an intresting car

[ohgood]

nice car ,what we need here in north america , don't get me wrong i drive a truck ,and spend 100$ per fill up but i get some good milage from it , but what we need to do is to get the manufactures to bring over the diesels from europe , our fuel is clean now ...i want to drive a ford f150 with a diesel....as for all this hybid sh$t , is not clean if you want a true hybrid look no farther than a diesel locomotive .. a diesel engine turning at a constant rpm and driving an alternator  to traction motors , very efficient i would say

unfortunately 'mericans i know are too closed minded to think diesel for their next purchase. diesel to most people means 'smokey, loud, stinky'.

hybrid ? "american made" hybrid ?oh ya, i looooooooove the chevy and ford 'hybrid' SUVs that get 25 mpg, hiway, like that's some miracle and think of themselves as real innovators. it's a shame that the engineering power of ford, gm and dodge can't make a decent car/truck/anything to compete with honda, toyota.

the green leaf on the back of a 6,000 lb suv/truck really gives me a laugh. gotta love marketing

(i'm not knocking your truck, diesel makes for awesome power and efficiency in heavy hauling)

The Jeep liberty uses a poorly designed and even more poorly timed diesel.  It's a crime to even call it a diesel.

VW eh,  funny cause my dads Jetta TDI got almost 50mpg........... My 1982 MB 240d  gets about 40 on the hwy and it's a freaking solid steel turd on wheels.  Let's not forget about modern MB turbo diesels, you know the ones pumping out 400hp in an SUV and still managing almost 30mpg hwy.  Show me a 400hp gas SUV getting 30mpg.

The diesel smartcar gets something like 80mpg, and my dads other car a professionally retuned E320 got almost 30mpg hwy and could hang with vette's all day long.

Yeah so a 3500 diesel gets shaZam!.....maybe 18-20 hwy these days.  Look at the freaking torque it's putting down.  The engine in those isn't designed for economy it's designed to pull.

jeep liberty - POS agreed. it's  shaZam! box with horrible aerodynamics and a nice marketing team.

vw's been making some crazy mpg champs with diesel for a loooong time now. props



at some point the price of gas will get high enough to make people think again. not yet though.

oh, btw, GM has a concept http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/ i guess to generate buzz about GM products, but it's a shame it will have typical GM quality, reliability, and stigma associated with a BIG 3 product. it might actually be an awesome machine, but the styling says "I want to be your sports car too!" and we all know about pontiac

[GeeP]

GM, Ford, Chrysler are just building what the American consumer wants.  The American consumer wants an ego trip on four wheels, so that's what they make.  In America, a car isn't transportation, it's a "statement".

Don't get me started on maintainability.

[ohgood]

GM, Ford, Chrysler are just building what the American consumer wants.  The American consumer wants an ego trip on four wheels, so that's what they make.  In America, a car isn't transportation, it's a "statement".

Don't get me started on maintainability.

Nice summary. I typed too much

[jserio]

not all of us americans just want to buy the bigest badest car on the block.

[yamahonkawazuki]

nor do all of us want honda or toyota either 

[simon79]

the chevy and ford 'hybrid' SUVs that get 25 mpg, hiway, like that's some miracle and think of themselves as real innovators..

Oh wait, my car gets 50 mpg on the motorway, seats 5 (ok, 4) adults + some luggage and tops 110 mph WOT.
And it isn't even a hybrid.
So this  must be a miracle I think?
Seriously speaking, car & engine downsizing is the way to go. We can't keep on building and buying uselessly large cars having ridiculous fuel consumption, oil will end one day.
We've been feasting on oil for too long now, it's time for a change, and now car makers seem to be beginning a new path.

[yamahonkawazuki]

perhaps, but some cant use smaller vehicles , and then again some need to

[simon79]

Well, I agree Yama.
What I mean, is that it's time to change some of our habits, i.e. why should one need to use a SUV when s/he lives in town and barely sees any snow or dirt?
Of course, there are people and situations that just need a larger and more capable vehicle, nothing against it.

[bettingpython]

I wish I could afford to have an additional car for just around town rather than driving my truck. I have need of a truck sveeral times a year but the fact is the majority of i's usage is to haul me around toi and from work. My wife drives a reasonable car a ford focus ZX4 that gets around 32 to 35 mpg on the highway and 28 around town, unfortunately you cant load the dirtbikes or our bikes for a trackday in it haul a load of dirt, mulch sheetrock, wood etc. etc. etc. with it. Things I find myself doing just about every weekend.

I do kinda like that twin cylinder diesel 150mpg would be very cool, of course I would prefer the 3 cylinder GT version all that performance and 100mpg

[Kasumi]

Yea id love to be able to afford two cars or at least a car and a bike.

My car at the moment gets 33mph on average which is pretty crappy and is costing me a fortune on my drive to work. I want one of these.... just can't justify spending the money at this time. I could easily take the payments out of my wage but just have this problem with spending money lol



100hp Brabus Smart roadster Coupe. 60mpg and with a few simple mods to the engine like ECU remap etc... can get 0-60 in about 7.5 secs which isnt bad when your getting great mpg.

[GeeP]

Yea id love to be able to afford two cars or at least a car and a bike.

My car at the moment gets 33mph on average which is pretty crappy and is costing me a fortune on my drive to work. I want one of these.... just can't justify spending the money at this time. I could easily take the payments out of my wage but just have this problem with spending money lol



100hp Brabus Smart roadster Coupe. 60mpg and with a few simple mods to the engine like ECU remap etc... can get 0-60 in about 7.5 secs which isnt bad when your getting great mpg.

Woah!  I want one too!  Where do I sign?   

[bettingpython]

Woah!  I want one too!  Where do I sign?   

Europe. Never in the U.S.

The same activist minded groups which spawned political correctness, cafe standards, the green movement and such horse pucky pressured the government and the NHTSA into enacting some fairly stringent safety regulations which do not exist in the european market. Cars like the brabus could never be imported because of these standards.

[Kasumi]

How come? the Roadster is one of the safest cars you can get? Front airbags, side airbags, crumple zones, tridon saftey cell so the cockpit is completely protected from impact from all angles and from a roll over. The standard one doesn't come with curtain airbags but if you pay extra you can have those which bring it to 5star NCAP saftey rating - highest we get in the UK.

I must be misunderstanding the sort of saftey regulations they are talking about because these are far safer for both the occupants and pedestrians than a dodge pickup which will mow anyone down.

[yamahonkawazuki]

do tehy have cats on em ( catalytic converters)?

[bettingpython]

The euro's don't have the safety glass requirements that NHTSA mandates in the US there is also some bracing requiremnt's in the doors that the euro's don't require. At least the last time I looked those were some of the major differences.

To make the panoz roadster legal in the US panoz had to add 300 lbs of weight in glass, internal door structure and some other things I can't remember.

Yet his european customers were able to take delivery of the car in it's original configuration.

[jserio]

are u serious? they keep cars out of this country because of some f%$king glass? it all shatters man it's not like we have triple paned bullet proof glass mandatory in all cars. 

[bombadillo]

Woah!  I want one too!  Where do I sign?   

Europe. Never in the U.S.

The same activist minded groups which spawned political correctness, cafe standards, the green movement and such horse pucky pressured the government and the NHTSA into enacting some fairly stringent safety regulations which do not exist in the european market. Cars like the brabus could never be imported because of these standards.

Through bureaucrats and long haired hippie people, we have effectively shot ourselves in the foot by producing some of the most oil consuming, inefficient, hogs on the road, and not allowing these great european cars that get twice our mileage to sell here.  We pacify these idiots in suburbia by giving them "hybrids" and in the long run will waste more than a standard gasoline engine would have cost in the first place.  The hybrid cars right now leave a larger footprint on earth with the production and disposal of the batteries alone than the amount of carbon emissions that they supposedly save.  We could start working on hydrogen powered vehicles or diesel/gas-sippers like the one shown up above a few posts back.  There are so many options and people that run biodiesel in their VW's more power to them because they already get better gas mileage than the hybrids for the most part.  The new epa ratings that were required to change last year really killed the hybrids because they boasted so much about the mileage that people found just wasn't there.  Now the little yaris practically beats out a prius for way less money.

By the way, if our little southern cal soccer moms didn't feel the need to drive the brand new Yukon XL with 24's on it, then we could save a few bucks.  People are going to switch after we're so overcrowded and overpopulated that it'll probably be too late to do much good

[Kasumi]

Plus i think its too different cultures, i was talking to an American guy at work the other day - he's just moved here etc etc... and basically had just had to do a competency test to get a UK license to drive and he was talking to me about driving in the UK compared to the US and also about all this stuff about the need for people to drive 4x4s all the time. A few things he said stuck in my mind, one was that in the US when they build a road they build a huge road capable of taking stupidly large vehicles on it which just encourages things to get larger, whereas here in the UK our roads seem to be built for horse and carts, constantly too narrow, too weak and always being repaired and widened but it encourages the use of small cars just for practicality. There isnt space in our towns to do a 3 point turn in your double axle pickup or take your dodge ram shopping.

Plus all the road tax you have to pay on your vehicle over here, congestion charging payments and all sorts. Then you move on to the sheer cost of fuel over here, forces us to NEED high mpg vehicles to run them everyday and get to work. Also factor in insurance which for me in a 1.4L 100bhp hatchback is in excess of £2000 which is a f'in lot.

I have to say though that i think some of the fun is lost driving over here. It should be an enjoyable experience but at the moment particularly for people my age, i can't be insured in anything over perhaps a 1.6 petrol or 2.0 diesel otherwise your into paying over £3000 per year in insurance which i cannot afford, it costs me £40 to fill up my car which i need to do every week after commuting to work and a few nights out. So its just an expensive thing for me. Theres no such thing as cheap fun motoring. Even if you bought a banger at £250 i would be paying 4 times that at least in insurance depending on the engine.

Would love to spend some time in America driving whatever i want lol.

[bombadillo]

I've been to england and ireland and it seems to be true to what you're saying.  Not many people bought a car for the sake of driving a fun or fast car.  Here, everybody seems to have their transportation and some kind of toy whether its a boat, jet ski, motorcycle, or like me who likes to have one of each.  I have too many hobbies, but the price of gas, and mild taxation and registration allow for it.  You guys get all the cool cars, but we can afford to drive or ride them.

[Kasumi]

You couldn't have put it better, only the elite of the elite can afford to have a driving to work car and then a toy be it a motorcycle or car. I hoped to be able to afford to run a car and a bike and use the bike when the weather was good to save costs.

The idea is excellent in theory. Bike insurance is sooo cheap in comparison to car insurance i pay £300-400 a year for a full fat 400cc bike, which in terms of car performance would equate to a porche up to about 130mph. Ive always ridden a bike and got my license's on the birthdays so been riding one since 16 on the road and still own my ZXR400 now. However its declared off the road and with no insurance simply because doing the figures i can't afford to run a car and a bike. My commute to work is too long to take the ZXR on bad weather, so im forced to use the car. So i need both, however i can't justify leaving the car at home and taking the bike to save on fuel costs and commute times simply due to the fact im paying over £2k just to keep the car on the road tax/insurance per year. If im driving my bike, although saving fuel costs im taking a huge hit on the money ive paid to insure the car. Hence i have to use the car everyday otherwise im loosing a fortune insuring something im not driving.

It sucks but thats how life is. I can afford to buy a dream car such as a BMW M3 which i would like to own one day, however i couldn't afford to pay the insurance every year.

Thats why i looked at a Brabus roadster coupe, fun car to drive, high mpg whilst still being a fun sports car. Although its significantly less to buy and insure than something like a BMW i still can't afford to insure it on a yearly basis until im about 24.

Hence the want to move to america where i can afford to have a car and bike and ride on the weekends for fun. At the moment and at my age i have to budget for everything and simply riding my bike on the weekend for fun doesn't fit in.