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Comments
Civic Hybrid and Prius are the same leaders they were before. What's the big deal?
From the looks of things, to get good hybrid mileage you still need to drive an electric beer can.
However, to drive a true luxury car, and still get great mileage, an E320 BlueTec might be a reasonable alternative, or even that S240D you make mockery of.
TagMan
No comment. :P
(just kidding now)
TM
You mean I fetched the bone... Gosh, I'm almost as smart as your dog.
Actually, your welcome. I'm sure your husky is a beautiful (and smart) dog.
And yes, I definately agree that the conversation needed to lighten up.
TagMan
My point is: one should not take reliability surveys too seriously. They are not gospel. Anybody can be unlucky and get stuck with a lemon regardless of the brand. I've been lucky so far.
PS: Just curious. Is the NY Times subscription in the dog's name?
That could be a big discussion all by itself, but I certainly don't think Forbes has a clue.
TagMan
To this point we have still averaged an impressive 25.5 mpg despite our heavy feet
...a number that's actually in line with the OLD EPA combined number of 26, and markedly better than the new EPA combined number of 23...despite the testers' "heavy feet".
Long shots certainly exist, but any betting man worthy of his salt should know . . . as well as anyone who values his or her time (warranty does not cover consequential lost revenue due to lost business opportunities) knows not to bet on long shots unless the reward is enormous.
I do believe when it comes to choosing BMW, reliability should no longer be a significant determining factor. Eliminate it for its body style or stark interior, if you like.
BMW has made great strides in making their vehicles more reliable and they put their money where their mouth is by offering the best 4 year warranty in the business.
As a prudent and conservative bet, I am putting all my chips on BMW.
All in all the overall package looks less retro, less Ivy League full professor or mid-50's divorcee, and far more contemporary. There are many good reasons to buy a Jag sedan (price, dependability, handling, performance, etc.) and now this revision takes away the excuse that it looks too "old" for the dynamic leader a men that all of us fancy ourselves to be.
Has anyone seen photos of the new body style 2009?
So the GS350 averages around 24mpg, and the 450h manages...23! Wow, technology at work. And all it requires is half the trunk space and $10,000! What a deal!
BusinessWeek
So how will VW achieve a turnaround in USA?
A German black leathered dominatrix named Helga to promote the Jetta (Please refer to the linked article above) :surprise:
Consistent bottom reliability for most VWs :lemon:
VW minivans that are rebadged Chryslers?
A VW GTI W12 650bhp 530 lb-ft of torque which almost makes a Phaeton sound sensible?
VW Chairman Piesch's proposal of introducing a new Phaeton in North America?
The Passat and Jetta that looks less quirky and is not as interesting to younger buyers as the older version.(all VWs are suppose to be quirky and funky IMO)
Does VW honestly think they're going to achieve a turnaround with the above kind of junk thinking?
1. LS---------3196
2. S Class----2135
3. 7 Series---1177
4. A8----------339
The LS came close to beating all the others combined! They must be gnashing their teeth in frustration in Germany!!
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
Darn thing is that this is my third BMW and I still have not had any issues with any of these seemingly indestructible vehicles to take advantage of their generous offer. Just the oil changes.
I'm not talking about the V8 5 and E class though. The GS450h, minus the "h" is the GS350. Even with advantages that hybrids got with the 2007 EPA spec, the 450h was still only about 2mpg better than the 350. Now the difference is basically zero. So the fuel economy isn't better, it's not really any faster, and it certainly doesn't handle better than the GS350. What is the point of the GS450h?
Dr. Ferdinand is the big problem. It doesn't matter who they shift around from here to there, he runs the show. He has such a death grip over VW that it makes even Carlos Ghosn blush.
VW dropped the ball for affordable, funky and fun to drive cars, instead obsessing over $60, 70, and 80K VWs that no one wants, and Mazda picked it up and ran with it. The Jetta costs far more than the Mazda3, and I'm sure the Tiguan will cost far more than the CX-7, and yet the Mazdas are just as good and won't constantly be in the shop.
If BMW is willing to deal when it comes to leasing though, who cares? BMW gave us a fantastic lease price on the X3, and on top of that, we never have to pay for brake pads, oil changes, and everything else Lexus, Acura, or M-B would charage a few hundred bucks for.
Not quite accurate. Using 2008 EPA methodology on the 2007 cars, the numbers are 22mpg combined for the 350 and 23mpg for the 450h. And as I posted above, R&T got 25.5mpg in real world heavy-footed use over a long period of time for the 450h.
I'm not saying the current incarnation of GS and LS hybrids is great, in fact I'm quite sure I'm not going to buy either myself when if comes time for my next car in maybe 6 months. In fact I wish an S diesel AWD were available in that timeframe. But for the car after that one, in 6 years or so, I hope Lexus, MB, BMW, Audi will all have AWD diesel hybrids (using higher-tech batteries) in the LS/S/7/A8 class and that's what I hope to be buying c. 2014.
LS600hL 21
LS460L 19
750Li 18
A8L 18
S550 4Matic 16
760Li 15
A8L-v12 15
S600 13
At least the LS600 has AWD and a slightly upgraded interior, so that's something for all that extra money over the 460L. The 450h though gives you essentially nothing for your money. It would be smarter to buy 16 iPhones.
As Alfred E Newman would say, "What me worry?"
SOURCE: WALL STREET JOURNAL dated Friday the 13th of July, 2007
If the 1980s created yuppies (young urban professionals) and the 1990s brought us bobos (bourgeois bohemians), the 2000s may be giving rise to a new kind of elite: yawns.
Rich but rumpled: Bill Gates is the patron saint of 'Yawns'
Yawns are "young and wealthy but normal." They are men and women in their 30s and 40s who have become multimillionaires and billionaires during the wealth boom of the past decade. Yet rather than spending their money on yachts, boats and jets, yawns live modestly and spend most of their money on philanthropy. In stark contrast to the outsized titans of the Gilded Age and the slicked-back Gordon Gekkos of the 1980s, yawns are notable for their extraordinary dullness.
They are the anti-Paris Hiltons, the demure Donald Trumps. And they are disproving the time-honored stereotype of the nouveaux riches as culturally insecure social climbers who blow their money on excess. If the symbols of the yuppie were Armani suits and BMWs, the symbols of the yawn are Dockers and microcredit.
The term "yawn" comes from Great Britain, where the Sunday Telegraph, a London newspaper, gets credit for coining the acronym. Citing a study that showed that only half of today's rich Britons said that making more money was their top priority, the paper noted that some of the new elite were leading quiet lives focused on family and charity.
Philip Berber fits the profile. The 47-year-old Austin, Texas, entrepreneur sold his online trading company, CyberCorp., to Charles Schwab in 2000 for more than $400 million. Yet he still lives in an unassuming house outside Austin, his family mainly flies commercial and his two sons drive old, used cars. Mr. Berber and his wife spend most of their time and fortune on their family charity, Glimmer of Hope, which fights poverty in Ethiopia by building water wells, schools and health clinics.
"I'm both ashamed and proud to be a yawn," Mr. Berber says, adding that he's never heard the term before. "The idea of making more money or having the biggest yacht has no appeal to me whatsoever."
Yawns are not to be confused with "old money," whose fortunes were largely inherited -- with the lessons of humility, public service and blue-blood exclusion passed down through the generations.
Yawns are also different from "the millionaires next door" -- those low-key welding contractors, dry-cleaners and dentists made famous in the book of the same title by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. And millionaires next door are worth only $1 million or more, while yawns are centimillionaires or billionaires.
The Price of Normality
Yawns spend substantial amounts of money and time trying to be normal. Natasha Pearl, founder of Aston Pearl, a New York-based concierge firm, says one of her yawn clients recently hired her to find a summer camp for his daughter that wouldn't be filled with other rich kids. She found him one in New England that was "very low-key." The client paid her $15,000 for the effort, even though the camp itself cost only $5,000 for the summer.
"It was worth it to him to send his child to a camp where the kids didn't arrive in private jets," Ms. Pearl says.
Although he is 51, Bill Gates is considered the patron saint of yawnhood. His philanthropy, nerdy clothes and close family help to offset the conspicuousness of his 40,000-square-foot mansion. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang and eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar are yawns, as is Nashville rancher and billionaire Brad M. Kelley, who drives a Ford pickup and says he has never been on a yacht. Mr. Kelley uses his extra cash to fund land-conservation projects and breed white rhinos, Eastern bongos and other rare animals in Africa.
Warren Buffett was a yawn when he was younger, but now, at 76, he's too old to qualify. Google guys Sergey Brin and Larry Page would be yawns, were it not for their shared private jumbo jet and frequent kite-surfing trips to Hawaii. Larry Ellison, the Oracle chief who owns a 454-foot yacht, and Mark Cuban, the loud-mouth dot-commer and Dallas Mavericks owner, are definitely not yawns. Nor are most of the people on the Forbes list -- 2/3 of whom are older than 50.
Some British journalists bemoan the yawns, complaining that they are boring. "It makes one nostalgic for yuppies, who at least were fun, with their gigantic phones, raging blood pressure and comedy cuff links," wrote Barbara Ellen in the Guardian newspaper. "By comparison, yawns seem slightly creepy: all that striving for faux-normality."
Riches on Display
It's unclear how many yawns there are in America, but unlike in Great Britain, they may be a minority among the wealthy here. According to a recent U.S. survey by Prince & Assoc., a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, respondents worth $10 million or more plan to spend an average of $384,000 this summer on yacht charters, $61,000 on spa services and $94,000 on jewelry and watches.
Americans, after all, are more prone to displaying their riches than Britons, who have a much longer history of refined, quiet wealth. "It's hard to be a yawn today in America," says Kathryn McCarthy, a New York-based adviser to superwealthy families. "A lot of them start out wanting to be yawns, but they get caught up in all the spending, the vacation homes, the planes."
Ms. Pearl, the concierge-firm founder, says, "The old-money families that live in a low-key style are doing this without conscious thought. They are behaving as their parents, grandparents, and earlier generations all behaved.
"The low-key new money is far more self-conscious, Ms. Pearl says. "They work very hard, and spend incredible amounts of money trying to be normal and raising their kids to be normal
Read the Membership Agreement that you agreed to follow in order to post here-the section on "unauthorized advertising."
The fact is he still has that 40,000 sq ft mansion. Wake me up when he donates that and moves into a 2000 sq ft house. Seems he could try a bit harder if he really wants to appear "normal."
First Forbes and now the WSJ. Man, it must be a slow summer for financial stories.
If Lexus is trying to out muscle the E550 and 550i with the GS450h, they've failed. The 535i and GS350 both do 0-60 in around 5.7 seconds. The GS450h is around 5.5. The E550 and 550i both have a lot more power than the 450h, and are a lot faster. (5.2 for the 550i, 4.8 for the E550). The truth is the difference in both performance and mpg between the 450h and 350 is extremely marginal. Your $10,000 gets you a 400lb., 5.2cu.ft anvil in the trunk, and thats it. The weight gain completely negates the power increase.
A Porsche Boxster has more total storage space than the GS450h, several convertibles do. The GS isn't a bad looking car, though I prefer the IS350's more aggressive, angular approach to the GS's curves. I also think the interior is bland. Nice materials, and it doesn't have the "pseudo-luxury" feel of the RL, it's just not particularly interesting to look at, nor is there enough room. At least Acura has the "well, we're stuck with the Accord platform" excuse for the too-small RL.
You're right, thank you, and thanks to carnaught for doing just that!
There have been many modest philantrophy giving wealthy types centuries before the term Yawn was ever invented. Now ofcoures Bill Gates and a few other gazillionaires are going to monopolize the term Yawn for themselves as if such people never ever existed before.
535i: 5.6 manual, 5.7 auto
550i: 5.4 manual, 5.5 auto.
Is that a heck lot of difference? Not really. The weight gain of a V8 over a 6-cyl negates much of the power increase. The V8 is also much thirstier than the I6, unlike the 450h actually having better gas mileage than 350 What's more, if driven for performance, with much hard accelearation and braking, the 450h's energy management would show even greater advantage than a V8.
Trunk space loss? What's the big deal? If a lot of trunk space is desired, get the RX400h. It's hard to do 5.5 0-60 with an ranch-raised White Rhino in the trunk anyway :-)
Or even better get a BMW 535i with more trunk space. Why sacrifice a sedan for a lifeless hyrbid Crossover that doesnt even get much better mileage than a 535i.
The comparison between the 535i and 550i is a brand new comparison since the 535i was just introduced. It's just like comparing a BMW335i with a BMW 530i last year. Within time BMW had upgraded the 5 series model to twin turbo and within time BMW will upgrade the 550i so that it will have significantly more beefier performance than a 535i. This is merely a transitional period between the 535i and 550i.
THe hybrid GS has been an uncompelling alternative to the non-hybrid GS since its introduction. In this case the hyrbid GS disadvantages are not transitional as it is with the BMW 5 series models.
BTW, the GS350 is also newer than the GS450h. At the time GS450 was introduced, the other GS was GS300, which was competitive to 530i, and superior to 525i, in terms of accelearation.
If this was a different day and age then yes BMW would develop a more powerful gas guzzling V8. But because of new fuel efficiency concerns I think that maybe (pure speculation) BMW will eliminate the 550i so that there will be only three 5 series models : 528i, 535i and a M5(for enthusiasts who couldn't care less about fuel consumption). If there was no BMW550i then BMW would be less constrained in adding even more ooomph to their twin turbo i6s.
But that may not be such a loss for BMW since there is a very good likelihood that diesel versions of the 5 series will be available in North America.
And on top of that there's the uber-pointless GS430. Lexus should kill off both the 450h and the 430, no one is buying them anyway, and just sell the 350/AWD and the GS-F. I doubt the F car will be much of a match for the E63 or RS6, but I'm hoping that it pushes Infiniti to create their own UHP division for the G and M, using the 3.7L TT GT-R engine. A 450+hp Nismo M would be a blast to drive, and I bet they could do one for at least $10K less than the M5.
As it is, the handsome, conservative appearance of the GS would fit me like a glove... a tight glove!