tim kakouris

of course...any suggestion of "environment" and the right gets their panties in a bunch about government. clean air be damned, because it might impact a right wingers wallet.

filled up for $3.24 yesterday. i heard today that our region is the lowest in the country. i'm also very excited about mileage this last fillup in the freestyle, 24.1mpg!

the cruze is a fine looking car. it will sell well, no doubt. now, let's get some more ford offerings here in the smaller car classes and we'll have something going.

all of the stories posted about the lottery winner said he WOULDN'T buy a foreign car, citing that he worked for ford for so long. sounds like a great spin of the facts to make ford look bad. anyway, i'll stand by what i said concerning the tundra. it posts great sports car numbers!

who cares?? don't you know that the only thing that matters in a pickup is it's 0-60 times????

i've driven a few cobalts, from down and dirty rentals to ss models. i agree with the interior being bad, but the car is not all bad. and the ss supercharged cars are downright fun, so the turbo promises to be much more so. ...and i really wish ford had something small with some real horsepower. isn't that what sporty cars are supposed to be? cheap fun? think back about 40 years...all those cars we revere now were stripper versions of popular cars with big engines. the mustangs and camaros and firebirds and chevelles and gto's. most had crappy interiors and all everyone cared about was a gas pedal, a shifter, and what was under the hood. i know this isn't the 60's anymore, but lets put a fun little car into perspective.

it's hot, bottom line. i like the convertible version, too. this is just icing on the cake. i wish ford could do something similar.

....but the corolla is much, much less of a car than the average. anyone with eyes can the stark interior, tin can doors, bare metal trunk, tepid handling, etc.

the camry is a great appliance, don't get me wrong. it goes from a to b as well as any car ever has. but, boy is that thing a cure for insomnia! every redesign seems to be a bigger effort to make it blend into the automotive landscape....and they sell like hotcakes! baffling. love it or hate it, at least the fusion has a personality. i like ours, wish they made a turbo 4 hp version, or at least the 3.5.

and the worm continues to turn... toyota window problems

it really is a good car. very useful. i'd buy another, especially after the updates. but, just like has been said, it appears as though ford may have this cars market covered with other vehicles, and too keep it may just be redundant. i just hope the planned replacements aren't too trucky. i don't particularly want an suv-type device for family hauling and such, and the milage i get puts any suv to shame.

if there was a high performance version of the freestyle/taurus x, it would be high on the list of car to buy for us. no sense in being doomed to a boring driving existence just because you need to seat 6 or 7 sometimes.

the hemi isn't being marginalized because of it's milage alone...it's a matter of it's emissions, due to it's design. the old 4.6 has been bashed for years because of it's power output, but lo and behold, it's still kicking because it was designed from the outset with more than just power as a goal. if the boss improves upon that, it will still be useful. it won't be used in high milage applications, but i will be used in high power applications because it will be clean enough to do so.

this post was about HEMI's, NOT panthers. anyway, it's a shame that the hemi was frozen in time with it's introduction. i guess that's the danger in introducing something as complex as an engine. you have to make sure that it can grow/shrink/change to fit coming needs/wants/regulations or you have one really expensive paper weight. sure, it was obvious that the hemi could grow and be made more powerful, but it's achilles heel looks to be economy. so, maybe the mod motors weren't so bad after all??

in the freestyle, you could remove it and there would just be carpet and a weird square plastic peice on the floor. it was not a quick change, but if you intend to leave it out, it's worth doing.

listen, styling is subjective. i know not everyone loves every car from dcx, but sebring notwithstanding, i think they have a nice line. but someone must've been hitting the sauce awfully hard when the sebring design came to the table and it was stamped "OK"....

we had an escape for 3 years. i loved the way it drove, but... it got horrible milage, and the duratec is pretty noisy under load. if ford could get the milage up, the noise from the duratec down, they'd have quite a driver. i've driven many other small suv's, and the escape is the most fun, easiest to see out of, peppy, etc. a lot of that could be helped with the 6-speed auto, i think. i'd consider buying another one even the way it is, but it would be an easier decision with improvements.

if chrysler improved their interiors (including getting rid of those chlostrophobic high/wide consoles) they would go a long way. the exterior styling is great, they seem to have solid entries in each category, competitive pricing, good engines, etc. really, the interiors are the achilles heel!

ralph, as much as i have loved playing with the bigger engines, i have to say i wouldn't mind at all if the mustang ended up with a turbo 6 or even a turbo 4 if the weight was trimmed and dynamics improved. i can't have a sub 20mpg car anymore (money, and the principle of the matter), and regardless of what the epa says, getting on the throttle in a v8 mustang means you're not getting 20mpgs. (i doubt that getting on the throttle too much in a turbo six would net 20mpg's, either, but the difference would probably be made up when you're not.)

every post here degenerates into a fucking panther spat. i wish the lovers of that damn car would go over to pantherlovers.net and let the rest here have some peace. seriously, richard, do we HAVE to let every thread be a panther pissing match? this is worse than the lemon days, or back when hemisbc would turn every post into a "compare it to dodge" post. how is this any different than when tommy toyota posts? it's not.

buick, verve, cts.

god....please.....no....more......panther.....b.s......please....... NO MORE PANTHER STUFF.

seriously, gm is on a design roll! this car and the buick are sexy! way to go, gm. now, if ford could just dig deep and get some of it's designers to wake up....

it's just another boring suv update. people may not like some of the crazy concepts that are showing up lately, but at least companies and designers are throwing out some ideas with passion. honda makes great vehicles, but they need some asthetic passion to go along with their engineering passion. it will sell because it's a honda and they have a deserved reputation for quality, but it would sell better if they could appeal to the imagination more.

that thing is killer. great to see that gm cares about buick.