Automotive enthusiasts?

Saturn? I heard it was for the youth market. it was like Scion

@RainbowDash69  
I still have brochures and a paper shopping bag with its brand logo.  
You know, they could have used Pontiac for that market demographic, Saturn felt like a dead weight. Especially when most of their cars at that point were sharing the same platforms.

@SeraphimDawn  
true, that’s probably why GM needed a bailout. they had too many ideas at once
 
it would be lots of fun to see a mid-2000s GTO mixed with a Saturn Ion!! I’d buy one for sure, they only had the “Red Line” sports package instead.
 
the Vue and Torrent were the same, the Relay and Montana SV6 were the same… yeah, Saturn wasn’t needed at all in the 2000s. it was a cool trend in the 90s and that’s about it

@SeraphimDawn  
hm I bet the brochures would be valuable in a few years. I still have my old Chrysler ones haha

@kleptomage  
Uhh… Nice seats? More electronics than you could ever use? The badge on the nose? I really have no idea what separates a luxury car from a nicely optioned “normal” car anymore.
 
 
@SeraphimDawn  
I think Saturn was originally supposed to be its own company, but was bought out by GM before actually making any cars. Then it became the semi-indepent “experimental” brand with no-haggle prices, then it was neglected and homogenized into irrelevance, and then it was GM bankruptcy-d out of existence.
 
I never really cared that much for Saturn, but the Sky was a neat looking little roadster at the end there.

@Flying Pancake  
the badge on a car can dictate the price, except for Hyundai lol
 
also, I used to think luxury cars meant A+ build quality and very tight tolerances. that’s mostly for imports, though.

@RainbowDash69  
That’s what I think luxury should mean: outstanding design, engineering, and craftsmanship. Yet luxury brands with the exception of Lexus are not known for being reliable.

@RainbowDash69  
@kleptomage  
I’d agree that good build quality is important to a luxury car, but isn’t that important for any car at this point? Even at a dirt-cheap price, you couldn’t get away with selling a Yugo anymore.

@Flying Pancake  
The standards for what is acceptable have been raised. That doesn’t mean a Bentley and a Mitsubishi are not light years apart.

@kleptomage  
True. I’d expect the build quality gap will continue to get smaller, though. If you’ve got robots assembling a car from start to finish, there’s really no reason it shouldn’t be well made. Maybe made using cheap materials, but still very precisely made.

@Flying Pancake  
Luxury should mean getting the upscale quality people pay upscale prices for. Upscale performance and stylish as well.
 
What do you guys think of Acura cars?

@Flying Pancake  
Then the difference will be in materials and design. No ordinary car could have an interior as fine as this.
 

 
@SeraphimDawn  
Acura is like the Japanese Lincoln. Not bad but hardly competitive.

@kleptomage  
But unlike Lincoln, Acura cars are quite common on the roads here where I live alongside BMWs, Audis, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and Infiniti. More common than Cadillacs actually.
 
According to consumer report magazines, they seem to nearly bottom out on the list on reliability.  
What is up with Honda lately? They were known for reliability for many years. Only Fiats, Dodges, Jaguars, and Chryslers score lower than them.

@kleptomage  
Yeah, that’s a whole lot more effort than anyone’s going to put into a normal car.
 
 
@SeraphimDawn  
Do those magazines give more details about what reliability entails? I remember reading somewhere that reliability ratings are heavily influenced by things like infotainment systems, so it could just be that Acura uses an awkward UI or something. I’m not sure if it applies to Acura, but Honda’s been taking some flak lately for moving too many controls to touchscreens.

Craftsmanship and build quality are important basically everywhere now, that’s why Honda is so cool because they build nice interiors now.
 
@SeraphimDawn  
that car is like my fantasy. a regular car in mint condition.
 
nobody would ever keep that car looking so good besides a grandma (or a person like myself)
 
 
@SeraphimDawn  
hm, Acura has some pretty sexy crossovers.  
 
That rear? absolute eye candy of the grocery-getting variety…
 
also, I remember when everyone made fun of the 2008 TL, I always liked it. It seemed “gangster” just like the 300 was in 2005.

@Flying Pancake  
oh yeah. I forgot about that whole mess for Honda. It is hilarious to have a separate touchscreen for the radio and another for the navigation.

@RainbowDash69  
Isn’t only the bottom screen in a Honda a touchscreen? I can see the value in keeping fingerprints to only one screen.

@kleptomage  
probably, yes. I feel there might be one automaker that has two, I can’t remember. you’re right though. it is the radio that has a separate screen and then they have their own buttons

@Flying Pancake  
I dunno…
 
 
Touchscreens are prone to breakage and are less fixable than traditional buttons. I’m not a fan of this trend either.

@RainbowDash69  
If I recall. Honda is often praised and successful for doing the same things that work for years now.  
If you look at their current generation Accord and compare to the previous one, you’ll see they’ve started to abandon their old philosophy and instead trying to appeal to current auto trends.

@RainbowDash69  
Strange as it looks, I can see some utility in keeping the nav display on its own screen so it and the radio can be used/manipulated at the same time. I’m not sure if that’s a situation that will come up particularly often, but I can at least see some logic there. The main complaint about them I’ve seen is that putting the volume control on a touchscreen means that you’ve got no tactile feedback, so to change the volume you have to either look at it (and therefore not the road) or just fumble around and hope you find it.

@Flying Pancake  
heh Chrysler has been doing radios the best for a decade! the hidden buttons on the back of the steering wheel for AM/FM/Sat controls and volume controls all right there!

I always change the volume in my car via the steering wheel buttons but I dislike putting the volume control on a touchscreen as a matter of principle. Use the touchscreen for things that actually require a touchscreen like navigation and leave the rest to physical controls.

@kleptomage  
Going back to the love for old school tech, I think a volume knob is very important. Volume button does on/off and volume… so simple!