a gigantic car on 23" wheels with no usable space because almost all of the size has gone to the hood … under which there is no engine
also the most pronounced transmission tunnel ever … with no transmission …
i literally just typed “is Jaguar” into Google and it autocompleted “going out of business” which is what i was going to ask … because with bullshit products like this - how can they not ?
of course Range Rovers still sell and this is basically an electric Range Rover sedan …
also reminds me of Cadillac Celestiq …
apparently marketing people have done the research and subhuman buyers of these vehicles probably demand 6 foot long hoods regardless of whether there is an engine underneath or not because to Normie Dogs everything is about looks ( and sound ) and substance is not a thing because that would require intelligence to interpret and Normies do not have intelligence …
somehow the Celestiq is less ridiculous than Type 01
although they both lean in the same direction somehow in the Cadillac it stops just short of total retardation but in Type 01 i am willing to bet you won’t be able to see the road over that hood nor see anything at all out of those tiny windows …
“oh look we put 1,000 hp in a car !” whoopty fucking doo ! 1,000 hp like the Model S that was DISCONTINUED ???
Model S had a decade and a half run. you’re bringing out a car in 2027 that is basically the same as something that was discontinued the year before - how much more out of touch can you be ?
I do wonder, when people buy an EV with 6 foot long hood ( and no engine under it ) do they think women are going to look at it and say " wow your hood is so big ! " ?
sorry it’s hard for us Autists to understand you Normie Cockroaches …
actually ZOOX is the first autonomous taxi thats making sense because theyve optimized for space (that I see running here in Miami), better than those Tesla GOLDs in Austin, Waymos, and other autonomous vehicles that are being tested on roads that look like normal cars. I completely agree re jag and cadi that they require a complete rethink instead of just doing same old…but people are retarded so companies MUST cater to their retardation unfortunately.
The interesting part is that most car companies are all fucked, because now without the engine design, the EV tech levels the playing field and makes every vehicle pretty much same performance wise - stupid fast. All they have to compete is the outside shell and interior designs which you wont be able to price in much different from 100k price tag of the top EVs. If performance is the same, interior is all pretty much equal with all the leather, displays etc, plus or minus on the higher end models, and a good looking outside shell, luxury and premium car manufacturers wont be able to charge 400k when 100k competitor is almost identical and hits 99% same checkboxes. Realizing this Porsche last week announced they are cutting off lower tier car production and now vowing never to kill ICE engines to cater only to high end crowd - because thats where the margins are. Thats why that Ferrari EV abomination is such a failure, because why would I pay 650k for something Ill have precisely same experience as driving another EV like Tesla Plaid that again costs 100k. Badge alone wont do it, because before when you drove a Lambo you actually had a completely different experience from a toyota camry driver, but now where all EVs can be designed easily to look cool and they are all essentially just giant gokarts than how do you justify the x5 premiums. Again thats why they are now sticking to making ICE available for much much longer but that wont be a winning strategy long term - maybe another 5 years or a decade max.
so i actually disagree with this whole post of yours.
that Ferrari Luce has completely sold out in China in days.
i told you 20 years ago when BMW started using turbos that it isn’t about performance. at the time my outgoing generation V8 BMW was priced higher but made less power than their new generation inline-6 turbo. my model was called “50” and the inline 6 was called “35” and on paper my model had more power but in actual dyno testing the 35 was more powerful. BMW under-rated the turbo inline 6 because they wanted to keel V8 the flagship.
after the Plaid you have started to finally accept a little bit that it’s not about performance but decided that it’s now about sound.
but who gets to decide what it’s about ? ultimately it’s the YouTube reviewers.
there is no OBJECTIVE way to say what should be valued. why is a $500,000 watch worth $500,000 ? i don’t think it can be any one thing. it can only be the MYTH.
this is what old Ferrari boss said when LUCE was unveiled - he said Ferrari has destroyed the myth.
the auto industry will simply need to find a new myth. this trying to hang on to V8s and stick shifts is frankly sad. they need to move on.
i don’t know how in the future premium cars will differentiate themselves from cheaper cars but if Balenciaga can somehow differentiate themselves from Adidas i believe the car industry will figure out a way too.
That said cars are tech and tech keeps getting cheaper so ultimately people may simply need to find something else to spend money on.
When we were in high school Motorola flip phones were a flex. Now nobody thinks a phone is a flex no matter what phone it is - well, maybe a folding phone is a flex.
something like that will probably happen to cars eventually …
then again, people still wear mechanical watches and use them to flex after they have been obsoleted for half a century by quartz so there will probably always be a subset of people driving loud combustion engines to flex even when the cheapest EV will be 100 times better than the most expensive combustion car but combustion car will be 100 times more expensive …
so perhaps there are two separate things going on here:
1 - differentiating products based on perceived quality
2 - simply flexing how much money you can drop on a product with zero regard to how well it works
i think we will have both. we will have EVs differentiating from each other based on things like ride quality and seat comfort etc. and we will have combustion cars occupying roughly the niche that Harley motorcycles occupy today which still use WW2 era air cooled engines and sell for 3 times more than Honda motorcycles that are lighter, more powerful and more reliable but don’t have the prestige because they just aren’t expensive enough.
electric motors were just the last nail in the coffin of performance as the differentiating factor between expensive and cheap cars. it was really the Turbos that started it. already 30 years ago when Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution with 4 cylinders was faster than a V12 Mercedes this was confusing people about what they are actually paying for.
I agree that branding has power because a Coach bag and a Gucci bag are the same shit, just different badging. With that said, the whole branding game is collapsing in real time as people are figuring out it’s all made in China anyway, so it’s no longer a flex but rather a tax on poor people trying to appear rich. Making ICE and stick shift available is sad, I agree, and it will be gone within ±5 years because all vehicles will have auto-policed speed limits or some other speed cameras everywhere (FOR YOUR SAFETY OF COURSE) nonsense that will make it pretty much impossible to drive fast. At which point you’ll just use a car as a mode of autonomous transportation and most people will not own cars but just use Uber-like services within cities (will own nothing and be happy about it…). At which point again, why even own one when availability of on-demand vehicles that shuttle you around destinations is available almost instantly as you need.
A flex will of course just be coach building services, where you can own your own EV autonomous vehicle but the outer shell will be made by bespoke coach builders to stand out so everyone will know you got money, that’s about it (kinda like the horse-drawn carriage era was). And maybe that will be for the better, so braindead morons driving a Toyota Corollas 45 mph in the left lane on a highway types don’t own or have to operate a car anymore at all, and AI is managing all of the traffic, period.
So point being get a v8 and enjoy driving while it is still possible Once you can’t actually drive fast anymore, the car just becomes an autonomous pod and another joyous activity is GONE forever. Of course there will be manual driving racing on tracks and all that stupid shit but it will be to you as much as equestrianism and dressage to you now.
it was possible to make cars stupid fast without EV tech as well. look at top fuel dragsters:
granted they use nitrous but 0-300 mph in 3 seconds is not bad for basically the same V8 as in an average truck with some nitrous boost …
it was fuel economy standards that forced automakers to use smaller engines but PHEVs have relaxed that restriction quite a bit which is why BMW is able to make cars like M5 or XM with over 700 hp …
in fact apparently in some parts of Europe the new M5 is cheaper than M3 because it’s a PHEV and M3 is pure combustion and is taxed at different rate …
strongly disagree. my Ray Ban sunglasses are $300 and are basically the same as $20 sunglasses you can buy from some homeless nigger in Chinatown - and yet Ray Ban is not going out of business anytime soon.
you can buy an insignia microwave oven for $100 from Best Buy or you can buy a Gaggenau microwave for $10,000 and Gaggenau is not going out of business anytime soon either.
things like design, craftsmanship, prestige and so on have nothing to do with horsepower or how loud the engine is …
by that logic all handbags should cost the same regardless of brand or quality since they don’t have an engine to differentiate from each other with loud noises
Chinese have basically gone full EV and sales of Chinese EVs in Europe are growing exponentially.
in America Chinese cars are banned but in Europe it’s a holocaust for their domestic EV makers …
Porsche focusing on combustion because they can’t compete with Chinese EVs is like American automakers focusing on SUVs and Pickup Trucks because they couldn’t compete with Japanese, Korean and European sedans.
but in Europe there are enormous penalties for driving combustion … as i mentioned elsewhere BMW M5 in parts of Europe is cheaper than M3 because M5 is a hybrid and M3 is not.
this means that only high end vehicles for people who don’t care about money can realistically be sold as pure combustion and that’s what Porsche is adopting to
they’re getting squeezed from two sides - by Chinese competition and by European regulators
Europe and Germany have fucked themselves. I saw data showing it’s something like 5 times cheaper to build the same car in China than Germany. 5 years from now 90% of all cars sold in Europe will be Chinese EVs.
depends on the market - US, EU or China.
in China ( world’s biggest car market ) western carmakers are pretty much finished.
in Europe soon almost all new cars sold will be Chinese EVs but there may be room for a few odd Porsche 911 GT3s etc.
in US the combustion engine lives on and Chinese cars are banned. US is also now world’s largest oil producer surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia.
but Americans only want SUVs and due to tariffs they should be made in USA. BMW, Mercedes and Toyota all build SUVs in America and will probably keep selling them just fine in the near future until Democrats come to power and change the laws.
depends on the city. Orlando is mostly single family homes with 2 or 3 car garages so may as well own your car. but in a place like NYC there is nowhere to park so people will use robotaxis. on the other hand in NYC there are no roads either so maybe you will be forced to take the subway.
maybe in NYC they will have robotaxis for short rides ( up to about a mile ) and subways for longer rides.
most likely when i stop enjoying driving it will be due to my own age and not what is done to cars. driving fun is IMO mostly about the driver and the road and the car has little to do with it. we are just made to focus on cars in part because carmakers pimp all the car reviewers and in part because cars are still a status symbol used to get pussy.
but realistically no car cane be enjoyed in NYC and almost any car can be enjoyed on a good road.
i mean if you go on a hike or a bike ride it’s the trail that counts not your shoes or bike.
my point is simple re sports cars > Ferrari, Lambos, etc were not only good looking but all of them were coveted because they had performance aspect to them that you couldnt get in a regular car that you purchase from a manufacturer (yes could be achieved aftermarket etc etc but then you are building your own car that breaks all the time and needed to know wtf you are doing). With that HUGE selling feature now gone, when a regular sedan can whip your ass at the traffic light, what exactly will you be paying 500k for ? It is a hard ask when you can sit comfortably in a normal car that has equivalent or faster performance .. So these ultra high end brands need to come up w something to differentiate themselves and Ferrari Luce was just riding on the Ferrari badge and novelty edition 1 factor for now thats why sold out, nobody will be buying them 2-3 generations in if they are just a rebadged model 3
so i was thinking how to answer this while having my coffee for breakfast and i had an idea.
Steve Jobs was once on TV being interviewed alongside with Bill Gates and he made a point to snub Bill Gates by talking about “Post PC Devices” … Bill was literally like " EXCUSE ME - WHAT ??? " … Jobs explained that Desktops in the future will be like trucks - only used for heavy duty professional work - while normal everyday tasks will be accomplished by devices like iPhone.
This has happened of course. We went from Giant Mainframe computers up to 1980s to desktop computers in the 90s - 2000s to smartphones in 2010s + …
the SAME BUT OPPOSITE thing is happening to cars, at least in USA.
as transistors got smaller RAM size grew exponentially to where now a smartwatch has thousands of times more ram than mainframe computers had that took up an entire building … so computers got exponentially smaller physically but they also got exponentially larger in terms of the size of their architecture - number of transistors, amount of RAM etc.
while technological progress enabled computers to get smaller the same progress enables cars to get larger … car ENGINES are getting smaller yes, but car INTERIORS are getting larger
it made the same power as the 4 cylinder in my Volvo makes …
so engines are like computers - they are getting smaller and more powerful - but while people always wanted smaller computers they also always wanted larger cars - so technology enables people to get what they want. car interiors are like RAM - always getting bigger.
in this analogy supercars must decline in the same way as mainframe computers have declined but both still exist.
and Super SUVs are on the rise just like smartphones …
because if you can have all the power of a mainframe in your pocket - why wouldn’t you ?
and if you can have the performance of a supercar in an SUV - why wouldn’t you ?
so BMW XM was only the second ever M car that wasn’t an M version of a BMW
the M1 did 0-60 in 5.5 seconds. the XM does it in 3.5 seconds.
reality is you can only go so fast on the road subject to speed limits. even though car safety has improved dramatically cars are still crash tested at around 30 mph and direct hits at 60 mph are generally not survivable.
so 60 mph remains the limit to how fast society allows cars to go for the most part … and if modern SUVs can hit that in 3.5 seconds - who needs something like a Corvette ?
the answer is Corvettes are bought by the same boomers who buy Harley Davidson cruisers.
what makes Corvettes and Harleys cool ? the answer is THEIR SHEER IMPRACTICALITY.
a Harley is cool because it is simultaneously expensive, unreliable and useless. It is a $30,000 toy that also requires a lot of free time to maintain. Only boomers have both that spare change and spare time.
Corvette is the next step - slightly more practical - you can fit golf clubs in there, you can also put on a roof and turn on AC, and the engine is liquid cooled and thus somewhat reliable. However it is still a $100,000 toy for boomers in Florida.
what makes them cool is precisely the fact that they are TOYS and are USELESS.
by contrast something like BMW XM is a practical vehicle that happens to be fast, and trying to be cool. same as Cybertruck for example. both are colossal failures commercially despite being objectively good vehicles that are both fast and practical. it seems XM and Cybertruck both priced themselves out of practical vehicle market while failing to have the style / image / prestige / cachet that rich people want.
so whereas in the past you needed something like Bugatti to be fast we slowly moved to an era where you could be fast with something like BMW M5 … to where you can now be fast with BMW XM that is the same size as BMW X7 but with 3rd row replaced by a PHEV system trading two seats for extra 200 hp and a lot of extra low end torque on basically the same chassis otherwise.
in other words car business has split in two just like watch making business
you now have smartwatches on one hand and swiss watches on the other
BMW XM is a smartwatch - it looks funky but is actually functional
Corvette / Harley is a swiss watch - it is useless and is basically jewelry
of course Swiss Watch bros still LARP about how precise their watches are or how reliable but reality is none of them can touch a $10 Casio.
Harleys are the same. Harley keeps trying to make a modern motorcycle and every single time they make a great motorcycle that flops commercially because Boomers just want something that goes CHOP CHOP CHOP.
i mentioned before i once tried to explain to a very young girl that my BMW was a sports car because the rear tires are wider than the front and she was like - but it has 4 doors ? because performance comes from doors and not tires obviously.
as for Corvette yes it is actually fast … and no Boomer who drives one has ever pressed the gas pedal all the way and never will.
the 911 is such a unique car because it splits the difference between a Harley and the XM. it has one foot in tradition like Harley and one foot in modernity like XM. it tries to appeal to both the Boomer crowd who want a classic whether it runs or not and to young software engineers who want a double clutch transmission, all wheel drive and variable geometry turbochargers.
the point being that PERFORMANCE is now something that is relevant only to SUVs. because in any other type of vehicle it is now trivial to achieve. you can just get a regular 3 series, put a $500 chip on it and you have something that would have been a supercar in the 90s.
to make a gigantic 6,000 lbs SUV like XM dance is somewhat more challenging but BMW has managed to do it anyway.
( you can use English subtitles in video below )
so performance is now only meaningful for SUVs and even then only when it comes to handling as acceleration is trivial.
and Corvette type cars are just about style and bling now. making them fast is beyond trivial now. Chevy could sell ZR1X for under six figures if they wanted to and the only reason they won’t is because 99.9999% of people don’t need that performance. the base Corvette already is too fast for the Boomers who buy it.
and yet corvette sells and so does Harley and so does 911.
because they are all ICONIC.
and the XM does NOT sell because it is UGLY.
and even SUVs nobody needs. all people actually need is a station wagon. those aren’t even offered because people think SUVs are cooler.
the only reason minivans exist is because you need a full size SUV like Suburban to replace a minivan and the average person can’t afford a suburban.
but anybody can afford a compact crossover to replace a station wagon …
the point is - it’s complicated.
performance is one of many pieces in the puzzle and is getting less relevant by the day but it didn’t start yesterday. performance has been getting less relevant from almost the moment automobiles were invented it’s just that automotive reviewers never really evolved to be able to talk about anything else and their audience is mainly 12 year olds so they don’t need to evolve either.
Automotive reviewers are like cheap skanks getting assfucked on PornHub - all they know how to say is " oh shit oh fuck it is so big and deep inside me ! " and Automotive reviewers only know how to say " oh shit oh fuck it is so fast and so loud ! "
by the way don’t know if you noticed this but status is now measured by how TALL your SUV is
so if you look at land rover line up or any other automaker the more you pay the taller your vehicle
because power is something that is not really relevant anymore - nobody really cares if their car has 500 hp or 700 hp - but people DO care how tall the car is
everybody wants to be ABOVE others ( literally )
of course the taller the car is the more engineering it takes to make it ride and handle well and also the worse the fuel economy - which adds to the status because poor people can’t afford cars with shit fuel economy
so if you want to be cool you basically get a G-Wagen and a Lambo - a comically tall car and a comically impractical one - then everybody will know you are boss
remember - the more reasonable, sane, practical and intelligent a vehicle - the more lame it is. this is why Volvo is lamest vehicle you can buy - because it’s a brand known for safety and station wagons ( practicality ).
nothing is more un-cool and un-sexy than safety and practicality. everybody wants extravagance and danger ! like Lambos that spontaneously catch on fire for no reason.
women don’t want a boring nice guy like a Lexus. they want a dangerous bad boy like a Lambo.
to focus solely on performance is like believing that injecting steroids will make women want you but we know it doesn’t work that way. likewise chip tuning a car to make it significantly faster doesn’t increase the value of that car.
injecting steroids may impress your gym bros and likewise tuning your 3 series may do the same but in the real world you will need more than that to get respect …
by the way forgot to reply here, you were off on the size of the car, until 1970s if not even 1980s most cars were twice the size … even interior space, pure land yachts. Cadillacs and Lincolns were massive until fuel crisis of the 70s and then Japs entering market w their fuel efficient ant cars.
so i spent some time reflecting on your comment and came to the conclusion that i have been successfully psychologically manipulated by Urbanists into accepting their narrative that cars today are abnormally large …
and i have fallen for it like a moron, even though i knew of this exact trick !
this is the same trick that Climatologists use when they show how CO2 and temperatures are rising while conveniently forgetting that there were several periods in history when both temperatures and C02 were MUCH higher than they are now …
so the trick is to pick and choose the X-Axis scale ( time frame ) of the chart to make it look like we’re exponentially hurtling towards some abyss when in fact if the scale is expanded further we are just reverting to the mean …
it is the same with cars. we are not entering some unchartered territory of car gigantism but simply returning to the historic size of cars before the 1973 oil crisis …
and although we are now in a new oil crisis this time it is irrelevant because cars are no longer dependent on gas in the way they were in the 70s. yes you can CHOOSE to drive a gas guzzler but you can also choose any number of technologies like Hybrid, PHEV or EV that aren’t as dependent or completely independent of oil prices.
if cars do get smaller again as they did after 1973 it won’t be due to oil prices anymore, but due to sheer terrorism from Urbanists who literally slash SUV tires and spray paint “this machine kills kids” on them:
Urbanists have many tricks up their sleeves and amazingly even i fell for it this time.
what can i say it is hard to defeat an enemy that never gives up. it’s like with Elon - even though i know he always lies he just never stops lying and eventually you end up believing one of his lies even though you swore you never would.
guilty as charged. thanks for catching my mistake.
i think it was Naval Ravikant who said something like “if you have underestimated something in the past - you are still underestimating it” …
so in this case regarding Urbanists, Climatologists or Elon it will be “if you know somebody is completely full of shit - they are actually a lot more full of shit than you know - and you have probably internalized some of their bullshit without realizing it”
this happens to me all the time. because our default is to believe and we always look for evidence of something being a lie before we can conclude that it is a lie. because of this somebody who lies all the time like Elon, a Warmist or an Urbanist no matter how many of their lies you catch you always still end up believing some of their lies.
because the lies do not always reach you directly from their mouth. often the lies are repeated by some unwitting imbeciles whom you have no reason to distrust. this is ultimately why pathological lying like that works IF you have a big enough platform for spreading those lies.
so Elon has such a large platform because of X and Warmists / Urbanists have it because of WEF and of course let’s not forget the Jews with their control of … well, everything …
no matter how much you think you’re on their case you can be sure you’re believing some of their lies without realizing it …
the only way to defend yourself against this is to actively force yourself to believe the OPPOSITE of what these people want you to believe … HOWEVER oftentimes they also control this “opposition” as with the 2 party system …
in other words there may not be a shortcut. i am reminded of the time back in Ukraine when i was sent to a Math competition with a few other kids and one of the kids on my team said “if worst comes to worst and we can’t cheat - we may have to think”
golden words - indeed we may have to - there may not be any other choice
Once you can’t actually drive fast anymore, the car just becomes an autonomous pod and another joyous activity is GONE forever. Of course there will be manual driving racing on tracks and all that stupid shit but it will be to you as much as equestrianism and dressage to you now.
