SoonerLS

How many years has it been since Ford offered a manual transmission in a V8 F150? I'm pretty sure it was long enough ago that the decision to drop the stick was made by the same morons who tried their damnedest to drive Ford into a bridge abutment, so I'd say the criteria, if not the data, they used to make the decision are dubious at best. I'm not arguing for MTXes in Fusions or Tauri or anything Lincoln makes, but a serious truck needs to have a manual transmission as an option, and the F-series should have enough volume for even a small percentage of sales to support the cost of adding one...

Well, if the gov't would stop wasting money doing things that it's not supposed to be doing and concentrate on doing what it should, dropping fuel taxes would be a non-issue...

We don't have annual inspections, and our odometers are never read--it is recorded on the title when you do a title transfer, but the actual reading is left to the buyer and seller. We also don't have DMV offices; I can renew my tag online, by mail, or by going to a local tag agency, which is a private entity. The only time I had to deal with an o-fficial state agency (other than traffic stops/court) in my motoring career was when I went to a hole-in-the-wall testing facility run by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol; after I passed, they gave me a form that I took to the tag agency.

Yeah, it's hard to move the needle when Ford doesn't even offer a stick in its best-selling vehicle. How absurd is it to not even offer a stick in a frakking pickup? Why do I have to choose between a Mustang and an econobox (a very nice econobox, but still an econobox) to get a manual transmission?

Here's the other side. Let's say you've had your corporate accounts at Bank A for years. You've never taken any loans from them, and you've been paying maintenance fees and transaction fees for years (after all, it's the big bank where everybody does business, and they do provide you with banking services). One day the bank starts requiring onerous paper work (to the point that you have to hire people to fill it out and file it), and then the bank's president starts talking about how you need to start paying higher transaction fees to the bank so they can increase the benefits for the small account holders--some of whom don't even pay fees on their accounts--in the name of "fairness." Now Bank B comes along and says they'll charge you maintenance fees, but they don't have any transaction fees at all. Are you going to stick with Bank A, or are you going to take your business to Bank B? Personally, I have no use for anyone who would renounce his (or her) US citizenship, but this is, for Saverin, strictly business.

Adios, Shel. You didn't do half bad for a Texas chicken rancher. He was a hell of a racer, car builder, and businessman, but here's his true legacy: http://www.cscf.org/

If I were to guess, it was either a V6 or a V8 with the cold weather package. As it came from the factory, my '06 (non-Sport) was noticeably softer than the '04 (Sport) it replaced; changing to 17" wheels helped, but I think the shocks and anti-sway bars make most of the difference.

How is going to a bank for a $500M loan the same as having $500M in the bank?

There were a few (less than ten, IIRC) '03 V6 Sports that escaped the factory, and they were reputedly the best-handling of all LSes. Both of my LSes are 2nd Gen, so I can't really comment on the difference between them and the 1st Gen LSes, but most of the people who've crossed the gap have said that the 2nd Gen LSes were the superior cars in all aspects except for one: they said they felt more "connected" to the 1st Gen cars. My '06 has the "cold weather" package, so it came with what was, essentially, the non-Sport suspension, but that just meant it came with 16" wheels (to accommodate snow chains) and the non-Sport shocks; my '04 was noticeably sharper in the handling department. I think there was a minor difference in the spring rates of the 1st/2nd Gen springs and maybe a little bit of difference in the mounting points, but there weren't any really big changes in the LS's suspension.

It'll probably have more impact than you think, because TANSTAAFL still applies--moving PHEV/EV charging to off-peak hours is still adding to the load, and adding load will require adding generating capacity, even if you don't say you need the capacity directly for the charging. If you start upping usage in the off-peak hours, you start cutting into the down times that the electricity production facilities use for maintenance--and to make matters worse, you force the generating facilities to keep up their output over more hours per day instead of letting them idle down, which means they'll need more frequent maintenance. The only way to deal with this is to add generating capacity, whether you say it's to directly handle the added load or to carry the load while other facilities go offline for maintenance.

If that's true, your Cobra must not nosedive at all. My '06 non-Sport wouldn't even dive under the hardest panic stops when it was riding on its stock 16" wheels with "touring" tires. It would throw you into the seat belt, but it wouldn't dive.

Yeah, I can see that. The FB page didn't do a particularly good job of explaining anything like that, IMHO, but FB is such a mess that I don't particularly want to spend a lot of time digging there...

"Total lack of real world testing?" Are you kidding? Do you really think that they ran this combo out there without any "real world" testing? More to the point, do you really think ANY manufacturer does (or is even capable of) testing for every possible set of conditions that every single one of their vehicles might possibly face?

Ok, I can see that. The first time I saw the Evos I thought there was a lot of Mustang style/design DNA in it.

What's your point here? I was just responding to your claim that the current Mustang is a notchback, when it much more closely follows the body lines of the '65 Fastback than it does any notchback. I didn't say anything at all about the Evos...

You do realize that jokes don't have to be 100% factually accurate, right?

Hmm...an Army vehicle from a British company. At least this time it could be sending out clouds of smoke on purpose... :hysterical3:

This is the original fastback: Which sure looks a lot like this: Now this is a notchback:

Actually, I don't want it because it would be a cluster***.... Back on topic, cnet's Car Tech recently drove the Focus Electric, and it sounds like they liked it. They also point out that the Focus Electric is well-optioned, and Brian Cooley specifically noted the lack of gear whine in its drivetrain. The review: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-57414918-48/2012-ford-focus-electric-the-strong-silent-type-first-drive/?tag=centerColumnArea1.0 Cooley's video review is about half-way down the page.

For some reason, a certaing song popped into my head when I read that... I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok...

Yeah. My recollection is that Leary doesn't mention Dodge by name, but when he's talking about the competition, the ram falls.

I prefer the WP7 method, since I don't have to unlock my phone to see how many messages of which type I have. FWIW, my work phone is an iPhone 4s and my personal phone is WP7.

I remember that ad. Unlike the commercials from Chebbie and Dodge, it was subtle. That's saying something, considering who was speaking...

I go back to what J Mays said about a Lincoln coupe--they have to get the bread and butter right before they can start working on dessert. Right now they don't need a supercar, but they do need super products, so that's where they've been investing their resources. They had to mortgage everything to save the company, and you want them to spend their finite resources on something that will contribute nothing to the bottom line? Yeah, they've had some success recently, so now they could start working on a supercar, but that success is still fragile--the Blue Oval itself is still in hock, for crying out loud--so they still need to have everything pulling its own weight. And don't forget the cost of the GT; rushing to get it out the door for Ford's Centennial damn near sank SVT. They're still trying to recover from that hot burn some ten years later...

My understanding is that Windows Phone 7 was not just an overhaul, but a clean-sheet design, so it could leave the WinCE baggage behind.