Why the hell any sane person would take a picture of a Dodge Journey
November 14, 2017 12:55 PM   Subscribe

 
Wow, the Toyota Alphard is at a Pontiac Aztek level of ugly.
posted by octothorpe at 1:22 PM on November 14, 2017


I hate driving very much but I would love to hate driving in that pink london taxi.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:24 PM on November 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I wish I had an Alphard instead of the Sienna I have now. At least it'd have some personality. I actually think it looks kinda badass, at least as badass as a minivan can be.
posted by zsazsa at 1:24 PM on November 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


i've reached the corn dog derail and i am upset
posted by poffin boffin at 1:26 PM on November 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Love this but after watching all the "Jason Drives" episodes, I wish that this was a video.
posted by octothorpe at 1:34 PM on November 14, 2017


I for one have heard of BYD, Great Wall, and Chery before. Since then I've forgotten whatever I knew about them other than that they were the ones who were poised to take the American car market by storm, something like 10 years ago, just like the Japanese cars did once before. As a counterpoint to all the predictions of these plentiful Chinese cars rolling onto our shores, there were also a bunch of dramatic images of them failing crash tests in spectacular ways.

In more recent news, see also the Trumpchi GS7
posted by sfenders at 2:25 PM on November 14, 2017


They link this Car News China site which is fascinating!
posted by bluefly at 3:07 PM on November 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


They're kinda like car versions of those pop songs played at high school dances in movies without the money to license real pop songs.
posted by Caxton1476 at 3:58 PM on November 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


That stretched Panamera is pretty sweet.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:28 PM on November 14, 2017


Isn't SAIC a US defense contractor? Is that the same SAIC in China?
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:30 PM on November 14, 2017


> I for one have heard of BYD, Great Wall, and Chery before. Since then I've forgotten whatever I knew about them other than that they were the ones who were poised to take the American car market by storm, something like 10 years ago.

China's size probably allows a domestic auto industry to thrive at large production scale without depending on exports, unlike Japan.

I recall seeing a China trade exhibit in the basement of the annual Detroit auto show maybe a dozen years ago. It featured award-winning student designs from Chinese industrial colleges, and some of those cars were pretty buckwild. One used the Fuller Dymaxion as a conceptual starting point, only it was lozenge-shaped with the wide point in the middle, and windows wrapped around the perimeter of the vehicle. And it was balanced on four wheels in a diamond pattern: One front, two middle, one rear. Since these were full-size design prototypes, they weren't built like actual working cars and that's OK, but i remember looking inside one and seeing that they hadn't finished the interior, where onlookers could see the bamboo lath and plaster shaping the body panels.
posted by ardgedee at 5:47 PM on November 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've seen a couple of stretch Panameras in Toronto. One was set up as a limo
posted by scruss at 5:50 PM on November 14, 2017


These cars are great and all...BUT THOSE CORN DOGS.

Those corn dogs.

What the hell have I been doing with my life until this point?!
posted by floweredfish at 6:41 PM on November 14, 2017


Big blank image squares, and "view image" returns a single pixel?!

That's with the newest Firefox.
posted by hank at 6:41 PM on November 14, 2017


One of my favorite things about traveling outside the states is seeing all the other car brands. The different emblems give me a mundane reminder of just how big and varied the world is.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:13 PM on November 14, 2017


Does Lavida have a model called a ‘Loca’?
posted by Segundus at 11:00 PM on November 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think you Americans might be surprised to see how few American cars are present here in Europe. There's a few niches that has a certain American presence, like over-sized SUVs and pickups, but that's it. The only US sedan I can remember seeing a recent vintage of is the Chrysler 300C, and that's just a tiny handful (upon further investigation I found that the newest for sale at the moment is from 2008, so maybe not so recent after all...)

If you look at Chevrolet sales numbers it might not seem so bleak, until you see that most of them are re-badged Daewoos (I think?) that for some reason are sold under the Chevrolet brand over here.

Of course here in Norway we're swimming in Teslas, which are US made but not something that's typically found in great numbers on the rest of the continent.
posted by Harald74 at 2:14 AM on November 15, 2017


Time was, all the decent cars (aside from muscle cars for people who like that sort of thing) made by US manufacturers were UK/Euro spec designs from brought over here. In the last decade or so that has reversed and aside from hot hatches and diesels they can't/won't (until very recently in the case of the hot hatches) sell here, design has largely moved back to the US.
posted by wierdo at 7:22 AM on November 15, 2017


I think you Americans might be surprised to see how few American cars are present here in Europe.

Right, but with Jalopnik being set up for car people, most of the readership knows that Vauxhall and Opel are GM, that Ford of Europe still uses the blue oval, that Peugeot and Citroen used to sell cars in the US, and the rest of the European brands are sold in the US.

The uniqueness of this article isn't the lack of American brands, it's the huge number of brands that a "car person" has probably never heard of before.

I knew Chery, but just for their early 2000s spectacularly awful crash test videos. Hopefully they have since learned that making something look like a car on the outside doesn't mean it's the same on the inside.
posted by hwyengr at 7:42 AM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Isn't SAIC a US defense contractor? Is that the same SAIC in China?

Science Applications International Corporation vs. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (and state owned, so one would hope not).
posted by dhartung at 2:55 PM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wow, the Toyota Alphard is at a Pontiac Aztek level of ugly.

"Predecessor: Toyota MasterAce" - what?
posted by lagomorphius at 5:58 AM on November 16, 2017


Regarding the title: Check out Curbside Classic. That sort of behaviour isn't nearly as weird as it might seem.
posted by Mitheral at 7:47 PM on November 16, 2017


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