European luxury car import ban

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C J Murray
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Re: European luxury car import ban

#16 Post by C J Murray »

My son-in law has a Focus ST and it drives great, surprisingly refined. My friend is a Ford dealer who was happy to get allocated a Fiesta RS thinking it would sell immediately. It didn't. He sold it but not quickly. I think he sells more Escapes in a month than he does Mustangs in a year. He personally had 2 GTs and he let me drive one, very impressive! I told him not to sell the last one but he got nervous and sold it for $140k. Now they bring way more money so he should have kept it. If you read Bob Lutz's column in R&T he tells many stories about not being able to sell the types of cars that we like. There are still a few good ones available but fewer every year. Soon we will just be passengers in self driving pods that we don't even own. All of our garages will be converted to video gaming rooms where we will compete with our robot life partner of an unspecified gender. Can't wait!
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Jon Schmid
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Re: European luxury car import ban

#17 Post by Jon Schmid »

C J Murray wrote:
jim nelson wrote:I vacationed in Ireland last summer visiting relatives, and I rented a Skoda, a pretty good sized car. I was a little leery, it was a 6-speed diesel sedan, but it made a believer out of me. Lots of room, very nice interior, decent performance, and staggering mileage--when I turned it in at the end of the week, it had over 1000 km's on it with 1/4 tank left. I'd buy one if they had it here.
We, 4 of us, rented a Ford minivan diesel manual trans when we were there and that was a pleasure too.

Skoda is owned by VW, right? That should be good.
We visited my son in Germany some years ago and were planning on renting an Audi (there were five of us plus luggage so no 911). No Audis left so I was offered a turbo diesel "Skoda." I had heard of Skoda from before the war but was not familiar at all with their current models. I was very pleasantly surprised. I hit 140 MPH on the Autobahn and only slowed down because I was afraid someone would panic if they knew how fast we were going. Only my son had a clue since the speedo was in KPH. The car felt like it was going maybe 85 it was that smooth--for a diesel no less--and still had some go left. Cliff, they are VW owned and I would have liked to have gotten one but they are not imported and now with the emissions scandal maybe it was for the best. But that was one fine car.

M Penta
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Re: European luxury car import ban

#18 Post by M Penta »

It would be cool to drive a Skoda in the states, but I'm sure there are plenty of barriers to that plan. As a driver of diesel cars for the last 20 yrs, the variety of diesels cars over there has always amazed me. Several different varieties of fuel too as we have with gasoline. That will probably change though, and perhaps just as well since diesel cars do not pencil out as well anymore when factoring in the increased complexity, expense and decreased long term reliability.

Last Summer when I was there I rented a spanking new GTI, which was pretty much the same thing as we have here (I think?). I had it up to 154 MPH and it had some left, not sure if the US version will do that or not. The last diesel I rented over there was an Audi A4 and it was quite impressive. I took it to a local "slalom" event and got 3rd place. Absolutely rung that things neck..

Very funny comment as usual Cliff! Lets hope that does not happen!

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