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$16k won't buy you much else, unless you go used.
They replaced an overpriced bloated sporty looking car with an inexpensive bloated sporty looking car. That is the Celica's replacement. I would still rather have a Civic, personally.
You've got THAT right. I was so disappointed in the tC. Honda would do it better if they chose to reenter that market. The Prelude was a great car!
Aah, the humiliation. A HondaOhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmHonda being dragged home by a 330,000 mile 1968 Dart! :shades: Okay, to be fair, it was this kid's fault for hooking up a sound system that the alternator and battery couldn't keep up with, but still, the irony was kinda cute. :P Kinda like another time when we had three drivers: One of 'em looked kinda like Hyde from "That 70's Show", would giggle over nothing, and drove a Ford Ranger. The other was this emaciated, anti-social dude who always seemed paranoid and as it turned out, sold drugs on the side. He drove a Chevy Celebrity station wagon. And then there was me with my Dart. Within the same week, all of our cars died. The Celebrity blew its engine, the Ranger crapped its tranny, and the Dart, which died completely one night and then fired up later, as if possessed, only to die again 2 days later, simply needed a new set of $2.98 points.
Ah, those were the good old days of cheap gas, where you could drive whatever you wanted and whined when it got over maybe $1.30 per gallon. I guess if I tried that delivery routine these days I'd be delivering in a hybrid!
Was it a four cylinder? Didn't they have a head gasket leak develop unless you did the recommended remove valve cover and retorque the center two head bolts? A neighbor had one do that. I believe they even had a replacement set of head bolts to use for that application.
>simply needed a new set of $2.98 points.
What was it with points wearing out? I had a Mustang 289 that went through points about every 8 thousand miles. Plugs went a little longer.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
As for the points, I'd always heard that they should be replaced every 12,000 miles. Once I started delivering pizzas in that Dart, I lost track of just how fast the miles were racking up. I had changed them in 1994, when the car had maybe 280,000 miles on it. So, no big shock, I guess, when I was pushing 320-325,000, and the dang things fried in late 1996. :sick:
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I think about the pizza guys now and the trans-am/camaro/Mustang they are so proud of, and driving high-powered RWD car in snow and can't help but wonder why they don' have a Festiva for work and that other car for play.
Only time I ever had a problem with snow was one night I was using my grandmother's '85 LeSabre. When the Intrepid was new, I'd drive that LeSabre on bad nights, because I'd rather the other idiots on the road bounce harmlessly off that old, long-since-paid-off beast rather than total a new car with roughly 5 years of payments still on the books. Well, stupid me, I came back to the store and parked on ice. When I went out with the next delivery run, the car did nothing but sit and spin. Luckily, another driver saw me and helped push me out. I remember we also had another driver, an Indian guy with a late 90's Corolla, who got stuck in the snow. Sometimes it's not the car, but the nut behind the wheel! IIRC he got stuck a few times!
I had some fun times back in those days but gawd, looking back, I hope I never have to do it again! I guess if I ever ran into a situation where I needed some quick cash, I'd try bartending or waiting tables. I'm done ragging cars out just to sling some pizzas.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Night all!!
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
I do think it's interesting that Toyota is giving all new model designs bigger engines. Like '09 Corollas are getting Toyota's 1.8L Dual VVT-i four-cylinder engine: 132 hp and get estimated 27/35 mpg city/highway for Standard, LE and XLE models while the S and XRS models will get 158 horsepower version of Toyota's 2.4L VVT-i four-cylinder engine with drop mileage to 22/30 city/highway.
I will say this: in fact I have read this type of statement in many car reviews online & on publication. "More the test driver or editor drove the car for everyday usage. The more they have fun driving it." That's so true! And that's why I have 61k miles on a '07!
Speaking of Honda's, I think one of the downsides of the Fit is we probably won't see a "true" sport version of it (I'm talking HP, not bigger rims
So it was the other way around. Management (hidden recalls) and Marketing (0/0/0 deals putting people upside down) hurt Mitsubishi enough that it hurt sales and starved them of the cash needed for product updates.
Frankly, it's a miracle the EVO ever happened.
When you look at the Mitsubishi line up what do you see that you can't get from someone else? Their two most interesting vehicles are the EVO and the Eclipse. Only the Eclipse stands out from what everyone else has. The EVO is an alternative to the WRX and the WRX is a hard act to follow. Even if the EVO has a less busy look to it.
But still getting back to the subject I don't see a Sub Compact Subaru or Mitsubishi. They might make cars in the Civic Corolla class but that seems to be about as small as most US consumers are willing to go.
Mitsubishi makes subcompacts and kei cars, but doesn't sell them here (yet). The kei-sized Subaru R1 has been occasionally rumored to make an appearance here.
Doesn't the fact they don't sell them here say something to you?
Problem is, with the weak dollar, they would be no cheaper than bigger, established subcompacts.
Major sexual harrassment cases at the Normal, IL plant.
21 months in, the Jazz just continues to do what it is supposed to do with no drama/faults whatsoever. My beloved loves the 7-spd CVT 'box and I enjoy driving the little beast as well........it always seems eager to please.
In America, the high number of pickups is largely due to fleet sales. In midyear, the top two sellers, the Ford F150 and Chevrolet Silverado had fleet sales of 21.3% and 16.2%, respectively, basically meaning every fifth F150 and every sixth Silverado you see is probably commercially owned, not by a private owner.
Little Fiat, VW, Peugeot hatchback turbo diesels seem all the rage in Europe.
There are increasing numbers of pick-ups around; but nothing like USA numbers - or sizes. SUV's are fairly popular but have an increasingly bad reputation as gas guzzlers and tend to get branded as "Chelsea Tractors", which is not a term of endearment. I guess we get our stuff home as best we can or get it delivered. We don't seem to have the passion for big projects I've seen in USA. We perhaps have a bigger poulation of estate cars but hatchbacks are far and away the major body style and it's amazing what you can carry with a little ingenuity.
As for the Camry - it's no longer sold in UK, nor rest of Europe I suspect. It was never much of a seller............too big to be popular, wrong brand to be prestige and at some stage Toyota quietly dropped it. I hadn't even noticed. Biggest saloon in the Toyota fleet is the Avensis, (plus an estate version), then the range moves on to SUV's. Lexus have some sales but mainly the IS models. Audi. BMW and Mercedes pretty much rule the prestige sector, (suprise), with Jaguar, Volvo, Saab following on. Honda sell a decent number of Accords but more Civics and certainly more Jazz, (Fit). Most Accords & Civics are probably diesels as are most Passats, A4's, A6's etc. Lexus do an IS diesel but it's not a great engine whereas the Audi, BMW and Mercedes are all very good diesels, as is the Honda along with Jaguar and Volvo diesels, (I drive an S60 D5 so may be biased). Saab diesels are OK but not top-flight.
Hope this gives you something to mull over for the time being.
Have you ever driven a Fiat 500, just as an aside? What a hoot. I wouldn't want to drive one on a daily basis but on weekends to foreign car shows it is fun. But then once again you have to have a truck to haul it from where I live to San Diego or Sacramento or any other place more than 50 miles away because they can't make freeway speeds.
I did notice that in Europe they were a bit more relaxed about personal space when driving. I believe their were quite a few times I saw six people in a Civic sized car. But they were nothing like Japan. On a Japanese Underground the conductors push the last few riders onto the car as the door shuts. Here if we can touch another persons shoulder with our elbow we are too close.
Are you sure that's just for the F-150 and Silverado half-ton, though? Ford and Chevy tend to lump all configurations of their F-series together in sales, as does Chevy with the Silverado. So with Ford, that means that the F-250/350/etc, which has about as much in common with the F-150 as a Malibu does with an Impala, gets all the figures lumped together. With GM, the trucks are more similar, just with beefier frames and suspensions under the cab and body.
I think these truck sales might even include medium-duty configurations, like what you see for moving vans, buses, etc. That's where most of your fleet sales probably get weighted in, with the heavier duty pickups. Your typical half-ton pickup of today really isn't that much more beefy than a mid 1970's intermediate car, when it comes to payload capacity, so they're just not that useful out on the job site.
I also have a feeling that in Europe, the do it yourself craze is much less prevalent. Residences tend to be much smaller, so there's less to remodel. I'd also imagine that a lot more people are renters over there versus here, which means that your landlord is most likely the one doing the renovations, as opposed to you doing it yourself. And since cars in general are more of a luxury in Europe, versus a necessity in much of the US, I'd imagine that delivery service is much more common.
I was in Paris back in 1994, and while a pickup truck was something you just didn't see, they did have plenty of these little cube truck type things. Basically they had the cab of a compact pickup, something like a small Toyota or Nissan, and on the back in place of the bed was an enclosed box maybe 5.5-6 feet long and a foot or two taller than the cab. It also stuck out wider than the cab of the truck, too. There were tons of these things running around.
Now to be fair, even with my pickup truck, I wouldn't want to deal with hauling this much stuff. Plus, getting stuff like a refrigerator and a stacked washer/dryer up a flight of stairs that have a landing, so it's not a straight shot, can be a real ordeal. But then there were other times when I just needed one or two things. For instance, originally I wasn't going to replace the stove at the condo, because it was fairly new. But it needed to be cleaned, and it was in much better shape than the stove at my house, which dated to 1981, had one ranger burner that didn't work, a broken upper oven, a timer that didn't work, and a lower oven that tended to scorch things. So at the last minute I decided to buy a new stove for the condo so EVERYTHING would be all-new, and then use the existing stove at my house.
That was nice, to be able to just go to Lowe's, buy a stove, throw it in the back of the truck and haul it to the condo. Likewise, back in May I needed a new washing machine at the house, so I just went to Lowe's, threw it in the truck, and brought it home. None of the delivery hassle. The next big item I want to get is a fridge...a big 21 or so cubic foot one. I'm tempted to just go pick it up myself, but I have a bum shoulder these days, so I dunno if I want to try lugging a fridge around!
White Vans the drivers are called White Van Man in the UK. The most insane obnoxious drivers you'll ever see on public roads in the UK.
Go to YouTube and you'll see videos on them.
Same type of van, very common in Europe.
This is the definition and the vans are all similar but some are bigger or smaller depending on what they deliver. Yes that's a white Van but that one has a window. True white vans are cargo only so no windows usually.
At the other end of the scale, our heavy trucks in UK are legally limited to 56mph, (which they can all do). Truck overtaking truck thus becomes an event of calendar proportions. Affectionately known as "Elephant Racing".
As for European car sales; The Ford Focus is UK's best selling car and the following tells the European story :
Europe’s best performing brand of 2006 was VW, thanks to several well-received new models – Passat, Jetta, Fox, Eos and Golf Plus, while in descending order the top ten is completed by Opel/Vauxhall, Renault, Ford, Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, Toyota, Mercedes and BMW. Fiat recorded the largest increase in sales from this group with an 18.7% rise in new car registrations mainly due to strong sales of the Grande Punto, as well as the Croma, Sedici, an expanded Panda range and the face-lifted Doblo.
Traditionally, Citroen, Peugeot and Renault occupy the last places in ownership/reliability surveys but that doesn't stop the masses buying them. :confuse: Not sure if VW above is just VW or the VW Group; VW/Audi/Skoda/SEAT. If it is just VW then I have no idea what happened to Audi - sure are lots about.
As for diesels; we Europeans love 'em and have a wide choice of good ones. Not having a diesel option is seen as a serious setback to any range, (excl RR, Bentley and the exotics, although there is lots of debate about a diesel version of the Audi R8). Looks like we're close to the point at which diesel car sales will outnumber petrol car sales. Current fuel prices in UK are circa :
UL Gasoline : $8 per USG and ULS Diesel : $8.4 per USG
Calculated using a £/$ ExRate of $2.02 per £1.
Given diesel's better mileage it starts to make sense. ULS Diesel is the only flavour available.
Comments made re European houses being smaller then USA houses is generally correct and my limited experience of DIY Store delivery services has been very good.
Apologies for wandering off-topic.
I've seen your videos of traffic accidents and such nevermind when I was actually over there and those guys make me look sane. :P
Those white vans do it all. I love the Top Gear Ep where they compete and I don't think anyone actually got a Sprinter. May of course got a Huge van, Hammond a small one and Clarkson I forget but it was probably fast.
Then they had white van men drive a van around the track in another ep. Great stuff. Sorry for it being off topic.
To get back on topic I would love to see some subcompacts or compacts here in the US with diesels. The Fit would be nice or anything in the 4 door hatch. It's all my european blood I guess but I like hatches.
Howeverr, the new Fiat 500 is about to hit the roads. Almost as cute as the original, and with lots of the same styling cues. Much more civilised though. 1242cc I4 petrol, 69bhp, 865kg and 0-62 in 12.9secs. Top speed a scary 99mph. It even has climate control as standard. Initial reviews are very favourable.
Go here for a look-see.
Fiat
If link doen't work, (my fault, not sure how to incl links), go to www.fiat.co.uk/ and click on the New 500 link.
Back to topic as this may never hit USA and is possibly sub-sub-compact but, to my mind, makes more sense than a Smart ForTwo or whatever.
I think it looks great, but I'd much prefer to see 180hp or more. ;b
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
My Volvo S60 has the 185bhp/295lbft D5 diesel and it's a brilliant bit of kit. Don't think you get that yet, either. :confuse:
Back to topic.
I'll agree the new little Fiat looks a lot cooler than a Smart
Would you really expect that a WORK truck is commercially owned? Seriously, some of the "fleet" sales are to small contractors with 2-3 vehicles who also use the vehicle as their personal vehicle.
Yes, I would. There are tons of F-150 pickups on my college campus with "UAB" painted on them. They are commercially owned, and are work trucks. There are numerous examples of these.
Why is this an issue with you, out of curiousity?
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D