I'm not excited for this upcoming "Puma". It already reminds me enough of the new Escape and Fiesta (which I both don't like), and it just looks like a blended mess of both.
Rebadged is not at all what it was. It shared the chassis type (not the chassis itself) and the suspension was derived from both the Falcon and the Fairlane. It was related to the Falcon in the same way the Escape is related to the Focus. It shares the floor pan and some engines and some of the front suspension. That's it. Even that received massive overhaul from the Falcon. The original chassis wasn't strong enough for the Mustang, so they had to engineer a torque box to keep it from twisting, further separating it from the Falcon and Fairlane. It also had a shorter wheel base, wider track, lower seating position, more advanced rear suspension, and lower overall height compared to the Falcon.
Was that for performance reasons, or so they could put more booth babes on the bonnet in the posters? xD
Working in car rental has taught me appreciation for some crossovers. Acadias and Sorentos are ok to drive solely because of their powerful V6s. I like GM's 3.6 especially.
As an owner of a 25 year old sedan with other cars in my family being a 12-year old 4x4 and a 5-door "sports coupe", I've never understood people who choose SUVs over cars...until I tried some modern family cars. >tfw when your 176 cm tall and you don't fit into a compact sedan's back row or hit your head against the roof when entering a midsize wagon. I want to scream. Not "WHY UGLY SUVS EVERYWHERE" but "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE NORMAL CAR YOU SODOMITES"
Probably aerodynamics. Once upon a time, coupes had sleek rooflines for style and aerodynamics, while sedans had boxier rooflines for practicality. But now we live in the age of limitless climate hysteria and lip-flappingly insane regulations, where every car must have the profile of a Prius just to satisfy the government (or maybe just for style, now that coupes barely exist outside of sports-oriented market segments).
Or maybe customers want to spend less on gas? Fuel economy is one of the most cited stats, of course they'd want to improve it. Even those old boxy sedans had advanced aero engineering.
The flight to SUVs is and always has been an attempt to dodge fuel economy regulations. People still want the power and functionality that a full-size station wagon used to offer, but thanks to regulations it isn't really possible to offer them anymore. That car had aero engineering, yes - but not to the point of completely compromising the car's usefulness. People may want to spend less on gas, but most of the modern "improvements" we see are a result of governments demanding increasingly imperceptible improvements regardless of the cost - the "standards must constantly get tougher" mindset that ended up torpedoing Volkswagen.
Honestly aerodynamics are genuinely affecting rear headroom in small cars. Because my Saab is flat all over, people up to about 6 feet tall can sit comfortably in the back, whereas even the new nissan micra is a cramped mess
How do you explain big wagons still existing - V90, E-Class, Insignia/Regal/Commodore...? Because sedans have since specialised in aerodynamics and fuel mileage, passing the practicality baton to crossovers. Volkswagen torpedoed themselves. It wasn't all cars that failed the emissions test, it was their cars.
V90 is Swedish, E-Class is German; European consumers have been conditioned to expect less power and also may not have space for a big clumsy SUV, which may also run afoul of obnoxious displacement-based taxes. US versions of the Insignia/Regal/Commodore are the exception rather than the rule. As far as I know the SUV trend started much earlier in the US than in other countries due to peculiarities of American regulation; for many years "light trucks" were less regulated than passenger cars, so became the last refuge of truly American car design. A Tahoe or Suburban fills the same purpose a Caprice wagon used to. It may be bigger, heavier, clumsier, more dangerous, and even thirstier than the Caprice, or at least it might have been originally, but at least it can still fit the whole family and tow a trailer too! 1. Crossovers are now starting to imitate the coupelike styling trend. 2. If practicality is no concern then why are coupes basically dead? Have you forgotten about all the other manufacturers that got nailed? Fiatsler got hit, Nissan apparently did at some point, Harley-Davidson got in trouble for selling tuning kits (labeled not for street use, as I recall) even though the bikes were compliant as sold, apparently Ford is in hot water now for... something? And Volkswagen could easily build compliant cars, they just wouldn't have been able to meet all the safety junk that adds hundreds of pounds to cars, thereby decreasing efficiency and increasing emissions. Some years ago, before the whole thing started, I remember a day when I went to the grocery store and stopped to peruse the car magazines, as I often do. In one of them - don't remember which - there was a column about Volkswagen's reveal of a new advanced-fuel-economy concept car that used aerodynamics and a diesel engine to get MPGs deep into the triple digits. But during the reveal, one of the company bigwigs came on stage and practically begged automotive regulators to lay off the rulemaking for a while so technology could catch up. Then, some time after that, Dieselgate hit and a bunch of things clicked for me. They didn't want to cheat, they wanted to be good little boys and follow all the onerous rules. But they couldn't - at least not without rendering their cars undesirable in the market - because the standards are becoming impossible to meet with current or even near-future tech. Mark my words, everyone or nearly so is cheating somehow. We have not seen the last of emissions violations, and the eco-fascists with their infuriating "standards must constantly get tougher, we demand and it is done" attitude will likely never realize that they are the problem.
If it's about power, why are there MLs or XC90s that have less power than the fancier wagons? You said they couldn't be built nowadays. They are. The fullsize decline was constant, and started way before regulations. And cars like the Caprice or Crown Vic still were not at all expensive. Courtesy of Paul Niedermeyer of Curbside Classic. People who tow boats would have had a Suburban in 1979 too. But are still taller than ordinary old sedans. It is still a concern. OK, are you really that dense? It was a few companies that failed to meet the regulations, not the whole industry. Multiple cars were checked, but only some failed. The regulations can be fullfilled, it's that VW, Nissan or FCA can't do it.
If aerodynamics was the reason for rear headroom being compromised in sedans, SUVs could not exist, because they are less aerodynamic than sedans. Its as simple as that really. Manufacturers make what people want to buy, if people are currently buying SUVs, it would be dumb not to make them. Lack of rear headroom probably stems from styling, and the audience that they are trying to target with those cars. At a guess, the only people in America who are not buying SUV's, are those that want something more sporty, as such, they give the car a sportier silhouette to appeal to that audience. But that is only a guess. The manufacturers that cheated, were fully capable of not cheating. They cheated to get a market advantage over other brands that were not cheating. It's not that they couldn't meet regulations. Its because they knew that if they lied to society, they could post better numbers, and therefore sell more products, and make more money, and take home bigger bonuses.
Drove my Mountaineer 800 miles to Miami, Florida. Ran through some bugs. Cleaned the bugs off then found my way onto some dirt roads.
This. This ugly shit's roof hurt my head. Yeah, sure Then how could anyone come up with a 5-meter long wagon that can seat two adults + two kids and trunk too small for an average dog? Plus, why is everyone talking about the demise of wagons in US and fully ignoring the situation in Europe, where wagon is still alive but should have been euthanized some time ago?
