Ongoing General Automotive Thread 2.0

[Fuzz]

Did it buff right out?

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Did it buff right out?

Not quite, but still looks better than that BMW

[Locke]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Hey don't take it personally it's just friendly ribbing. The only thing that matters is that you like it

Edit:
If it makes you feel any better, thanks to my wife this summer the front end on mine doesn't look much better than yours

Spoiler!

Oh...that'll be fine! Little bit of brake-clean and you wont even notice!

[soreshins]

I bought a 22 Toyota Highlander in September - only 12500km on the clock. Lovely car to drive but my god does it have the most interior rattles I’ve ever experienced in a car. From the dash, door panels etc. it’s ridiculous. It’s my first Toyota so is this a thing with them or have we just been unlucky?

[bagofpucks]

Huh, interesting. I don’t know many Toyota owners that have had that issue. I have a friend with a 2020 tacoma that has had some wind problems, but that’s it. We have a 2018 Sienna and that thing is just the perfect appliance vehicle; nothing too exciting but just works. I will say, the newer Siennas and Highlanders seem to have a lot more plastic in the interiors, so maybe that’s part of it?

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by soreshins

I bought a 22 Toyota Highlander in September - only 12500km on the clock. Lovely car to drive but my god does it have the most interior rattles I’ve ever experienced in a car. From the dash, door panels etc. it’s ridiculous. It’s my first Toyota so is this a thing with them or have we just been unlucky?

We have a 21 Highlander, zero rattles. Were the previous owners bombing around offroad or something?

[soreshins]

I believe it was an older couple who had it before us so I doubt they were off-roading. Car is spotless too. We got it certified pre-owned from a Toyota dealership and it’s due its next service in about 1500km so I’m going to ask the dealership to try and fix some of the worst ones. It’s driving us bananas.

[Dion]

I would love this bad boy parked in my garage...

[TorqueDog]

If it's any consolation, iamca; as a long-time BMW fan, I've felt BMW had lost their way a number of years ago, so I don't really think the iX makes that situation any worse. It's really just continuing on BMW's recent strong track record of making me pine for the BMW of the mid-late 1990s / early-mid 2000s, back when "The Ultimate Driving Machine" was their motto and they friggin' meant it. The steering feel on a base E46 318i was head and shoulders above virtually every car in its segment, same with the E39 525i.

I should never have sold my E39 M5 and I will regret moving on from that car for a long time.

Originally Posted by btimbit

Edit:
If it makes you feel any better, thanks to my wife this summer the front end on mine doesn't look much better than yours

Spoiler!

Tried to park it by feel?

[Bill Bumface]

^ I know someone that had an E30 M3 and an E39 M5. I can't imagine trying to fall asleep at night realizing I let both of those go.

We had an E46 325xit. It was not a prime specimen, and had rust issues and was generally constantly falling apart. I spent so much time and money fixing it. But the first drive of the thing working properly again would enable the mental gymnastics to keep it just a bit longer, especially after refreshing the suspension. It was not fast by any means, but it was wonderful

[Table 5]

I owned e46 330xi for about a year just before Covid (bumface you may remember as I asked you for advice). It stranded me on the side of the road the first week of ownership, and pretty much went from one issue to another the entire year I owned it. It looked great (my favourite 3 series design ever), and was an excellent driver...but I was glad to get rid of it. That one year probably cost me more in maintenance/headeaches than my Cayman did in 6 years. Glad to have checked BMW off the list, but there's no looking back (unless perhaps its an E9).

[Erick Estrada]

I don't know. The B58/S58 and ZF8 combination will likely go down as their greatest powertrain ever when you consider power, efficiency, and reliability. We are finally in an era where BMW and reliability can be mentioned in the same sentence yet people pine for the days where they were worse performing and considerably less reliable. Yes I get they they were lighter, had better steering feel, more raw, etc but you can say that for yesterday's cars of every brand. Have some of the classic ultimate driving machine feel? Yes but that's something that was unavoidable given the parameters of building cars today relative to the past. In 15 years there will be people posting their disdain for the fully electric line of BMW cars mentioning how the G87 M2 was the last great BMW as the cycle continues. Lots of people have issues being caught up in nostalgia, conveniently forgetting the bad associated with the old vehicles.

[Table 5]

You're right in that nostalgia definitely does funny things to people, and all cars feel number than they used to. Having said that, I really think what made the older generations truly standout, apart from their driving characteristics, is that their designers just nailed that aesthetic so well and for so long. They had that perfect teutonic design language...taut and athletic, yet crisp and restrained. An athlete in a great suit.

We all have different tastes, but I just don't see many people looking back at BMW today and pining for this design language. It's overwrought, angry, and disjointed. That iX to me honestly look like the Chinese knockoffs we used to laugh at a decade or two ago. But hey, maybe time does soften our perception, as I'm starting to think even the Chris Bangle designs are looking decent in comparison, and that was when things started going downhill.

[Table 5]

Btw, as much as I hate the BMW design language today, I do think their Vision Neue Klasse concept shows promise. Maybe they are just pushing the ugly to its inevitable overcomplicated extreme, right before going back to a more restrained aesthetic.

[Slava]

I don't know if this should be in here or the home improvement thread, but anyone got any thoughts or advice on containment mats for the garage? I have an issue where the snow/ice melts and it ends up rusting and corroding the cables for the door. Obviously, the cables break (eventually) and I get to have a guy come out to replace them.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't know if this should be in here or the home improvement thread, but anyone got any thoughts or advice on containment mats for the garage? I have an issue where the snow/ice melts and it ends up rusting and corroding the cables for the door. Obviously, the cables break (eventually) and I get to have a guy come out to replace them.

I've used one for about 8 years - I had a great custom mat made locally that was 50% wider than the usual single car. It's still holding up well.

- You're essentially building a very flat yet super short tank to hold water in
- Is your garage heated? If so, be prepared to broom water out pretty much every time your drive in with accumulated snow
- I went with a 1/3" (or was it 1/2...) edge rope to act as containment. It's a balancing act between retaining water and a tripping hazard
- Inevitably, some water will get past the edge, particularly on the side closest to your overhead door as that's where the water should pool. It will not get past your door seal and can still cause you some problems, albeit much less
- To solve this I lay down a few containment socks on the sides to capture water in addition to the mat

I think I got a quote for $6,000 to install a trench that would drain into a bucket (that I'd manually have to empty out)... would have been much less hassle, but my mat was far less than that.

[DoubleF]

"It was hard to see this morning due to the fog"
"Dang, that sucks. Did your fog lights not work?"
"That's not what fog lights are for DoubleF!"

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

"It was hard to see this morning due to the fog"
"Dang, that sucks. Did your fog lights not work?"
"That's not what fog lights are for DoubleF!"

Technically they aren’t. They help to illuminate the road directly in front of you when you’re driving slow, but they don’t actually help you see through fog at driving distance and aren’t intended to do so anyway.

[Fuzz]

They are mostly designed to take rock chips and crack shorty after getting them.

[Sliver]

Finally getting around to posting some photos of my new (to me) car. TLDR: photos of car are in spoiler tags at the bottom of the post. I bought a 2022 Genesis G80 Sport+. It's the one with the 3.5 liter twin turbo. A few notes on my choice:

• At 6'4" I wanted something totally comfortable for a tall person. This is the most comfortable sport sedan of any of its competitors for me. All the German cars have become too small.
• Wanted AWD and it to be fast, but I didn't feel the need to have the fastest car out there. Last car was a monster with about 550hp and over 600 pound-feet of torque. I didn't ever get a ticket in it, but this 375hp in my new car is much more rational for where I am right now. It's faster than peppy, but I'm not instantly breaking the law just by blipping the throttle.
• Needed great self-driving tech. This car nails it for me. Can press a button and it'll take care of 90% of the driving for me in stop-and-go rush hour. It'll also do 90% of the driving for me on the highway between Calgary-Canmore/Lake Louise...I'm on that highway at least once per week.
• The rear bias in the AWD system is awesome and it's super quick to disable traction and stability control with a hard button. You can easily kick the ass end out and have a blast. In my Mercedes, you had to disable that stuff through the infotainment while stopped, which was the lamest thing ever.
• I know it's a tired old song at this point, but I truly hate cars that are a slab of glass with no physical controls and a bunch of ugly/messy gloss black. I love how in this car I have to rotate a crystal disk to put it into drive. To control the volume a I roll a knurled dial/knob. There are great touch points and physical buttons without having button overload. You can control the infotainment with the screen if you want, but I rarely touch it as I don't like fingerprints on my stuff. There is a super nice interface wheel with a centre button right where you rest your arm, so you can control everything without screwing around with touching the screen. Just makes me feel like I'm enjoying the car more. I also have a hot button programmed that I press and it makes the screen go black for a really chill environment. And there is no gloss black, woot.
• This car came with five years of "white-glove service". That's free maintenance and oil changes, but get this: They come to me - wherever I am in the city - drop off a loaner car (only time I've used this so far they gave me a brand new GV70 with the 3.5TT engine), take my car for service, then call me to find me again when the service is done and grab their car and drop mine off. It's fkn magic. Talk about a time/hassle saver. I don't think I could ever go back to messing around with dropping a car off for service. I'd feel like a caveman.

Some kind of gimmicky but fun stuff:

• I can press a button and the car will park itself. It'll back into a spot or parallel park itself. I can even do this while standing outside the car and just pressing a button on the key fob. Like, what? That's insane.
• 3D digital gauge cluster. Gimmick, but cool AF. I love it.
• In the HUD, it'll show album art when I change tracks. Sounds small, but I love seeing some obscure band's album from 30 years ago (like The Smalls) floating in mid-air above the hood as I'm cruising down the highway. Just makes things fun and happy.
• Four-wheel steering. I guess that's not really a gimmick, but it is pretty cool. It totally shrinks the car for parking and allows you to make way tighter turns. At slower speeds the rear wheels turn opposite of the front wheels to rotate the rear end and at faster speeds the rear wheels turn the same direction as the front wheels for sharper handling/lane changes.

Some compromises:

• Some of the aesthetic choices are not totally my bag. The vents on the side front fender are a bit much, but I do see these on a lot of vehicles right now, so it is apparently a style that can be hard to avoid. Not a deal breaker, obviously.
• I really don't like the wheels. I powder coated mine black because the factory grey was especially lame (IMO) and looked plasticky, but they're really nice for winter wheels, I guess. My plan is to buy some five-spoke wheels for the summer that are a bit concaved. I think it'll suit the car more.
• The car had a bunch of dark chrome accents, which I didn't like. I wrapped them in black just to tone them down a bit. Also had chrome exhaust tips, which I powder coated black as I didn't like those, either. Fewer different colours/materials on a car = less busy-looking to me.

Other little things I've done: Tinted the windows all the way around at 25%. TBH, that's a little dark and I think I should have gone 35%. Hardwired my radar detector. Slightly tinted the red reflectors at the back to match them to the hue of the red taillights. They were slightly redder and it looked a bit off. I also debadged it. I originally did this before I ceramic coated it and was going to replace the badges with some nicer ones, but I ended up preferring it with no badges at all - not an aesthetic I normally like (although I always take off the "SPORT" decals and such from, like, my F-150s and stuff).

Aside from it being a better fit for me than the myriad of other cars I drove (see my list a few posts above), probably the best part is the bang for buck/value. It was literally $100,000 less than the runner up (Porsche Macan GTS). The Macan was more fun to rip around in, but the reality is for me right now I'm on the highway to and from the mountains and driving around the city to and from work 99% of the time I'm driving. Full rips in the Macan are unreal in every conceivable way, but the Genesis is by far the better vehicle for how I operate right now. And will it depreciate like crazy? Probably, but I picked it up with 20,000kms on the clock and it was just 18 months old. I saved over 35% from new. Depreciation - at this point, anyway - worked awesome in my favour.

Anyway, here are some shots:

Spoiler!

Beast Mode with SeaSucker Monkeybars suction cup roof rack and pod:

I'm so stoked on my choice (had it for three months now). No regrets at all, and I like having a Genesis as I hope they push other manufacturers to be better and offer greater value. I don't like the melted-face garbage Mercedes is pumping out (every model looks the same and so bland). I think new BMWs and Mercedeses are way too reliant on screens and capacitive touch, which I hate. There's no sense of occasion when I drove those cars and when it's just slabs of glass everywhere they really don't feel like you're having luxurious experience befitting of the price. I came from a 2012 CLS550 and whenever I drove any German car and got back into my 2012 it just felt so much nicer and like what I think of when I think "luxury". The G80 retains that sense of luxury in my view. The interior is beautiful. The ambient lighting is lovely and tasteful (unlike how you feel like you're driving a disco ball when you're in a Mercedes now).

Also love Genesis' service. The white glove situation I mentioned above blows anything Merc, Audi or BMW have out of the water. I also don't have to pay for apps and features. I have every option the Germans have, plus a whole bunch more, didn't get bent over and I have a totally comprehensive app for starting, monitoring my vehicle, adjusting climate, etc. all included with no subscription costs.

We'll see how this car ages and how it feels in time. My Mercedes was getting too many rattles that I was always chasing (had about 115,000kms on it) and the air suspension was feeling really tired by the end. I wouldn't want air again...it's just not that great and never cornered as well as my G80 does.

That's probably more than enough on that.