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Agreed, but a good motor is a good motor, and if it finds its way into sport crossover bull crap cars it'll just as likely find its way into a sports sedan or coupe simply to justify production.

I hear you on that, as I recall only up until recently have Audi RS' series cars come in sedan form, they were always released as Avants first and Sedans later (if at all). Of course we only got the RS4 recently only to have it discontinued, same with the RS6 which saw a one year run in 2003. The whole "Eco" thing is just marketing, they'll slap Green on anything as long as the dollar projections are high. The sad thing is people will buy that crap up because they'll "feel" like they're doing their part, there's a lot of money to be made to help people feel self-righteous. I could care less about saving the environment to be completely honest, but i do like the idea of buying a motor that is turbocharged, direct injected, and puts out around 400hp with gobs of torque, even if it is being pushed as a "green" solution.

The X5 is a full size SUV, while the X6 is more like a sports SUV (due to its size) as opposed to a sports wagon, the genre of car that they fit into has been established for awhile. The genre i was referring to belongs to the Acura ZDX, for some reason they thought a car that's not as practical as a station wagon and not as performance oriented as a sports car would work well together. The traditional sports wagon addresses both issues and does it without looking genre confused (am I an SUV? am I a Hatchback? Sports car??? how about none of the above).

Manufacturer's are already trying the sport wagon thing, personally, i don't care for it. The only real sports wagons on the market today are the wrx wagon and the Audi Avant models, there are a few other euro models, but those two are easily the most popular and deserving of the "sport" nomenclature (they really give you that great balance between performance/practicality). I hate the idea that these new "sport" wagons need to look like some step child of an suv and a car, just follow the original wagon formula and give me a bad ass motor.

To each their own, i think it looks better than most of its current competition: Civic, Focus, & Corolla. Most of the competition at that price point is blander than cardboard, while i don't think it's some kind of game changer, at least it's not boring.

I'm unsure how ergonomic the car really is until i test drive one, but at face value, i'm going to have to disagree with anime52 and say that the car looks pretty sweet. It's not as a good as the Sonata (especially now that the Sonata has a 276hp turbo motor), but for its marketed price range and competition, for the first time it's actually looking like a competitor.

it's definitely catering more to adults as the series progresses, the things that i find cheesy my 5 year old son thinks are "cool" so it's doing a clever job of keeping both audiences occupied.

i didn't buy too many of the clone troopers the first time around because i've been waiting for them to release them with the ball jointed hips. Now that they're doing that, i've been buying a good number of the releases up (like the new Commander Cody). Picked up ROTJ Luke recently, very impressed with him so far, i was also really impressed with their ESB Luke with the ball jointed hips as well. The ROTJ Luke is pretty accurate, but I think overall the ESB Luke gives you a little more substance, removable gun, lightsaber, great head sculpt, a bit more iconic (for me at least).

admit it, you're a slickdealer, i'm the exact same way, it's like a disease.

i caught this on DVD last week, I enjoyed it overall, i might have had a different opinion if i spent $12 to see it, but for a $1 rental, it was a good watch of mindless entertainment. When the Pred teamed up with the Humans it brought me back to the old AVP arcade game days, when the predator was the "good" guy and in a way they showed that presented with the right situation even a predator could ally with a human. If the AVP movies never happened i wouldn't hate the concept of that alliance happening, unfortunately AVP movies did happen and now i never want to see any future for that franchise.

having your local shop do the oil on a car that uses conventional oil is usually cost effective, but cars that use synthetic is usually really expensive. Where 5 quarts of synthetic with a filter is around $30, the local shop typically charges $50. Plus i'm a bit picky, in the winter i switch to 0w40 oil and I've talked to the oil monkey's at my friends shop and they just throw in whatever the computer says (and i've seen the computer be wrong first hand). There's still something to be said about doing oil changes yourself, especially with cars purposely becoming more complex to keep you away from working on it, it's one of the few things you can do that helps you feel like you contribute to your car still being on the road.

I know for the fuel cleaning they just throw a can of bg44k and let it run its course, though i'll admit i'm a big fan of bg 44k. One of my best friends get it for me for free (he's a mechanic) and i swear by it, every 5 or so oil changes i'll throw a can of bg quick clean in my oil too to help pull the crap deposits that are starting to gum up the cam's. I don't know the real science to whether it truly increases the life of the motor or does anything to longevity but i can tell you that the motor usually sounds a lot smoother afterwards, especially with motors that have some age on them.

Watched both episodes, it was good, the animation is a bit distracting at times so that'll take some getting used to. Surprisingly, the story and themes (big business, military, politics, etc.) feel aimed towards adults while the weapons, character designs, and action sequences keep the kids in play (energy weapons instead of bullets). There are some cheesy dialogue parts, but GI Joe is cheesy so it felt right. I guess it's because i work on a military base, but i can't help but feel they should pay more attention to the disciplines that the military is known for (saluting, cover, appropriate naming conventions), but i know that's asking too much of a kids a cartoon.

I went to my local Costco yesterday and they had the ATAT for $75

Definitely following you on that, Dodge/Chrysler is dead, GM only makes a good car if it has an LS motor in it and Ford is the only true American car company showing any promise. On that note, the new F-150 finally retired the Triton V8 and moved onto all modern motors, one "ecoboost" direct injected turbo motor, the new 5.0L V8, and a more traditional 6.2L V8. Ford is also bringing the Euro style focus stateside (not sure if we'll get an RS model with the turbo motor yet), and is really strengthening their core lineup. As far as their work on Lincoln, I would give them another 5 years to get that brand together, hot off of the heels of axing Mercury, they can now really buckle down and focus on making real luxury cars with that brand. I always tell anyone interested in buying American, go buy a Ford, I've always tried to be as unbiased as i can when possible, but Ford has really stepped their game up in the past decade.

I don't own one but my friend and i work on his YJ a lot, it's such a piece of crap but we love it, it has some strange charming quality to it. Plus you get the bonus of being a part of a community with the Wrangler.

I agree with you on the first point, loved the McLaren F1, and also loved the Ferrari F40, supercars really hit a good age there in the late 80's through the late 90's.

you're also looking at two completely different technologies between this concept and a bugatti, the bugatti is using technology that's been tested and perfected over several decades at this scale, turbines are typically only used in larger or more specific applications and in this case has been scaled way down. the Jaguar is using turbine engines in conjunction with electric motors, electric motors are known well for having fantastic torque but they're not really HP crunchers and while turbine motors sounds cutting edge, in this application its probably not as performance minded as it sounds, mostly due to the nature of a turbine motor. Turbine motors are typically meant to run at a constant speed, they don't wind up and wind down very well like a typical otto cycle motor, which is why you see them on jet liners and generators, things that will have the motor running at a constant rpm for long periods of time. I'm not sure how they've balanced the efficiency of the electric motor with the turbines, but i'm sure it's far from perfect at a conceptual stage, so there's a lot of room for improvement in this type of design. In regards to weight, i'd be surprised if they kept it below 4000lbs, you have to consider the fact that there are six motors in this car not counting the batteries to power four of them, this thing has to weigh a lot regardless of space age materials.

agreed, and since it's electric the torque curve should remain almost linear until a certain RPM (where it will drop off considerably), i'd like to see it in action, i imagine weight is what keeps its 0-60 time higher than it should be.

Back when i had nothing better to do than go to track events i've seen a few monster miata's in person, and they're fast, very fast, and not just on the straights in the corners too. If i hadn't turbocharged mine, i probably would've gone the V8 route when i owned a Miata.

You're not alone, i'm not that old (i am a family man), but with modern global platforms the two door coupe has become impractical since the weight savings and performance advantage just aren't there anymore. The number of coupes actually built on a coupe chassis has narrowed considerably so they might as well dump the super long two doors for more compact and practical four doors and throw some real back seats in because performance won't be effected adversely in the least (in some cases the weight distribution is beneficial). I'll still own a two door coupe if it's built that way from the chassis up (Elise, Miata, TT, GT-R, Corvette, etc.) but those are also cars that either can't accommodate four doors or truly benefit from only having two.

i know what you mean, in my area TRU charges $10 a fig while target and Wal-Mart are $6-7, the only saving grace for me is my friend works at TRU so he gets me the figures on the cheap after he applies a novels worth of coupons and his associate discount. I should really post the receipts for some of my TRU purchases, it's hilarious to see the numbers game done on them.

The "Terminator" was definitely the best Production Mustang of that body style, a friend of mine got one as a graduation gift from HS, needless to say the tires didn't make it to graduation. If I ever come across one at the right price i would buy it, i hate the exterior/interior styling but that motor was something to behold.

So i confirmed something a few weeks ago that i had been sorta curious about. I've had Verizon FiOS for over 3 years and for the first time in three years my cable TV died. The internet worked just fine, but tv crapped out, so i decided to troubleshoot since i have all of the equipment needed to test coax ethernet and fiber. I always assumed that the whole "fiber to your door" thing was just marketing, i figured that it ran to a fiber backbone but ultimately they just pulled copper from the CO to your door like everyone else does, but after tracing it all back, it really does come in as terminated SC fiber into the smartbox on the back of the house. I work with fiber on a daily basis at work and it's not an easy thing to deploy, for once, i was pretty impressed with Verizon's infrastructure and the fact that they're marketing was actually telling the truth.

that shift knob looks retarded.