Next car will probably be a Subie Impreza 5-door with CVT and flappy paddles.............. which is how a 41-year old man says he's buying a station wagon.
Factorial wrote:
Shyster wrote:They will pry my gear-shift lever out of my cold, dead hands (and the clutch pedal away from my cold, dead left foot). My last two cars had manuals, my current car is manual, and my next car will be manual.
Agreed. It's all about control.
Yeah, I felt that way, too... then I moved on the other side of the hill.
I think I want paddle shifts on the next car because any car I own is in danger of ending up on a track, and since I have 5-speed manual track car and a 5-speed manual touring car already I might as well have something different in the other car.
dodint wrote:I think I want paddle shifts on the next car because any car I own is in danger of ending up on a track, and since I have 5-speed manual track car and a 5-speed manual touring car already I might as well have something different in the other car.
The paddles don't really work for me. Actually, 0-60 is rated .05 -.1 second faster on auto than paddles and the same as paddles when compared to the 6MT version.
Only use I've heard of the paddles is with a few maps - but stock - no way, unless you want to make sweet music in a parking garage or tunnel.
Yeah, that's not a consideration for me at all. The advantage of paddles is you don't have to take your hands off the wheel when negotiating complex turns on a road course. Drag racing is a whole different discipline and none of my training or equipment is made for it.
There is a strong theory that now that autos are advanced enough the MT in all forms are obsolete in a drag scenario for production cars, but I've not tried it myself. I do plan to take my track car to the local drag strip next year for the heck of it, before I take it off the road completely.
tifosi77 wrote:Next car will probably be a Subie Impreza 5-door with CVT and flappy paddles.............. which is how a 41-year old man says he's buying a station wagon.
(looks outside at car....looks back at monitor.....looks back at car again)
I mentioned to my wife yesterday about trading our truck in to reduce the payment. Now she's going nuts saying she can finally get the SUV she's always wanted. But I still want something to tow my trailer. Looks like a 3k# towing capacity is hard to come by with a mid size SUV. Plus the whole point of ditching the truck was to ditch the payment.
tifosi77 wrote:Next car will probably be a Subie Impreza 5-door with CVT and flappy paddles.............. which is how a 41-year old man says he's buying a station wagon.
(looks outside at car....looks back at monitor.....looks back at car again)
thanks man. I never looked at it that way before.
My buddy bought an A3 a couple years ago, and he refused to accept that it was a glorified station wagon. "It's a hot hatchback...." Three doors, yes. Five doors, station wagon.
shafnutz05 wrote:As a mom and dad with two compact cars, we are eagerly anticipating our first minivan/stationwagon purchase. A Subaru Legacy would be quite nice
Those Subaru station wagons are nice and give you a lot of flexibility and are much cooler than a minivan. If you have less than 3 kids you don't need a minivan.
shafnutz05 wrote:As a mom and dad with two compact cars, we are eagerly anticipating our first minivan/stationwagon purchase. A Subaru Legacy would be quite nice
Those Subaru station wagons are nice and give you a lot of flexibility and are much cooler than a minivan. If you have less than 3 kids you don't need a minivan.
shafnutz05 wrote:As a mom and dad with two compact cars, we are eagerly anticipating our first minivan/stationwagon purchase. A Subaru Legacy would be quite nice
Those Subaru station wagons are nice and give you a lot of flexibility and are much cooler than a minivan. If you have less than 3 kids you don't need a minivan.
They're nice. My Dad has two of them. He's old, though.
tifosi77 wrote:Next car will probably be a Subie Impreza 5-door with CVT and flappy paddles.............. which is how a 41-year old man says he's buying a station wagon.
(looks outside at car....looks back at monitor.....looks back at car again)
thanks man. I never looked at it that way before.
My buddy bought an A3 a couple years ago, and he refused to accept that it was a glorified station wagon. "It's a hot hatchback...." Three doors, yes. Five doors, station wagon.
I like the new A3s. Was supposed to test drive one last week, then common sense set in about more than likely being upside down on a car that isn't even a year old yet.
I also found out later that the premium package does not come in all-wheel drive, which is a dealbreaker to me. If I lived anywhere else south of PA, I wouldn't care.
tifosi77 wrote:Nothing, if you're a mom in the 1980s.
That's just plain wrong to compare the two. It's not like his audi looks like this:
First - it's about function, not form. I don't care if the A3 (or the Impreza I'm looking at, or the Mazda3 5-dr alternative) were all styled by Pininfarina and sported Borrani wire wheels, Brembo brakes and a track-ready Hewland sequential 'box connected to a multi-liter twin turbo........ they're station wagons. Their 'sporty' appeal is targeted at dudes who want some of the utility of a wagon, but haven't quite come to grips with the level of self-emasculation nascent in such a realization.
Second - My mom had two wagons just like that when I was a kid. Red (which I called the Dragon Wagon) and later a blue one (which I called Blue Thunder), each with the faux wood side panels. I learned to drive in Blue Thunder; hated every moment of it.
A 3-door hatchback is fine; in fact, I think those are the perfect combination of performance and utility. (One of the things I enjoyed about Spain was the ability to see so many 'Top Gear' cars, hot hatches that they test on the show all the time but aren't available for sale in the U.S.) But once you add those two extra doors, you are now putting the premium on utility over performance. And that's an event horizon of motoring that rarely gets uncrossed.
columbia wrote:Im always amused by the my car is an extension of my schwanz crowd.
It's not the car, per se, but rather what the car symbolizes about your lifestyle. Same 40-year old dude driving down PCH, first trip is in an Aston Martin DB9, the next trip is in a Range Rover Evoque. But are 'status' cars that connote high financial achievement..... but they send very different messages about that guy's lifestyle and priorities. Even if misguidedly so, it's an inescapable subliminal reaction. Some may look at Aston driver and think 'mid-life crisis', others may think 'sweet ride'..... they do not think he's off to pick up the kids at soccer practice or Home Depot for lumber.
