What vehicle do you drive?

Hateyou said:

Hopefully the market sorts that out. 55% of buyers say no android auto or CarPlay is a deal breaker and they won’t consider a car without it. If GM sales drop 55% they will likely roll that rule back (after we bail those sorry fucks out again probably). I agree with that, no way am I buying a car without it.

Car companies aren’t software companies, their UIs are slow, clunky, unintuitive, absolute dog shit. Maps that are slow or extremely outdated or require subscriptions. I travel for work frequently and want to be able to hop into any rental and use a UI I’m used to, not figure some new proprietary bullshit every single time.

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I'm hoping for that as well.

But also I'm aware that the drive by investors to see everything through the lens of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is pushing every type of manufacturer to try to figure out a way to turn whatever they make into a "service" with a "subscription". The auto makers got a taste of this with OnStar.

But also, the market always finds a way. For those stalwarts I am sure there will be options come up that are third party replacements for the built in infotainment systems. Then the automakers will make sure there's no way to easily mount a replacement (i.e. do away with the time honored DIN system)...

I'm already to the point that I'm pretty sure if/when my lovely current daily driver (2017 Caddy CTS vSport) is ready to pass on I won't get another solely because they are watering down the performance of that model/line effectively over time (Thanks CAFE standards), and this is kinda the nail in the coffin for me and GM cars.

Burren said:

Hell, today you can retrofit CarPlay into a lot of classics and that’s massively popular. We are all too accustomed to it now to stop. But, no fucking way I’m paying a monthly fee to use a car’s functionality.

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If you read up earlier you can see I've already done this into my wife's 2013 Ford Escape (it had a crappy Gen 1 Microsoft SYNC system). Drop in Sony head unit replacement has worked like a dream, plus the Maestro module to integrate with the cars onboard capabilities gave her new features she didn't even have in it before, like on screen control of the AC.

Hateyou said:

I can’t believe you’re extending the life of a ford escape. My wife had two escapes, the latest two body styles, as work vehicles and they were both trash with constant problems. I would never own a ford by choice.

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Maybe we just lucked out... Maybe it's the fact that she drives very little... All I know is that I had pooled up the cash to get her a nice CPO compact SUV (probably Lexus, maybe Audi from what we were shopping around) and she came up with the idea of "Can we just get the new features I want slapped into my Escape? And then fix up the little scratches and such in the paint?" Which, let's just say, saved me a lot of money. So we now have a "rejuvenated" 2013 Ford Escape. With this said she gets out and goes anywhere in her car MAYBE once a week. 13 year old car that IIRC is just now coming up on 60k miles.

Knocking on wood... The biggest mechanical issue I've had to handle on it was a fuel pressure sensor I had to change out which was causing idling issues.

Soygen said:

The ship has landed. I've had to rearrange my garage to squeeze a car in. I've been using my garage as my woodworking / 3d printing man cave basically, but with this car I'm not leaving it sitting in the Florida sun every day. Fortunately all my big tools are on wheels and I can just pull the car out and move everything around when I want to use the garage for projects.

Initial impression of the car is that it's stunning in person. The green in the sunlight looks amazing(I'll take some better pics when I take it out later). Handles and sounds great. Having to baby it during break in is going to be brutal, but I'll be doing joyrides to speed up the break in process. Can't wait to really get on it and see what it's got.


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Ah yes.. the "we need to start using the garage as well.. a garage again" moment

I had the same thing with our 2 car detatched. It had devolved over time into a combination workshop/storage shed for us. Then when I had to do some major structural work on it (replacing a lot of studs in the walls) the edict was forged that from that point forward no matter what else was going on in there, at any point we would be able to park BOTH our cars in our two car garage. That fact has single handedly kept me from acquiring a proper CnC or the kiln that I want due to space constraints.

Soygen said:

It's funny because when I had no garage for the majority of my life, I would always sneer at people who wasted their garage by NOT having their car in it. When we bought this house in 2021, I only had a pickup that I don't really care about keeping clean/nice and I got hardcore into woodworking and then would sneer at people wasting their garage by having a car in it. Now I'm a hypocrite for both my present and past self.

That said, when we bought this place, my only stipulation to my wife is that the garage is 100% mine. She can decorate the entire house however she likes. Arrange the pool patio, etc, but she holds no power in the garage.

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When I bought this house I was lucky. The previous owner was an Electrical Engineer for Raytheon. They had converted the existing 2 car attached garage into a home office and workshop for him. Then they build a detached 2 car. So I have a space for my 3d printers, and various "small tinkering". The garage is where big things get worked on, especially once I got into metal-crafting.

In our house the "inside" workshop and game room (which used to be his home office) are my domain, everything else belongs to Mrs. Haus and she's converted one spare bedroom into her "She Shed"

Soygen said:

The ship has landed. I've had to rearrange my garage to squeeze a car in. I've been using my garage as my woodworking / 3d printing man cave basically, but with this car I'm not leaving it sitting in the Florida sun every day. Fortunately all my big tools are on wheels and I can just pull the car out and move everything around when I want to use the garage for projects.

Initial impression of the car is that it's stunning in person. The green in the sunlight looks amazing(I'll take some better pics when I take it out later). Handles and sounds great. Having to baby it during break in is going to be brutal, but I'll be doing joyrides to speed up the break in process. Can't wait to really get on it and see what it's got.


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I love that color.