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Post by the light works on Mar 28, 2015 16:04:38 GMT
I'll just have to visit London before he officially moves to Downing Street... I have a plan I want to put to him that requires all american cars to be shrunk to fit UK roads. And converted to right-hook drive. And have engines that can do minimum double digits in the MPG stakes. our cars have been able to make double digit MPG for a few years, now. |
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 29, 2015 10:15:49 GMT
I have a plan I want to put to him that requires all american cars to be shrunk to fit UK roads. And converted to right-hook drive. And have engines that can do minimum double digits in the MPG stakes. our cars have been able to make double digit MPG for a few years, now. Your cars get on average half what we get. We do not have family cars that can do less than 20, we look for 30plus, even high 30's as realistic MPG, into the 40's for some. Its a size thing... europen cars are half the size of those land-yacht's the 'muricans drive.... And yes, there are exceptions to the rule. Anything doing less than 20 is "luxury", anything less than 10 is a truck.... And just for interest, my daily WORK drive gets 9mpg on average at good cruising speed... 40 odd tons of it. For interest sake, and maybe to dispel the myth, you 'Muricans on the board, whats your average MPG in your daily drive, and is that average, high, low, or something different... And what is the typical mpg for a 5seat 5door "family" saloon these days.... |
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Post by the light works on Mar 29, 2015 14:39:23 GMT
our cars have been able to make double digit MPG for a few years, now. Your cars get on average half what we get. We do not have family cars that can do less than 20, we look for 30plus, even high 30's as realistic MPG, into the 40's for some. Its a size thing... europen cars are half the size of those land-yacht's the 'muricans drive.... And yes, there are exceptions to the rule. Anything doing less than 20 is "luxury", anything less than 10 is a truck.... And just for interest, my daily WORK drive gets 9mpg on average at good cruising speed... 40 odd tons of it. For interest sake, and maybe to dispel the myth, you 'Muricans on the board, whats your average MPG in your daily drive, and is that average, high, low, or something different... And what is the typical mpg for a 5seat 5door "family" saloon these days.... my daily drive is a bit cheating - it gets 11-12 MPG, but it weighs 6 tons, and is about as aerodynamic as a house. before I put the service body on it, it consistently got 17 MPG. Mrs TLW's pickup gets 15-17 MPG, and the 90s minivan we just got as a gift from my parents gets in the mid 20s. my last "family" car got around the mid to high 20s, too. - that was an 88 Acura. my van, when I first got it, could drive 500 miles on 30 gallons of gas. after the government decided to "improve" our gas to reduce emissions, I could only drive 400 miles on the same 30 gallons. it is true, though, that american cars run one size larger than european cars. when the Escort was a thing, we considered it a compact car, and their festiva was a subcompact. (our escort, per a previous conversation, also had about 2/3 the horsepower that yours did, which made it a bit of a slug - case in point, I got a ride home from college with a friend whose mom drove an escort. we got passed on upgrades. by trucks... LOADED trucks.) but our standards are getting smaller. the descendent of the land yacht my mother drove when I was a child is about half the size of its namesake and gets twice the gas mileage. my grandfather's Oldsmobile had a 7.5 liter engine and the doors (it was a coupe) were about 6 feet long. you could probably park a mini in the passenger compartment, if it was a convertible and you took the windshield off. (and the seats out of the Oldsmobile, obviously) |
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Post by OziRiS on Mar 30, 2015 1:31:23 GMT
In comparison, my 2005 Skoda - which is a normal sized station wagon (about the same overall length and height as a Chevy Cruze) - gets around 45 MPG on a bad day.
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Post by the light works on Mar 30, 2015 2:14:09 GMT
In comparison, my 2005 Skoda - which is a normal sized station wagon (about the same overall length and height as a Chevy Cruze) - gets around 45 MPG on a bad day. a chevy cruze is a midsize, here. |
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 30, 2015 6:35:20 GMT
Ford Transit Van, Petrol engine, I was getting about 30 to the gallon....
loaded, 25.
Thats a one-and-a-half ton load.
Drove to my Parents house, 150mile away, 35 to the gallon at motorway cruise.
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Post by OziRiS on Mar 30, 2015 9:32:15 GMT
In comparison, my 2005 Skoda - which is a normal sized station wagon (about the same overall length and height as a Chevy Cruze) - gets around 45 MPG on a bad day. a chevy cruze is a midsize, here. So we agree. Not a small car  |
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Post by the light works on Mar 30, 2015 14:14:53 GMT
a chevy cruze is a midsize, here. So we agree. Not a small car this is a normal sized station wagon, here.  |
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Post by kharnynb on Mar 30, 2015 17:31:04 GMT
my xsara picasso does about 36 miles to the gallon and it's hardly small, seating 5 adults and having a decent luggage space.
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 31, 2015 6:19:19 GMT
That stsation wagon is what we would call and estate.
Back to Top Gear, Dermot Oleary, ex X-Factor, has been tipped to be the replacement for Jeremy.
Thats if the other two will still be on the show....
Neither of them have publicly said much at all, other then James saying he is putting his ferrari on E-Bay.
There are reports that Jeremy may have been offered a place on the Russian show.
Others have suggested a world tour, where Jeremy may do guest spots on all of the other Top Gear shows around the world.
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Post by the light works on Mar 31, 2015 14:24:54 GMT
That stsation wagon is what we would call and estate. Back to Top Gear, Dermot Oleary, ex X-Factor, has been tipped to be the replacement for Jeremy. Thats if the other two will still be on the show.... Neither of them have publicly said much at all, other then James saying he is putting his ferrari on E-Bay. There are reports that Jeremy may have been offered a place on the Russian show. Others have suggested a world tour, where Jeremy may do guest spots on all of the other Top Gear shows around the world. That would be a grand comic closure to have Clarkson star in every Top Gear EXCEPT the BBC one. I don't know if Subaru ran the "sport utility wagon" campaign in England in the 90s, but it was a TV staple here - with Paul Hogan touting the superiority of the Subaru Outback as "the world's first sport utility wagon" over traditional SUVs. - except at the time I was taking an auto magazine, that reran the introductory review of the Jeep Wagoneer:  that listed it as a "station wagon for both sport and utility use" yep, they used wagon, sport, and utility in the same sentence. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Apr 1, 2015 2:41:05 GMT
Here in the UK we'd probably call an SUV a 'people carrier'*, and unless you happen to have a need to move a lot of people around all the time don't seem to be all that popular.
The reason is most likely cost. They are too expensive for most families, especially now road tax is based on the size of the engine. Another factor is practicality. As I've noted before UK roads are narrower than their US counterparts, making driving vehicles of that size interesting to say the least.
(*Of course all motor vehicles are 'people carriers'...until the robots take over anyway)
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Post by silverdragon on Apr 1, 2015 6:50:12 GMT
That last thing is what we Brits would call a Yank-Tank.
The nearest we have is the Range-Rover, which although I cant quite tell, is probably half the size.
The Nissan Nivara is about the largest SUV we have on common sale, there are one or two humvees about, but not a retail option, the Toyota Land-Cruiser was the biggest we had at one point on common retail sale.
People carriers, since we started finding out the 7seat back row was only for kids below 5ft tall, most people have given up on them, unless they are the Van based real mini-bus type.
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Post by kharnynb on Apr 1, 2015 11:05:03 GMT
here we call em russia-mobiles, since they tend to have russian plates and are owned by thicknecked individuals that have stolen mrT's wardrobe.
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Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Apr 1, 2015 13:10:26 GMT
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Post by Cybermortis on Apr 1, 2015 14:31:18 GMT
The nearest we have is the Range-Rover, which although I cant quite tell, is probably half the size. The Range Rover is actually slightly larger than a Ford Explorer, which is (I think) a mid-sized SUV by American standards. The difference is around 20 cm depending on the model of Explorer. Big American cars are rare in the UK overall due to costs. As there is little market for such vehicles they are not produced in the UK (or Europe) so have to be imported, which might well cost more than what you paid for the car. Likewise all parts have to be imported. Then there is the not too minor matter of insurance, as the steering wheel is on the left hand side insurance rates sky-rocket. I also suspect that some older American cars don't conform to existing emissions standards for the UK and Europe (in fact many older US cars don't conform to emissions standards in the US these days - the original car used in the TV show Knight Rider is illegal to drive these days because of this). This in turn raises costs as the cars would have to be modifyed before they could be driven. |
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Post by the light works on Apr 1, 2015 14:36:28 GMT
That last thing is what we Brits would call a Yank-Tank. The nearest we have is the Range-Rover, which although I cant quite tell, is probably half the size. The Nissan Nivara is about the largest SUV we have on common sale, there are one or two humvees about, but not a retail option, the Toyota Land-Cruiser was the biggest we had at one point on common retail sale. People carriers, since we started finding out the 7seat back row was only for kids below 5ft tall, most people have given up on them, unless they are the Van based real mini-bus type. for your size scale, that is the same size chassis as what we call a van, and I think you call a transporter. that particular one was designed to carry four ranch hands, and four bales of hay, without benefit of a road. - or take a family of 5 or 6 out camping on the weekend. (or, and don't tell the seatbelt advocates, about 10 kids down to the swimming hole) our more modern large SUVs are mostly used to project wealth (only rich people can afford to feed them) and medium SUVs are used by soccer moms who don't want to admit to being soccer moms by driving minivans. (my mother bought another minivan because getting in and out is a lot like sitting in a chair and standing up again. ) The biggest thing to remember about the evolution of American cars is the vast amount of real estate and the low population density, compared to most of europe. we have a few cities where space is a concern, but for the most part, the roads were built in the land yacht era, when a compact car was 20 feet long and 7½ feet wide. |
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Post by The Urban Mythbuster on Apr 1, 2015 14:36:38 GMT
The nearest we have is the Range-Rover, which although I cant quite tell, is probably half the size. The Range Rover is actually slightly larger than a Ford Explorer, which is (I think) a mid-sized SUV by American standards. The difference is around 20 cm depending on the model of Explorer. Big American cars are rare in the UK overall due to costs. As there is little market for such vehicles they are not produced in the UK (or Europe) so have to be imported, which might well cost more than what you paid for the car. Likewise all parts have to be imported. Then there is the not too minor matter of insurance, as the steering wheel is on the left hand side insurance rates sky-rocket. I also suspect that some older American cars don't conform to existing emissions standards for the UK and Europe (in fact many older US cars don't conform to emissions standards in the US these days - the original car used in the TV show Knight Rider is illegal to drive these days because of this). This in turn raises costs as the cars would have to be modifyed before they could be driven. Midsize is correct. The size gradation for Ford SUVs from smallest to largest is Escape -> Edge -> Explorer -> Expedition -> Excursion. You may sense a naming scheme, it carries over into their passenger cars also: Fiesta -> Focus -> Fusion -> Five Hundred... |
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Post by the light works on Apr 1, 2015 14:42:17 GMT
The nearest we have is the Range-Rover, which although I cant quite tell, is probably half the size. The Range Rover is actually slightly larger than a Ford Explorer, which is (I think) a mid-sized SUV by American standards. The difference is around 20 cm depending on the model of Explorer. Big American cars are rare in the UK overall due to costs. As there is little market for such vehicles they are not produced in the UK (or Europe) so have to be imported, which might well cost more than what you paid for the car. Likewise all parts have to be imported. Then there is the not too minor matter of insurance, as the steering wheel is on the left hand side insurance rates sky-rocket. I also suspect that some older American cars don't conform to existing emissions standards for the UK and Europe (in fact many older US cars don't conform to emissions standards in the US these days - the original car used in the TV show Knight Rider is illegal to drive these days because of this). This in turn raises costs as the cars would have to be modifyed before they could be driven. in the US, cars are only required to meet the standards in effect when they were built. - which is a great benefit to those who own antique cars. |
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Post by the light works on Apr 1, 2015 14:45:08 GMT
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