“This is a battle not of speed but of impressions. And if anything is going to leave an impression, it’s speed. With electrics now grading into track use, the testing for this year’s event involved course time.”
… I knew that the PEVOTY piece was a John PigBoy Heffalump special.
I bet he doesn't know that the metaphor he badly mixed originates in the Bible, and if he's familiar with Damon Runyons riff on the verse, "but that's the way to bet", he likely doesn't know who Runyon was.
Just checked out the article - no thanks. Reading about those cars makes me as unhappy as when I saw overweight, lazy cyclists passing me on e-bikes on our ride in Tucson last weekend.
Yeah, bookstores certainly aren’t what they once were. Loved the golden era of Borders/Barnes and Noble/Bookstar - definitely a step up from the B Dalton/Waldenbooks era in the 80s/early 90s.
Regarding Cadillac F1 - as much as I want to get behind this I can't help but think this is Jaguar - Electric Bugaloo, potentially even worse as they don't have a race-winning base to start with. Far more effective organizations (Toyota, Honda, BMW) have been chewed up and spit out and that was back in the seeming innocence of early-naughts F1, when Eddie Jordan and Jackie Stewart had teams that could eek out wins. I would love to see a competitive, US-led factory team; however I give GM three years until they decide to pursue goals "more in line with their sustainability objectives."
I remember they were toying with having flywheels acting as mechanical capacitors in their Patriot WSC car. I spoke with an engineer on the program a couple of years later and it didn't take too much effort with a fault tree to see how it could be a bad idea on a crowded race track surrounded by spectators.
Gene M.F. G.D. Haas, one of the greatest american businessmen in history by difficulty of competition space, with one of the finer computer numerically controlled tool manufacturing companies *in the world* under his ownership, has not managed better than 5th Place in the constructor's championship. What chance does gm stand?
The MSRP inflation is obviously overdone looking at used car values. I hope no one is buying Wagoneers vs leasing them. 2 yr old wagoneers with 20-30k miles are depreciating 40%, as in $60k used on the dealer lot with a $99k sticker. Who the hell can absorb that financial hit? Leave that type of hit to Rolls Royce and Aston Martin new car buyers.
A friend of mine who has been in the car business in some aspect for his entire career (salesman, F&I, dealer principal, consultant, etc. - he has done it all) was recently in the Philly Ferrari store. He told me they had a number of used 812 GTS examples for sale. I checked the website - 4 or 5 cars, which is quite a lot, particularly of a low production $500K+ convertible on the cusp of winter.
He clarified that they had at least 4 or 5 MORE that are not listed on the website.
I wonder how equipped the current Ferrari sales staff is to negotiate against the types of people who are able to buy used $500K cars?
That is a reality tv show I would watch. I bet there is an amount of diversity among the $500k buyer. The type who earned their way into that level of means vs the child/grandchild of someone who made it happen. And then there is the actor/musician/influencer. All vs your local Ferrari sales professional. It’s gold Jerry! Gold!
We could film it in Atlanta; I recently observed a McLaren Elva (1 of 149 globally) parked at the “valet” of one of the FIVE hookah lounges within 1,000 feet of my building.
yeah thats true given how sometimes theyd overlook things and while engine masters was great its more like benchracing but with a dyno to support the argument
also they never went wild enough with the carb size test i want to see a pair of 1150 dominators on a 305
When the Cavalier came out in 1981 it was aimed at the first generation Accord which was similarly sized but then Honda came out with four more versions of the Accord which made it bigger and competed against larger more expensive cars before GM gave the poor Cavalier its first meaningful redesign in 1995.
Not only was the original Accord a little smaller than the first-generation Cavalier, it was also CHEAPER when adjusted for equipment.
Of course, that wasn't reflected in the real world, where GM dealers had to discount while Honda dealers regularly tacked an additional 10-20% of ADP to the sticker.
The first year Cavalier’s were pricey. Loaded they were priced higher than most Caprices and Cutlass Supreme’s. They were very well trimmed but had awful drivetrains. The Olds and Buick versions weren’t much cheaper than the Cimarron when loaded up. They decontented them repeatedly after 82 until they became the cheap and cheerful cars we know of today.
Jack, unless I missed it, I eagerly await the next tale in the Blake Z. Rong canon that you promised us recently. I'm not mad, though. What you've gifted us in the interim has been eminently satisfying.
I never thought I’d say this 10 years ago, but we need a new Cavalier. A small car with a big back seat, a super simple infotainment system, a drivetrain that can deliver 40 mpg and a 9 second 0-60 time wrapped in conservative sheetmetal that will still look good on faded dented paint a decade from now. $19,995 for a base model, $21,995 for an LT, $23,995 for an RS. Add $2k if you want the package that has a sunroof and a Bose stereo.
Yep. I had an 87 Z24 in high school. 17 year old me thought it was cool. Clutch was looong. First time I drove my college girlfriend's Prelude 5 speed was a revelation.
They should get wacky. Stick the 2 liter turbo they shove in the Cadillacs under the hood, and let the Cadillac V folks do suspension tuning. It would be an amazing little bit of cheap speed
It’s a nice car for the money. One worries a bit about the 1.2t, but taking everything into context it’s a pretty unbeatable bargain in todays market tbh.
We bought a Trax for our daughter in college and it is great for her. 18 months ago used beaters with 200k miles were $15-20k, so the Trax seemed like a bargain. If they haven’t raised MSRP much it probably still is.
Why should Nissan be the only game in town? The Cavalier’s, Escort’s, and Omnirizon’s of the world used to own that segment. I just have a tough time with this era of Chevrolet selling Caprice Classic’s with a pickup bed for $80k. We need a reality check
I drove or rode in a lot of those econoboxes in high school. The domestics ignored the segment for the most part with 2nd rate product, and lost that ownership.
The Japanese have now taken over the more premium entry level positions, and the Koreans have moved in to the upstart space.
The segment isn’t large enough for 3 tiers; the domestics don’t have a meaningful position other than badge engineered stuff like the Trax.
The most amazing thing about the J-cars: you could get a 4 door sedan, 2 door notchback, 2 door hatchback, wagon, or convertible. GM is too obsessed with EVs to do anything bold, and anyway, the EVs sucked away all their money.
Had a Jetta as a rental two weeks ago, and was very pleasantly surprised. I say this as someone who was driving around in a B5.5 “peak VW” Passat at age 17. You could do much worse on an entry level car, and the size is perfect.
I've long felt that way about the A-body Buick Century circa 1996. Fix the intake gaskets on the 3100 V6 and let it rip. You would still be able to fix it out of most junkyards. A simple cloth bench seated, column shifted people mover that should be as reliable as the tides. People might even be surprised how a generous tire sidewall can give a comfortable ride. For the way the roads are kept around here, ride means a hell of a lot more than handling.
Those drove lousy when they were introduced in 1982 and were just as bad in 1996 but adhered to the old adage that a GM scan would run bad longer then most other cars would run.
Had a neighbor with a '89 Pontiac 6000 with the 3100 that drove all over the SE. He sold the car with close to 500K in 2000. Engine still ran great but had to have the transmission rebuilt at 250K.
Counterpoint: cars didn't more expensive, people just bought more expensive cars. Can't be seen in the school drop off driving a Versa, what would the neighbors think!
As a fan of Roadkill and most other “shows” that came from its model, I am very sad to see the money people have decided to kill it. I wonder if they looked into selling it instead of pulling the plug. I would imagine that they could have done so for a minor profit and allowed more great content to be produced and enjoyed. Yet this could be a threat to corporate productions that they profit from.
Pour one out for Roadkill. Probably the realest non-scripted automotive show that ever was, chiefly because the presenters didn't care about what the viewer thinks about them; as long as Freiburger and Finnegan were happy, they considered it well done. And it worked for 10 years.
I believe the lease is with the manufacturer, so dealers don’t take ownership and have no reason not to take back a lease. At least a few years ago lease returns went through wholesale auction and then made their way to the dealership used car sections.
I think most dealers get the first right to keep a lease returned to them in brand at some agreed to price. If you’re a Lexus dealer, why wouldn’t you want that 3 year old RX or ES that you have been maintaining? But since a financial institution owns the leases, they aren’t obligated to keep and resell that vehicle.
I know of a 2024 Lyric at whatever trim gets you massage seats with 10k miles that sold at dealer auction for $33k. It’s not great! $12k is a stretch, but $20-$25 seems reasonable.
I am an avid proponent of leasing EVs. It’s unbelievably cheap to do so right now. Take a Honda Prolgue or Chevy Equinox/Blazer. You can get one out the door with no money down around $200/mo for two years and 10k miles/yr. It can’t fit all lifestyles (such as mine, I lament), but if it does, it’s so cheap as to you almost have to do it
I think he's good at what he does: kinda-sorta fiction-ish tales about Boomers and Greatest Generation people who aren't alive to contradict him. He's not qualified to test or evaluate vehicles.
This is a tempest in a teacup. He's on one of those gay cruises to Alaska or something. You can't keep him away from ridiculous press trips and endless posturing.
i remember vividly seeing that vid when it came out and when he called the 500c a fuckbuddy i was hit with the realization that theyd hire anyone to write some junk about a car and they absolutely didnt need to be adequate at it whatsoever
I made it only 40-50 seconds in until I heard the reference. No where in any universe would the female equivalent of a Fiat 500 be on the roster. What’s the equivalency? A 5 out 10 midget with a butterface? I’m sorry, it’s an Abart, so maybe it’s like a goth midget…6/10.
I hIghly doubt these are committee hires. They find people completely absolved in their own personalities and are so annoyingly outspoken that they somehow get construed as quirky and hip/hot because they are so far removed from the interviewer as they themselves are trying to appeal to a crowd that they don’t remotely understand. They just know it’s not how it was done in the past and are throwing darts blind. “They sound edgy and trendy” and yet they’re the loudest, most obnoxious person in the room. Squeaky dingus gets the grease.
"a deformed ugly obese cripple with the voice of an injured duck"
more kermit than daffy but go on
"He will have Sir Lewis to deal with next year"
yet another layer of hamilton driving prowess mystique will be peeled off in front of a crowd to ensure that as many people as possible going forward will credit more and more of his sevenish championships were literally just down to the car
"GM-F1 will be the worst team since Minardi, but they won’t have any of Faenza’s charm"
Are we sure about this? Why the urge to shit on it before it even has a chance to race?
F1, like any top-level motorsport, is about money... maybe GM F1 would have more resources than Haas, and some positive results may materialize... I'm no GM - or even Corvette Racing - fanboy, but I would love to see a successful US factory team. At the very least I'd give it a chance...
-Does GM have a culture of excellence, of achievement? Does GM EVER set out to WIN, to be the best? Or just do things “good enough”? GM CERTAINLY doesn’t set out to win on behalf of shareholders!
-What will Mary and Mark do when their entirely new, de novo team is almost certainly woefully uncompetitive, in a series in which the slowest car is typically ~1.5% slower than the benchmark on any given weekend? Will GM (1) get better, (2) pout, (3) accept mediocrity, (4) or quit?
-IF GM gets around to building their own Power Units (from 2028) and stops working as a customer of Ferrari or Honda, do you think they’ll be able to overcome FIFTEEN years of a head start from Merc and Ferrari (and nearly that from Honda)?
They’re already begging the new administration to keep the EV mandates in place because of the billions they’ve spent. I have zero sympathy for them if at the same time they’re moaning about spent EV money they’re going to waste more money on another boondoggle.
While you bring up valid points, I don't think GM employees are going to be doing anything at least initially.
They may very well pull a Toyota. Mary won't be around for the failures to go on her resume.
I really want to know who on the board is approving these decisions, between paying the anti dilution fees and laying off people to now sucking up to the new admin to help them push EVs because they've blown their load. None of these help the shareholder OR the customer.
And her job is to strategize for the future! She didn’t push back on EV mandates because she and her elite cronies *wanted* EVs, the public be damned. Total fail, as all the information was there that EVs were a boondoggle.
She's a member of the International C-Suite Class, who don't come up from the mail room but "earn" MBAs at prestigious universities, which qualify them to run the company into the tar pits while they raid the pension plan.
$100 million in stock? Her own stock? For running a company that's been in retreat since, er, the 1960s? How is this possible? I don't care how much Musk makes because Musk created it. Mary Barra has been managing decline - it's not quite the same thing.
I think if you had some exposure to GMs internal culture you might start doubting the efficient market hypothesis. Or at least strongly doubting the rationality of consumers
One of the complaints, valid I think, against Michael's F1 performance was his insistance on living in Nazareth and commuting on the Concorde. I wonder if he felt he had to make a stand with that same attitude.
I hope GM can attain at least mid-field competency solely to read Jack's reactions to Reuss grid interviews but expect rather a signal of doom with an announcement of MasterCard sponsorship.
Also fuck Substack for making me again download their horrible app just to write this comment.
We don’t yet know the precise ownership structure of the Cadillac team or what the financial picture for the 11 teams will look like from the 2026 Concorde agreement onward, so we don’t know how much of the mooted $450MM anti-dilution fee (which will be paid out over a period of time) GM shareholders are on the hook to pay.
What is known is that Michael Andretti has no shareholding (at this point) on the Towriss side of things.
Reading between the lines, the DOJ called John Malone and said “let’s make a deal:” Michael Andretti drops out of the GM team and Greg Maffei departs on your side, otherwise we’ll pursue you for what is rumored to be $2BN in penalties.
I don’t see how Cadillac can perform at a midfield level while producing their own Power Units, particularly given they do not have a driver development program and will be hellbent on having a red-blooded American fella driving at least one of their cars. They might sniff a midfield finish in the WCC if the Ferrari PU is leaps and bounds ahead of the field in ‘26 and ‘27, assuming the Ferrari advantage is as big as was Merc’s from 2014.
Zak Brown has already secured Mastercard as a McLaren sponsor.
I'm DEAD sure about it. Because I've met Gene Haas, and I've talked to him about what he had to do in order to make HIS team work, and I've seen his facilities from the inside, and I am certain that General Motors doesn't understand ANY of what's required. Nor do I think that Andretti, who is obviously behind the curtain here, understands how to compete in a non-spec series.
If GM had any kind of a track record in the past 20 or 30 or 50 years of being able to pull off something like this maybe people would be less skeptical. But GM has trained us that they are incapable of living up to whatever they are pitching at any given time.
When I read this passage…:
“This is a battle not of speed but of impressions. And if anything is going to leave an impression, it’s speed. With electrics now grading into track use, the testing for this year’s event involved course time.”
… I knew that the PEVOTY piece was a John PigBoy Heffalump special.
John Pearley Huffman?
Yes, but JB has at times referred to him by that alternative nomenclature.
I thought that the Maranello piece he wrote, which was accompanied by cartoon illustrations, was very cool. In period, when I was a child.
My favorite JB reference to him is John Puffy Heffalump which is how I like to refer to him.
I bet he doesn't know that the metaphor he badly mixed originates in the Bible, and if he's familiar with Damon Runyons riff on the verse, "but that's the way to bet", he likely doesn't know who Runyon was.
Is this better?
"In the debate over objective speed and subjective impressions, to paraphrase Joe Stalin, speed leaves an impression all its own."
Please don't drag down the good name of Joe Stalin in comparison with such a contemptible character!
Sounds like it’s time to visit Barnes and Noble and check out the latest R&T and this article. I’m curious who the testers are!
It’s online.
I wonder if R&T is still “perfect bound” or just stapled 😂?
Guess I could that but then I wouldn’t have the other magazines at hand to thumb through.
I used to love Barnes & Noble, and also Borders (RIP).
I went into the local Barnes & Noble recently - terribly depressing.
Just checked out the article - no thanks. Reading about those cars makes me as unhappy as when I saw overweight, lazy cyclists passing me on e-bikes on our ride in Tucson last weekend.
Yeah, bookstores certainly aren’t what they once were. Loved the golden era of Borders/Barnes and Noble/Bookstar - definitely a step up from the B Dalton/Waldenbooks era in the 80s/early 90s.
The only print mags I subscribe to today are 000 and The Road Rat.
I’ve seen 000. I checked out Road Rat after you mentioned it here earlier.
I still subscribe to Collectible Automobile, and get Continental Comments with my LCOC membership.
Hey, did you also ride the El Tour de Tucson?
One of my "golden era" experiences was seeing Salman Rushdie at Borders #0001.
Would that have been in Ann Arbor? I thought that’s where Borders originated.
They produce it in the Jostens press shop along with high school newspapers and yearbooks.
Regarding Cadillac F1 - as much as I want to get behind this I can't help but think this is Jaguar - Electric Bugaloo, potentially even worse as they don't have a race-winning base to start with. Far more effective organizations (Toyota, Honda, BMW) have been chewed up and spit out and that was back in the seeming innocence of early-naughts F1, when Eddie Jordan and Jackie Stewart had teams that could eek out wins. I would love to see a competitive, US-led factory team; however I give GM three years until they decide to pursue goals "more in line with their sustainability objectives."
When was the last time Government Motors raced in a series that wasn’t spec or BOP-driven?
Can-Am?
2001 - 2002 Cadillac LeMans effort comes to mind, quickly ran away in the face of Audi / Bentley (quick name change) dominance
Semi-related: Chrysler was playing around in LMP900 about that time too. It was an interesting time that is overshadowed by Audi’s dominance.
That said, the R8 was a beautifully-engineered car and the team came prepared.
I remember they were toying with having flywheels acting as mechanical capacitors in their Patriot WSC car. I spoke with an engineer on the program a couple of years later and it didn't take too much effort with a fault tree to see how it could be a bad idea on a crowded race track surrounded by spectators.
they lost to porsche there too
theyre consistent i guess
Nah Porsche left Le Mans after the 1998 victory to spend the next decade building Cayennes and Panameras and quixotically trying to buy VW.
right but i meant that everyone packed up and went home after the 917/30 started kicking everyones ass until 74 i think
Oh, I see you were replying to ME and not Jeremy.
yeah
this new format is complete ass lol
That Porsche VW Uno reverse card ranks right next to Volkswagen buying the wrong Rolls Royce in the annals of automotive M&A
Gene M.F. G.D. Haas, one of the greatest american businessmen in history by difficulty of competition space, with one of the finer computer numerically controlled tool manufacturing companies *in the world* under his ownership, has not managed better than 5th Place in the constructor's championship. What chance does gm stand?
The MSRP inflation is obviously overdone looking at used car values. I hope no one is buying Wagoneers vs leasing them. 2 yr old wagoneers with 20-30k miles are depreciating 40%, as in $60k used on the dealer lot with a $99k sticker. Who the hell can absorb that financial hit? Leave that type of hit to Rolls Royce and Aston Martin new car buyers.
It’s everywhere now.
A friend of mine who has been in the car business in some aspect for his entire career (salesman, F&I, dealer principal, consultant, etc. - he has done it all) was recently in the Philly Ferrari store. He told me they had a number of used 812 GTS examples for sale. I checked the website - 4 or 5 cars, which is quite a lot, particularly of a low production $500K+ convertible on the cusp of winter.
He clarified that they had at least 4 or 5 MORE that are not listed on the website.
I wonder how equipped the current Ferrari sales staff is to negotiate against the types of people who are able to buy used $500K cars?
That is a reality tv show I would watch. I bet there is an amount of diversity among the $500k buyer. The type who earned their way into that level of means vs the child/grandchild of someone who made it happen. And then there is the actor/musician/influencer. All vs your local Ferrari sales professional. It’s gold Jerry! Gold!
Would easily be better than any of the Motor Trend shows.
We could film it in Atlanta; I recently observed a McLaren Elva (1 of 149 globally) parked at the “valet” of one of the FIVE hookah lounges within 1,000 feet of my building.
Engine masters is the best show ever. It was occasionally painfully obvious no one in the room had an engineering degree though. X
yeah thats true given how sometimes theyd overlook things and while engine masters was great its more like benchracing but with a dyno to support the argument
also they never went wild enough with the carb size test i want to see a pair of 1150 dominators on a 305
Accord vs. Cavalier? I thought lumina was the Accord competitor. Cavalier and grand ams were more civic size.
But I was a teenager in those days. Any ride was better than being at home.
When the Cavalier came out in 1981 it was aimed at the first generation Accord which was similarly sized but then Honda came out with four more versions of the Accord which made it bigger and competed against larger more expensive cars before GM gave the poor Cavalier its first meaningful redesign in 1995.
Ahh! I was wondering why it was Accord, not Civic!
Not only was the original Accord a little smaller than the first-generation Cavalier, it was also CHEAPER when adjusted for equipment.
Of course, that wasn't reflected in the real world, where GM dealers had to discount while Honda dealers regularly tacked an additional 10-20% of ADP to the sticker.
The first year Cavalier’s were pricey. Loaded they were priced higher than most Caprices and Cutlass Supreme’s. They were very well trimmed but had awful drivetrains. The Olds and Buick versions weren’t much cheaper than the Cimarron when loaded up. They decontented them repeatedly after 82 until they became the cheap and cheerful cars we know of today.
Yup, I remember looking at Type10 hatchback 4-speeds with my dad, they were priced against the 200SX!
I would have loved to have seen the expression on the GM executives faces when they first saw the redesigned 1982 Honda Accord.
Jack, unless I missed it, I eagerly await the next tale in the Blake Z. Rong canon that you promised us recently. I'm not mad, though. What you've gifted us in the interim has been eminently satisfying.
Oh yes! I have another story to tell and I'm trying to think of how to do it without causing more mayhem than is prudent.
I never thought I’d say this 10 years ago, but we need a new Cavalier. A small car with a big back seat, a super simple infotainment system, a drivetrain that can deliver 40 mpg and a 9 second 0-60 time wrapped in conservative sheetmetal that will still look good on faded dented paint a decade from now. $19,995 for a base model, $21,995 for an LT, $23,995 for an RS. Add $2k if you want the package that has a sunroof and a Bose stereo.
And it should be available as a coupe, too. Enough of this Maximizing Interior Volume business.
It might have something to do with the customers' habit of Maximizing Exterior Volume...
and call it a Z28!
Wasn't Z24 the Cavalier performance trim?
Yep. I had an 87 Z24 in high school. 17 year old me thought it was cool. Clutch was looong. First time I drove my college girlfriend's Prelude 5 speed was a revelation.
Alright. If we're doing a reboot we should stick to canon
They should get wacky. Stick the 2 liter turbo they shove in the Cadillacs under the hood, and let the Cadillac V folks do suspension tuning. It would be an amazing little bit of cheap speed
Yes Z24. Got mixed with the Camaro. I didn’t google before posting.
Chevy will gladly sell you a Trax which nearly fits the bill.
ew
lets not do that
It’s a nice car for the money. One worries a bit about the 1.2t, but taking everything into context it’s a pretty unbeatable bargain in todays market tbh.
We bought a Trax for our daughter in college and it is great for her. 18 months ago used beaters with 200k miles were $15-20k, so the Trax seemed like a bargain. If they haven’t raised MSRP much it probably still is.
Glad to hear it’s holding up well!
MSRP is still near as makes no difference the same I think. Starts at $20k, taps out around $27k for one with all the options.
Neat little car imo.
I saw a new one of these in the wild and by gosh, it was rather nice inside and out. Too bad it's woefully underpowered. I'd take a CX-30.
Sounds like you are in need of a new Versa.
Why should Nissan be the only game in town? The Cavalier’s, Escort’s, and Omnirizon’s of the world used to own that segment. I just have a tough time with this era of Chevrolet selling Caprice Classic’s with a pickup bed for $80k. We need a reality check
I drove or rode in a lot of those econoboxes in high school. The domestics ignored the segment for the most part with 2nd rate product, and lost that ownership.
The Japanese have now taken over the more premium entry level positions, and the Koreans have moved in to the upstart space.
The segment isn’t large enough for 3 tiers; the domestics don’t have a meaningful position other than badge engineered stuff like the Trax.
https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/nissan-execs-sound-the-alarm-on-increasingly-dire-situation
Nissan Death Watch
again? seems like the third time in my adult life
Do you think anyone in Yokohama regrets machinating Ghosn's downfall?
probably a nonzero amount of people have committed sudoku over it
Free the Cost Killer One!
I recommend the Apple TV+ doc on his escape.
The most amazing thing about the J-cars: you could get a 4 door sedan, 2 door notchback, 2 door hatchback, wagon, or convertible. GM is too obsessed with EVs to do anything bold, and anyway, the EVs sucked away all their money.
Those fools should have made the Volt in all of those versions.
Yes to this! I do love my Volt hatchback, but I do wish it was a little bigger. A wagon version would've been pretty sweet.
They did make a two door notchback, you just had to go to another dealer to get it!
The ELR was a 2dr fastback. Great car but way overpriced.
Something you wouldn't have to do today
It has been suggested that such a thing she be built to last a long time and be based on either an Alfa 75 or 164.
That sounds like a Jetta.
Had a Jetta as a rental two weeks ago, and was very pleasantly surprised. I say this as someone who was driving around in a B5.5 “peak VW” Passat at age 17. You could do much worse on an entry level car, and the size is perfect.
The Jetta seems to be the one car Volkswagen always gets right and still has the soul of a Volkswagen.
Buy a Park Avenue and save a few buckets of cash. Won’t get you 40 mpg but keep one of those buckets near the tank.
No one makes money selling a new car for twenty grand anymore, that’s why there are so few options at that price point.
5 year old Camrys with 100k?
That’s why new cars at twenty grand aren’t profitable.
I agree. The first-gen Cruze has also turned out to be pretty decent, although the writing was on the wall:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/06/this-is-a-rental-chevrolet-cruze-with-55000-miles-on-the-clock/
I've long felt that way about the A-body Buick Century circa 1996. Fix the intake gaskets on the 3100 V6 and let it rip. You would still be able to fix it out of most junkyards. A simple cloth bench seated, column shifted people mover that should be as reliable as the tides. People might even be surprised how a generous tire sidewall can give a comfortable ride. For the way the roads are kept around here, ride means a hell of a lot more than handling.
Those drove lousy when they were introduced in 1982 and were just as bad in 1996 but adhered to the old adage that a GM scan would run bad longer then most other cars would run.
Sometimes that's enough. But I'd agree that the way they isolated the subframe was not the best idea
Had a neighbor with a '89 Pontiac 6000 with the 3100 that drove all over the SE. He sold the car with close to 500K in 2000. Engine still ran great but had to have the transmission rebuilt at 250K.
That sounds like something no automaker wants to make.
Yup. They wouldn’t make a red cent off a car like that
$47,500 for a new car in a time when the median familty income ricochets around inside a space bordered by $60,000 and $85,000.
In order for that to be sustainable, the average income would need an upward jolt of close to a hundred percent RIGHT NOW.
So when does the bottom fall out? What do you people think will go down in '25 once El Presidente gets in the chair? Asking for a friend...
Oh, everything will be glorious in ‘25.
'Own nothing, be happy.'
Counterpoint: cars didn't more expensive, people just bought more expensive cars. Can't be seen in the school drop off driving a Versa, what would the neighbors think!
As a fan of Roadkill and most other “shows” that came from its model, I am very sad to see the money people have decided to kill it. I wonder if they looked into selling it instead of pulling the plug. I would imagine that they could have done so for a minor profit and allowed more great content to be produced and enjoyed. Yet this could be a threat to corporate productions that they profit from.
Pour one out for Roadkill. Probably the realest non-scripted automotive show that ever was, chiefly because the presenters didn't care about what the viewer thinks about them; as long as Freiburger and Finnegan were happy, they considered it well done. And it worked for 10 years.
No show is truly unscipted but Roadkill was a much better Top Gear America than Top Gear America by far.
I think if MT did a column on the best toaster, it would be more engaging than more worthless, embarrassing electrics.
A dealer near a friend of mine has a 2023 Lyriq with 11K miles for $39999. 20 grand plus depreciation on 11K miles and 2 years.
Want to bet it'll be $12 grand a year from now? Even if one wanted an electric, smart move is lease and dump before it becomes a paperweight.
that depreciation is absolutely insane
deeply amusing however
If its $12k let me know immediately.
I want to know whether dealers will (or may) renege on taking back these lease returns
I believe the lease is with the manufacturer, so dealers don’t take ownership and have no reason not to take back a lease. At least a few years ago lease returns went through wholesale auction and then made their way to the dealership used car sections.
The lease is with the BANK. And they knew what they were getting into when they got into it.
I think most dealers get the first right to keep a lease returned to them in brand at some agreed to price. If you’re a Lexus dealer, why wouldn’t you want that 3 year old RX or ES that you have been maintaining? But since a financial institution owns the leases, they aren’t obligated to keep and resell that vehicle.
I know of a 2024 Lyric at whatever trim gets you massage seats with 10k miles that sold at dealer auction for $33k. It’s not great! $12k is a stretch, but $20-$25 seems reasonable.
I am an avid proponent of leasing EVs. It’s unbelievably cheap to do so right now. Take a Honda Prolgue or Chevy Equinox/Blazer. You can get one out the door with no money down around $200/mo for two years and 10k miles/yr. It can’t fit all lifestyles (such as mine, I lament), but if it does, it’s so cheap as to you almost have to do it
Lest we forget that America’s other leading car magazine once sat atop a restaurant called the Pretzel Bell.
That's where I had my initial HR interview for Hagerty in 2018!
Jack - not a fan of A.J. Baime? He seems to be a pretty good scribe.
I think he's good at what he does: kinda-sorta fiction-ish tales about Boomers and Greatest Generation people who aren't alive to contradict him. He's not qualified to test or evaluate vehicles.
And his weekly WSJ puff piece.
And speaking of the WSJ … Pulitzer Prize-winner Dan Neil hasn’t published anything in about 6 weeks - I wonder why???
"Mexican plastic surgery catastrophe a la Kanye's momma" comes immediately to mind.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1gioe4i/where_has_the_wsjs_dan_neils_column_gone/
This is a tempest in a teacup. He's on one of those gay cruises to Alaska or something. You can't keep him away from ridiculous press trips and endless posturing.
Or his voluminous thesaurus.
Baime is especially dim. I remember his Abarth video review was a word salad of errors, like he couldn’t even be bothered to regurgitate the PR.
The only mistake he DIDN’T make was claiming it was RWD or a 6cyl.
https://youtu.be/QP6F1u4ZNXI?si=utbNNBz9V_VMyZwx
THATS HIM
i remember vividly seeing that vid when it came out and when he called the 500c a fuckbuddy i was hit with the realization that theyd hire anyone to write some junk about a car and they absolutely didnt need to be adequate at it whatsoever
i hate that guy and that video
I made it only 40-50 seconds in until I heard the reference. No where in any universe would the female equivalent of a Fiat 500 be on the roster. What’s the equivalency? A 5 out 10 midget with a butterface? I’m sorry, it’s an Abart, so maybe it’s like a goth midget…6/10.
I hIghly doubt these are committee hires. They find people completely absolved in their own personalities and are so annoyingly outspoken that they somehow get construed as quirky and hip/hot because they are so far removed from the interviewer as they themselves are trying to appeal to a crowd that they don’t remotely understand. They just know it’s not how it was done in the past and are throwing darts blind. “They sound edgy and trendy” and yet they’re the loudest, most obnoxious person in the room. Squeaky dingus gets the grease.
Guys like him are why I stopped subscribing to all car magazines after 30+ years with all of them and don’t even read them online anymore.
"a deformed ugly obese cripple with the voice of an injured duck"
more kermit than daffy but go on
"He will have Sir Lewis to deal with next year"
yet another layer of hamilton driving prowess mystique will be peeled off in front of a crowd to ensure that as many people as possible going forward will credit more and more of his sevenish championships were literally just down to the car
I cant stand lewis hamilton but he is also 40 years old. Reflexes slow down, injuries dont heal as quickly. He isnt 2010 Lewis or even 2019 Lewis.
"GM-F1 will be the worst team since Minardi, but they won’t have any of Faenza’s charm"
Are we sure about this? Why the urge to shit on it before it even has a chance to race?
F1, like any top-level motorsport, is about money... maybe GM F1 would have more resources than Haas, and some positive results may materialize... I'm no GM - or even Corvette Racing - fanboy, but I would love to see a successful US factory team. At the very least I'd give it a chance...
Cause he's Jack and he has to hate GM.
Serious questions:
-Does GM have a culture of excellence, of achievement? Does GM EVER set out to WIN, to be the best? Or just do things “good enough”? GM CERTAINLY doesn’t set out to win on behalf of shareholders!
-What will Mary and Mark do when their entirely new, de novo team is almost certainly woefully uncompetitive, in a series in which the slowest car is typically ~1.5% slower than the benchmark on any given weekend? Will GM (1) get better, (2) pout, (3) accept mediocrity, (4) or quit?
-IF GM gets around to building their own Power Units (from 2028) and stops working as a customer of Ferrari or Honda, do you think they’ll be able to overcome FIFTEEN years of a head start from Merc and Ferrari (and nearly that from Honda)?
Cryptic
(4) quit
And they’ll blame it on not wanting to spend more money, not their performance.
The GM way. They’ll pull a Honda and develop a great chassis for next season and drop out.
They’re already begging the new administration to keep the EV mandates in place because of the billions they’ve spent. I have zero sympathy for them if at the same time they’re moaning about spent EV money they’re going to waste more money on another boondoggle.
literally state subsidized retardation
Gotta keep the borders open as well so they can reap the profits from all those factories they moved "down south" without pesky tariffs.
Exactly.
While you bring up valid points, I don't think GM employees are going to be doing anything at least initially.
They may very well pull a Toyota. Mary won't be around for the failures to go on her resume.
I really want to know who on the board is approving these decisions, between paying the anti dilution fees and laying off people to now sucking up to the new admin to help them push EVs because they've blown their load. None of these help the shareholder OR the customer.
To borrow a Robert Farago phrase, the "board of bystanders"
Mary has sold close to $100 million in stock this year, acting against the long term interests of the company for her own short term financial gain.
And her job is to strategize for the future! She didn’t push back on EV mandates because she and her elite cronies *wanted* EVs, the public be damned. Total fail, as all the information was there that EVs were a boondoggle.
She's a member of the International C-Suite Class, who don't come up from the mail room but "earn" MBAs at prestigious universities, which qualify them to run the company into the tar pits while they raid the pension plan.
And they're allowed to walk away...
$100 million in stock? Her own stock? For running a company that's been in retreat since, er, the 1960s? How is this possible? I don't care how much Musk makes because Musk created it. Mary Barra has been managing decline - it's not quite the same thing.
10-30 million a year for a decade.
GM's culture is "Short-term profits are rewarded with bonuses. Long-term problems are for the next guy to solve."
I think I've read this comment 3-4 times now.
I think if you had some exposure to GMs internal culture you might start doubting the efficient market hypothesis. Or at least strongly doubting the rationality of consumers
toyota dumped a quadrillion dollars into their f1 excursion and that went not great
gm will probably go the same route
There’s a cost cap, and Andretti was apparently intent on doing things their way by basing the team in suburban Indy (Fishers, I believe).
The F1 labor market is near Oxford, England, where 7 of the 10 teams are headquartered or have their largest facility.
There is no way in hell GM can compete as a de novo effort.
One of the complaints, valid I think, against Michael's F1 performance was his insistance on living in Nazareth and commuting on the Concorde. I wonder if he felt he had to make a stand with that same attitude.
I hope GM can attain at least mid-field competency solely to read Jack's reactions to Reuss grid interviews but expect rather a signal of doom with an announcement of MasterCard sponsorship.
Also fuck Substack for making me again download their horrible app just to write this comment.
We don’t yet know the precise ownership structure of the Cadillac team or what the financial picture for the 11 teams will look like from the 2026 Concorde agreement onward, so we don’t know how much of the mooted $450MM anti-dilution fee (which will be paid out over a period of time) GM shareholders are on the hook to pay.
What is known is that Michael Andretti has no shareholding (at this point) on the Towriss side of things.
Reading between the lines, the DOJ called John Malone and said “let’s make a deal:” Michael Andretti drops out of the GM team and Greg Maffei departs on your side, otherwise we’ll pursue you for what is rumored to be $2BN in penalties.
I don’t see how Cadillac can perform at a midfield level while producing their own Power Units, particularly given they do not have a driver development program and will be hellbent on having a red-blooded American fella driving at least one of their cars. They might sniff a midfield finish in the WCC if the Ferrari PU is leaps and bounds ahead of the field in ‘26 and ‘27, assuming the Ferrari advantage is as big as was Merc’s from 2014.
Zak Brown has already secured Mastercard as a McLaren sponsor.
I'm DEAD sure about it. Because I've met Gene Haas, and I've talked to him about what he had to do in order to make HIS team work, and I've seen his facilities from the inside, and I am certain that General Motors doesn't understand ANY of what's required. Nor do I think that Andretti, who is obviously behind the curtain here, understands how to compete in a non-spec series.
If GM had any kind of a track record in the past 20 or 30 or 50 years of being able to pull off something like this maybe people would be less skeptical. But GM has trained us that they are incapable of living up to whatever they are pitching at any given time.
The thing to remember is F1 is not an American sport; it’s an English one.
Verstappen's victory from 17th on the grid, in the rain, in Brazil will become the stuff of legends.