coming. I've never seen the roads as empty as this January. What I've noticed the last two months is how the price of oil collapses on the last 2-3 days of the expiring contract. That's when folks have to decide to store the oil or sell it. We are running out of storage for privately held futures. I read a report today that there's nearly 2 days of privately held global demand floating on tankers all over the ocean. The fact that most folks are deciding to sell the expiring contract at 7-10 bucks under the next month contract is telling me the "real" market price is in the low 30's and the difference between the next month price and the closing price of the expiring contract is the speculation in oil.
Regards,
OW
Also, can you explain how this contango works?
contango Definition A condition in which distant delivery prices for futures exceed spot prices, often due to the costs of storing and insuring the underlying commodity. Opposite of backwardation.
The next thing I'd like to ask you is the tricky situation in gasoline prices firming during this glut. The refiners are at 83% yet the price of gas is naggingly holding to the recent gains. What's up?
Regards,
OW
Oil in relation to gas prices still remains a mystery to me, because in spite of the brilliant observations you point out, there are those so-called "experts" and "analysts" that seem to talk in circles and come up with a dozen different predictions based on a dozen different reasons.
I always knew you would like the GL, and I still believe that when you were purchasing the LS, had you gotten the S-Class, you would be feeling the same way about it as you do the GL. But, that doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with the LS460L that you chose. It's a fine car, and it is obviously serving you very well.
Man, when will this economy of ours come back to life? It's killing me.
TM
That in turn flooded the aisles of the Mercantile Exchange and everyday oil crepted up 2-5 dollars, on up to about 148 bucks a barrel. At the same time, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP reported near or full record profits. All the while people were losing their homes, jobs, and all livelihood that we'd come accustomed to.
I'm no crying far-leftist, but we had a government that was basically idle. Then when it all hit the scene, the fingerpointing started.
I really do wish the new Administration well as I really don't think it can get any worse. No matter what O'Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto, Dick Morris, Limbaugh(this guy needs a real job), Culter(talk about needing to get real) and any of those far-right nut jobs say.
Contango simply means each succeding month future should be higher than the current month by the storage cost plus the time value of money. But when you see the expiring contract at $32.75 and next months contract at $41-43 on the same day then you have a very wide contango that can only be explained by a freak phenomena in the expiring price or, in the words of Alan Greenspan, irrational exhuberance in the minds of speculators. For three straight months we are seeing the expiring contract trade 20-30% under the succeeding month contract amid building inventory reaching glut levels despite serious oil production cut backs (in a largely cold winter no less) and we have Chavez inviting our big oil companies back into Venezuela because he's in trouble. The Saudi's have also built a massive new drilling station if you saw 60 minutes a few weeks back, and it's not even on-line yet. There's absolutely no supply issue and the cost to store is cheaper than ever so why the hoped for price jump in the next month contract. Just see where oil is in about 27-28 days. If you have another 20-30% contango when the March contract is near expiration you are going to see those future months come way down each month. That finally started to happen a few days ago as speculators are starting to get burned and these inventory reports are disastrous.
I wish I had a crystal ball as to where oil goes. I think it's going to spend a lot of time between 30 and 42. Gas is headed lower. RBOB dropped nearly a dime (almost 10%) today. I don't know how in the world RBOB spiked from 78 cents to $1.18 on rapidly rising inventory. It's like buying a stock after bad earnings and a bad outlook. I guess the 78 cents was an artificial low and maybe it really belonged in the 90-95 cents range at that time.
Tag - economy goes nowhere until the banks loosen the strings. The government should create a national bank that gives mortgages at 4-5%. If they did that instead of all this TARP nonsense you'll see the banks respond immediately with lending. We are a credit economy and without lending we just force real estate lower and lower, worsening Balance Sheets with every fall. Banks are not short of cash, they are short of capital because of the asset writedowns that their own actions help propogate.
Now Toyota has broken this tradition by introducing its latest technologies not solely in luxury cars but also in a mainstream car like a Prius.
Here are two fascinating articles on the history of the Prius
link title
link title
Yes I will test drive a Lexus HS205 just to see how different it is from a Prius. Despite my reservations about a car that will disappoint both performance seekers and fuel efficiency seekers simultaneously I will still test drive an HS250 in order to see if my pre-conceptions are wrong.
Welcome to our forum Wiseman.
Wiseman raised a good point. Oil will likely fall during the global slowdown. But unfortunately that's not the end of the story. Oil and commodity prices will boom again in a few years when the Great New Inflation Era happens and yes it will happen based on how fast the printing presses of the world are issuing new currency paper to save our globe from a slowdown. World history and the current news in Zimbawe is proof that increasing money supply to increase wealth is superficial and harmful at best. The usual winners during infationary times are owners and producers of real assets (gold, oil and other commodities)
Len, your wisdom on these matters amazes me. I think that Obama should appoint you as his main economic advisor. You make SO much sense. Why doesn't the government see this rationale?
Wanting someone to fail just so your opinion is right, and particularly when you want your own President to fail, means you are in immediate need of a psychiatrists couch - round the clock.
Thanks for the compliment but I like the media information space a lot better. It's my comfort zone and we've got some nice logs on the fire leveraging existing data, despite this economy.
I certainly agree with the obvious, which begs the deeper question, "What will be the catalyst?" and "When will it happen?"
There is soooooo much real estate lost to the banks due to the ridiculous mortgage practices... the "NINA" approach... "no income, no assets" yet they still made the loan. Heck, the mortgage industry was literally predatory in making those loans. But now, those loans have been defaulting and the banks have been saddled with thousands upon thousands of properties at fractional prices. That, combined with the lack of normally available mortgage funding, has caused real estate values to crash.
So now, we are in what could almost be described as a negative bubble. We must see a rather massive injection of money into the economy or we suffer from implosion.
I personally think the catalyst will have to come from Washington, in the form of a collossal stimulus package, but I can't help but question whether or not they can appropriately focus the money where it will do the most good. As long as enough of the action taken is positive, then it should be successful.
Personally, I am not so sure I have any issues with some inflation down the road. IMO, the bigger and nastier enemy proves to be massive deflation.
I also think that the American economy has "rubber band" qualities... meaning that it is actually building its energy level even as it gets stretched. This energy will eventually release in the form of positive action taken by Americans.
A massive stimulus package and more available credit would be a good start, and I hope we don't have to wait too much longer for the politicians to figure it out. And, I certainly hope we don't see too many "favors" or too much "pork". As far as I'm concerned, if they replaced "deer hunting" with "lobbyist hunting", we'd all be better off almost instantly.
TM
Inflation does not help asset prices. Financial assets (including real estate) are priced according to long-term interest discount. Home prices in 1980 were miserable with inflation and interest rate both running in double digits.
What's good for the economy and asset prices is monetary stability, not wild gyrations like we have been having in the last decade. So that businesses can plan properly.
That's the trillion-dollar question... :P
Seriously... it really is a very good question. As Len pointed out the obvious need for banks to loosen the strings... where will ALL that money come from? And, as a seperate note to wiseman, I still maintain that inflation will result from the inevitable over-printing of money, and that inflation would be more desireable right now than deflation.
TM
What's good for the economy and asset prices is monetary stability, not wild gyrations like we have been having in the last decade. So that businesses can plan properly.
These are very sound points that you make in my opinion, "Mr. wiseman". I love that name
I agree with the tenet about inflation and housing but I'm not sure it applies this go round. The tenet works because usually housing falls in response to rising interest rates curbing the inflation. But we have low interest rates and deflation now. So even if rates rise they will still be moderate to allow housing to rise somewhat (not skyrocket). None of this means anything though if there's a big limitation or freeze on credit.
Banks - they lend in response to competition and of course to make money. They don't need to lend to do the latter with the US Treasury standing there with $25bln checks to cover past losses. Again banks don't need the cash for their coffers. They need it to strengthen Balance Sheets to cover over-written down assets, which actually cost them money when they were rising, as they paid lavish bonusses in cash on false earnings that never had any cash support. The right medicine is to apply that cash to something that will get those assets to recover. The cash has to get in the hands of the public who will use it dynamically rather than to banks who will simply prop up Balance Sheets covering past sins with it. I'd do a temporary serious cut in tax rates (some folks lost more in portfolio value than they made in income last year and they have to pay taxes on only the income part) across the board with greatest emphasis to the middle class, coupled with incentives to buy hybrids or high MPG gallon cars in conjunction with direct government loans to home buyers. This will help write-up the assets of the banks and at the same time give them a lending competitor and take away their golden parachute. Putting all this cash into banks is like burying it in the ground right now. They can phase the tax increases back in over 3 years and if folks know the effect of them they will adjust their spending to compensate.
We have a complete one directional downward event going on. People want to buy things but have no access to credit so the things they want to buy keep falling until they get low enough to create demand. But banks then need more and more cash to cover the falling assets so the bailout gets larger and larger because the medicine is going to all the wrong places. In the stock market there's a natural correction for this in well capitalized cash rich companies. Drop Microsoft, Google, Apple stocks (and many others) much lower and they'll just write a check and buy back all their shares. But most people don't have that luxury. They need credit to buy cars and houses.
Limbaugh is certainly an idiot, but would you really want to live in a country where the government could imprison people for merely saying idiotic things?
The Fed's focus on 2 percent inflation was not the problem. The problem was the fact that the Fed kept their eyes closed while asset prices were bubbling up to unsustainable double digit rates.
That is not the fault of free markets but the fault of the Fed.
During the 1990s the Fed felt it was its duty to stabilize the US economy during the Asian and Long Term Capital crises by adding more liquidity to markets. By doing so they had caused the Technology Bubble in which the Fed felt it was its duty to add more liquidity to markets which lead to the current asset bubble/credit crisis that we are going through right now.
And now the Fed is reacting to the current asset bubble by adding much more liquidity then ever before in order to stabilize the US economy.
Does anyone here see the trend above. :confuse:
The result of this new Bernanke monetary stimulus is already known : A far worse future economic crisis .
No elected Republican or Democrat will ever have the guts to confront the unaffordable debts that the USA is faced with today. Their only alternative is to use the Fed to deflate the value of those debts with massive inflation.
To claim that the cure to this upcoming deflation is inflation is like claiming arsenic is good for a dying patient.
So what does the US economy require?
More savings and not more credit. Consumers are saving, companies are saving but Governments feel they have a duty not to save. What a shame because it is deflation that the US economy needs right now. The destructive forces of deflation is the only force that will cause asset prices to drop to their uninflated value. Deflation is required to destroy unproductive assets so that money can flow to more productive assets.Any interventions will delay and worsen the recovery process.
Seems to me a perfectly reasonable position to take and one with which I totally agree.
I would be careful in calling people idiots when the shoe might very well be on the other foot.
Can we PLEASE stick to cars here.
What the world needs now is a new generation of persuasive people like Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat,Ayn Rand, Schumacher and Friedrich Hayek. They are the ones who showed the stupidity of socialism. Laughingstocks like Limbaugh adds credibility to the cause of socialism.
You must be new to this forum. The regulars frequently discuss non-automotive topics. As long as the conversation eventually returns to luxury cars, the hosts tolerate these meanderings. You're welcome to join in.
About Limbaugh: I used to listen to him regularly. As far as my economic views are concerned, I'm a hard-core fiscal conservative - quite possibly more so than Limbaugh. I should like the guy, but I agree with Dewey's well-stated criticism: he does nothing to connect his listeners with the towering giants of capitalist thought. He's an entertainer - not a thinker.
I wonder if Limbaugh has even read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" - one of the most scathing indictments of socialism/collectivism ever written.
To keep this on topic: I drove a 2009 BMW 328i xDrive coupe yesterday. (It's interesting that BMW has dropped the xi designation.) Although I was impressed with the car's handling, I would've have liked it more if it had been equipped with a stick (it was a loaner). In any case, as good as it was, it wasn't more fun to drive than my 2001 330i. So I remain satisfied with what I have - although there is something to be said for a heated steering wheel on a bitterly cold day.
I have been a member of this forum for many years. I always get annoyed when the conversation turns to politics unrelated to automobiles. The internet is full of many, many political sites from all points of view. I access many of them. I come here to indulge in my love of cars and to get away from politics.