In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski. It's a packed show this week, with the 2023 Japan Mobility Show dominating the conversation. First, they talk news, beginning with UAW strike updates. From there, it's on to the semi-confirmation that Dodge will sell gasoline-powered versions of its new Charger. They take a look at Honda's decision to back away from its cheap EVs based on GM's Ultium battery platform. Then they get to the big reveals and concepts this week in Tokyo, with concepts by Honda, Mazda, Lexus, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi and Toyota. After that, it's time for the latest reviews. Both have spent time in the Autoblog long-term 2023 Toyota Sienna, and they pivot to the new Onyx package for the Subaru Ascent. The show ends with some talk of fall beers. Phew, it's a packed podcast!
Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: Podcast@Autoblog.com.
Transcript[THEME MUSIC]
GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to the "Autoblog Podcast." I'm Greg Migliore, and we've got a great show for you this week. So let's jump right in. Lots of things going on in the news world, in the car world. And we've driven some interesting things. Plus, it was the Tokyo Motor Show this week. With that, I'd like to bring in senior editor for all things consumer, Jeremy Korzeniewski. What's up?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I'm sitting here drinking some coffee, looking at beautiful fall foliage out the window, and here to talk about some cars.
GREG MIGLIORE: Same. Same. So let's jump right in. Just so you guys know, for the news segment, we're going to hit on the UAW strike. The Dodge Charger may go ICE or stay ICE. You wrote an interesting piece on that. I'd like to unpack that with you.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: OK.
GREG MIGLIORE: And you know, we'll talk about some other news on the EV front. So first off, this is breaking news, if you will. We're recording this on Thursday morning. Hopefully, you're listening to this on Friday, the weekend, enjoying your weekend, if you will, with some "Autoblog Podcast" sounds.
And who knows? There may be more deals by the time you're hearing this. But Ford has reached a tentative agreement with the UAW. Wednesday night, UAW President Sean Fein in a Facebook Live or Facebook address sort of laid out the terms. They got a 25% raise over the cost of the contract. It includes Cola and a few other things the UAW was looking for. It seems like an unquestioned victory for the union. It also seems like a deal that, frankly, Ford should be able to live with.
So you know, for all of our insight on this, best thing to do is head back to the site and kind of head with it that way, just because like the way this looks right now is Ford workers are returning to work right now. You know, very important factories where they make the Super Duty, the Ranger, the Bronco, things like that.
I think a deal with Stellantis and General Motors is imminent, let me put it that way. So rather than dig into it too deeply, I think it just makes sense to say, hey, follow us on our social channels where any breaking news will get out there. And of course, you know, we'll have that you on the site the minute it happens.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: One interesting thing, Greg, about this, I'm super pleased that it sounds like there's an imminent end to the negotiations and striking, getting workers back working and vehicles being made. I read something this morning from Hyundai. It was talking about their guidance for the remainder of the year.
Of course, Hyundai and a lot of the import car companies have factories here in the United States where they build vehicles. Most of them, in fact all of them, are non-unionized. So Hyundai was asked what they thought the UAW's new deal with Ford might mean for them, and they do expect a little bit of the, quote unquote, "rising tides to raise all ships," to potentially increase pay at their factories as well, despite the fact that they're not unionized.
So that'll be another little wrinkle to pay attention to moving forward. Even the American workers at factories that are not unionized may see a little bit of a windfall from the latest UAW deal. So that could be interesting too.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, sounds good. So let's transition over to some enthusiast news about the Dodge Charger. You wrote this story. This is kind of a followup to a story we had last week, as well as we talked about it on the podcast, because people like to talk about the Charger or the Challenger.
We sort of hypothesized that given that there's like a transmission tunnel in these body-in-white's like chassis that we've been seeing, sort of spy photos from the factory floor, maybe they're going to keep on with the internal combustion engine. Perhaps that Hurricane straight-six, which I believe would be a twin turbo, and that honestly sounds pretty good to me. Best of all worlds.
Now, you know, a lot of different rumors were floating out about this. The drive, for what it's worth, they kind said they confirmed it, and they did get what appeared to be an anonymous source going forward with that. But I thought you brought some good perspective as somebody who's been around for a long time, talking about what, you know-- like this has kind of always probably been in the cards.
They just didn't quite say it right off the top when they rolled out that concept. So kind of maybe take us through what you were going for here.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Well, OK, so basically, we can establish a couple facts that are conclusive. One, the Charger bodies that we saw look a whole heck of a lot like the concept did, which is great. They also have a clear transmission tunnel, and they've got some really beefy chassis rails that you can see you know that are riveted and welded directly into place.
Clearly these body-in-white have been designed to accept an internal combustion engine. That's a fact. Another fact, it's the STLA Large architecture. So what you're seeing-- so if you're not super familiar with the terms "architecture" or "vehicle platform," what that refers to is all the hard points that make up the metal structure underneath the bodywork. That's what engineers refer to as a vehicle's platform.
The STLA Large platform, which the Dodge Charger, Daytona, and presumably most other large vehicles from Stellantis, rides on that platform, they already said years ago that the STLA Large platform was being designed to accommodate internal combustion drivetrains in addition to electric powertrains.
In other words, seeing these bodies-in-white that look like Charger Daytonas that we know will be electrified, having a transmission tunnel and being clearly set up to accept an internal combustion drivetrain, shouldn't actually be surprising. We should have known that. We should have expected that when we saw the bodies-in-white. So a lot of the internet hubbub really is unnecessary. You know, Dodge telegraphed this that this was going to be the case. It was a platform designed for both internal combustion powertrains and electrified powertrains.
The wrinkle here is a report-- it started from "The Drive--" that an anonymous supplier source confirmed that these in bodies-in-white were going to accept an internal combustion engine. It would indeed be, as Greg mentioned at the beginning, a form of the Hurricane Inline-6, most likely with twin turbos, and it would be connected to an eight-speed automatic transmission sending power to the rear wheels, or optionally, all-wheel drive.
Again, not terribly surprising. We knew from Dodge's previous information publicly stated that these vehicles would be able to accept it. So here's the questions that remain unanswered. Since Dodge has clearly stated that the Dodge Charger Daytona will be fully electric, will not have an internal combustion engine option, how does that coincide? How do you make that work with what the supplier said?
The most obvious explanation to that, as far as I'm concerned, and Greg, you can chime in here too, the most obvious explanation is that the Charger Daytona is going to be fully electric. Will there be versions called Charger, Dodge Charger, or Dodge Charger something, that have an internal combustion engine? It seems likely.
You know, I mentioned that Dodge has a great history of names in the post that I wrote up that they could trot out for muscle car fans. We've been hearing rumors forever that they're going to make a Barracuda. I mean, how perfect would that be? There'd be a Dodge Charger. There would be a Dodge Charger Daytona, the electrified pinnacle that is going to set dragstrips ablaze.
What if they had a Dodge Barracuda that had kind of a similar platform, a similar mission statement, but was powered by an inline-six engine? And the other thing is, Dodge isn't planning on going completely electrified for quite some time. They're going to continue to offer internal combustion engine vehicles, and even though they've got this performance reputation, they also sell a lot of just normal, kind of sporty family cars.
No one's expecting them to completely abandon the performance-oriented consumer that needs to drive a family around, right. So were we thinking that they're going to come out with nothing but 1,000 horsepower, all-wheel drive, electric dragstrip terrors? I mean, that's not going to happen.
So clearly, they're going to use this STLA large platform that the Charger Daytona will be based on for numerous different vehicles, probably lots of different names and a lot of different use cases. Things all the way down to crossovers will run on this platform.
Potentially, the Dodge Stealth that they've been talking about that could take the place of what we think of as kind of the Durango slot in the market, that's going to be probably built on this STLA Large platform as well. It's been built to accept internal combustion engines, but that doesn't mean that the Charger Daytona is going to feature one of those. Dodge has clearly stated that it will not.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I think you do a good job of unpacking it there. I think we're in a situation where we're only going to see this sort of muscle car family grow, you know. And I think it's going to be a good thing. You dropped a lot of very cool names there, from the Stealth to the Barracuda, which I think would be outstanding.
I bet Ralph Giles, the Stellantis Vice President of Design, would love to get that one back. The Magnum, I think, could actually even find a place. You know, remember, that was sort of the other sibling that was first of the first to go. So I mean, I think it just makes a lot of sense.
I think this allows them to create some really high-performance electric vehicles, it also some pretty boulevard-pounding ICE vehicles as well. And at the end of the day, it's how they look, I think, too, for a lot of Dodge consumers.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: For sure, for sure. And I mean, I hope that they don't abandon the heart of the market too. You know, could they make a nice, say, 390, 400, 420-horsepower Inline-6 that they can sell for a reasonable amount of money, and kind of create a four-door Charger platform? Because everyone's expecting there to be two-door and four-door vehicles. Two-doors sell in very small numbers compared to their four-door siblings. The Charger outsells the Challenger, and it always has.
So you know, we're certainly not expecting them to just say like, well, we're turning ourselves into a total halo brand, we're going to do nothing but Demons and Daytonas. That's not going to happen. So I don't know exactly what all the hubbub is. People are just like drawing the conclusion that Dodge is lying or has changed its mind. I don't think that's the case.
The pictures really just confirm what they've already told us, that you know, there's going to be this Dodge Charger Daytona. It's going to look really cool. It's going to be fully electric. It's going to be built on a platform that will be shared across many different model lines, and some of those will be powered by internal combustion engines. So really, it's more of a confirmation than it is like a revelation.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I think also a lot of people, when you saw that Daytona concept over a year ago at this point, Dodge did pretty much say we're going electric, but they also didn't exactly-- there were some things that were unspoken. They didn't say they weren't going to have like a straight-six or a V8 or whatever. They just said, we're going electric.
And then everybody has been jumping to conclusions, which I mean, this is one of the most popular enthusiast cars, the Charger and the Challenger. Of course people are going to want to know what's up. So I think it could be a fun time, perhaps even more fun for people like me, who enjoy driving the Charger or the Challenger.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, absolutely.
GREG MIGLIORE: Maybe the Barracuda.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I hope so. I mean, there's a lot of name recognition being left off the table by not having a Barracuda. Like, it just seems so obvious that that there would be a Barracuda. I think they're calling this Charger Daytona. That's a two-door, obviously, enthusiast-oriented vehicle.
Where the Cuda/Barracuda could fit in, I don't know. Daytona certainly seems like it's going to be the range topper, but you know, could there be a Charger Cuda or something like that that is a different package, that you know, maybe is the one that's got the internal combustion engine? I don't know. I'd be shocked. I'm shocked that they haven't brought that name back out more than anything else. So here's hoping that it comes out, and it's something really cool.
GREG MIGLIORE: Like 15 years ago at Autoweek, I wrote a story about the Barracuda trademark being trademarked, if you will. So this is a long time people have been wondering about it.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I mean, isn't it such a cool name?
GREG MIGLIORE: It is.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I also don't know how they don't have a Roadrunner.
GREG MIGLIORE: I mean, yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I mean, I know these are-- we're talking about Plymouth models, but Plymouth doesn't exist anymore. They've been rolled up into dodge, and it is what it is. I really hope that some of these-- I mean, Demon, they pulled that out. Dart, they pulled that out. Magnum, they pulled that out. They'd had an Aspen, even, which is a name from history. You know, like those names have a lot more cachet to them than like Intrepid and Neon.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yes.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: So you know they're not going to trot those things back out. Here's hoping they kind of dip into their past, because Dodge is good at that, at kind of parlaying their past successes into future successes. So we'll see how it goes.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, sounds good. Let's transition things over to Honda, announced at the Tokyo Motor Show, which we'll get to that in just a minute here, that they were basically-- they and General Motors had agreed to end their agreement to jointly try to produce more affordable EVs.
I think this is interesting that Honda sort of was the one to bring it up. GM didn't really say anything about it either way until after the fact. From what I understand, the Honda-GM collaboration produced like one crossover at this point, and then it sounds like they were better off going their own way, which frankly I was always confused why they did it that way in the first place.
I always thought GM was probably giving up more than they really should have been, like giving up actual proprietary Ultium-based technology to let Honda Motor Co. make a crossover that would ostensibly compete with them. I understand the rationale of trying to like you spread out the costs, the development costs over time, but it just seemed like, what are you really getting out of this, you know.
So the fact that they're going to maybe go separate ways in this isn't a surprise to me. It also, I think, speaks to the fact that Honda and Toyota in particular, but also General Motors, have been kind of-- it seems like they're slightly pulling back a little bit from EVs, not for production plans or anything like that, but they're being a little more cautious about just how bullish they were about it.
Like if you look back two or three years ago, I mean, we got like daily press releases on who's going to be all electric by 2025, 2030, 2040. I don't think people are saying that as much, and I don't really know what that portends for the future. But you know, in October, S&P says BEVs were about 7.5% of the US market. That was up, I think, 47% from a year ago. So it is trending in that direction, but I'm also wondering if companies perhaps think they have more time to get there and are willing to maybe take that time. I don't know. What did you make of this announcement?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I mean, you touched on a lot of points that are interesting here. For one, there was talk that GM had to revise some of its plans, just because, you know, with the strike going on, with losing out on a lot-- because the underlying thing here is that right now, gasoline vehicles and the profits for them are what is allowing the car companies to invest research and development money into their electrified futures.
When that stops coming in and you don't know when it's going to end, you start making decisions to save money. you know it's the same thing that people do when their household income goes down. What do they do when they're like, oh gosh, we're not going to have as much money coming in as we thought we did. What are we going to do? We're going to cancel Netflix. We're going to cancel Apple Plus. Whatever.
So I think that probably is some of why this is happening. But also, you alluded, Greg, to GM giving up a lot. What they were giving up was in exchange for spreading out those research and development costs. Now, General Motors is going to have to foot the entire bill. whatever Honda hasn't given them up to this point, they're going to have to foot the entire bill for the development of low-cost vehicles.
And oddly enough, or earlier this year, they just stopped producing their very low cost electric vehicle, the Bolt, which by all measures was good. It was a vehicle that people liked, and it actually sold relatively well too. But they have to do a new platform with their Ultium technology so they can spread those costs around, and eventually, half a decade from now, recoup a lot of the costs that they are accruing right now.
So interesting timing on it, interesting that Honda was the one to announce the change, considering that General Motors was doing the majority of the development work on it. But you know, it leads me to believe that it wasn't super far along anyway. I don't think everyone would be content to just kind of walk away if a great deal of the engineering and dollars had already changed hands.
So probably, they didn't get all that far, and they probably saw this as a good opportunity, before it got too far and before they the option to walk away from it was taken away from it, go ahead and choose to walk away from it now. As far as the broader perspective on electric vehicles, we're going to talk about this a little bit later in the podcast with Mercedes-Benz, I think.
I think what we're seeing is a writing of expectations and how quickly consumers are going to adapt to an electric future. Those of us who own electric cars-- I own one-- those of us who own them already know that the transition is not nearly as difficult as people think it is.
Once people park an electric car in their driveway and figure out that, oh my gosh, I wake up every morning and it's fully charged, and if take a road trip, you know, I'm just going to change my route a little bit, and instead of taking this direct route over there, you know, I'm going to add 30 minutes to my trip because I'm going to divert here and charge for 20 minutes and keep going.
It's really not the big deal that a lot of people think it is on an ownership level. That leaves those who are against electric vehicles for personal reasons that don't have to do with the ownership. And you know, I'm not telling anybody what they should or shouldn't do. I own a gas-powered SUV in addition to my electric car.
There's some people who are just not ready to make the switch, whether it's for practical purposes or whether it's for their own personal opinions. And you know, I don't think we're going to transition to fully electric in mainstream segments as quickly as the car companies were hoping to do that. So not super surprising to me that this happened.
I mean, I guess it's surprising on one hand, because you know, you think that car companies want to spread these development costs out as much as they can, and partnering with another huge brand with deep pockets, you know, Honda and General Motors, that does make sense. So it's surprising in that way, not terribly surprising in that they're kind of recasting their formulas moving forward, because you know, some people just are not ready to make that switch.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Let's transition over to the Tokyo Mobility Show, as it's called this year. Lots of EVs, some hybrids too. Just a wide range of things. Perhaps the most overtly sportscar-themed show I've covered in quite some time. Very cool. I hope if you're listening, you've been following Joel Stocksdale, John Snyder. They were out on the ground there. They are on the ground there.
They seemed to have an absolutely great time. They did an incredible job there, and this is to me, I think, the most impressive auto show I've seen in several years. I mean, it's like, you know, every single of the Japanese domestic manufacturers showed up and showed out with concepts, with ideas, with CEOs.
I mean, like they had the heads of the company there. You didn't see this at the Detroit Auto Show. Like Jim Farley and Mary Barra and Carlos Tavares were nowhere to be seen at the Detroit Auto Show. But here, you had the major sort of CEOs talking about cars, people seeing breathtaking concepts.
I think it may help that it's an every other year show, so you know, it's now or never. But I don't know. I thought it was a very cool show. I mean, the thing that really struck out to me-- my guess is you probably liked it too-- was the Mazda Iconic. What a great name, right? The Iconic SP. RX-7 had a rotary vibe, beautiful styling. It kind of took me back to the last time I drove an RX-8. You know, we're talking about Dodge making different sports cars. How about Mazda?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, totally. Honestly, you know, we haven't cast our votes, or I haven't cast my votes yet for the Tokyo Auto Show.
GREG MIGLIORE: Hi, Vito.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, but this Mazda is kind of leading the charge for me. It's going it's going to get some votes from me, and it actually is a twin-rotor rotary with a hybrid component to it as well. They're saying 364 horsepower, which is awesome. 3,197-pound weight, which leaves us a very favorable power-to-weight ratio. So man, super, super cool concept. Love it.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Any-- what stood out to you?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Man, there was so much, so much. The Honda Prelude is cool. You know, I'm not someone who grew up driving Hondas.
GREG MIGLIORE: Right.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I owned an RX-8 and loved it, so the Mazda appeals a little bit more to my own personal heartstrings than the Prelude. But the Prelude is another cool one, and it actually looks like something very production-ready. So hopefully, that leads to something that is kind of similar.
I do get distinct Toyota vibes from the fascia, you know, the front end of the Prelude. That'll be interesting to see how that translates into production in the future, but love that. The Lexuses look crazy to me. They're all angular, and you know, like I'm looking at the LF-ZC. And it kind of looks like someone took a Jaguar I-PACE, sent it through a paper shredder, and then taped it back together.
But they're saying that is going to preview a production vehicle. So hopefully, they tone down some of that origami look, not that Lexus doesn't-- not that Lexus likes to tone down its styling. But that'll be interesting to see as it moves forward. But I think to me, the craziest thing that I've seen in pictures from the show is the Nissan Hyperforce.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I mean, it is just crazy-looking. It looks like an early video game rendering of a Pikes Peak time attack racer to me. Like, it's got this crazy, crazy front end on it that like sticks way out, like almost like a samurai or an anime face mask or something like that. It's got these crazy wing doors that go up, wings all over the place, angles all over the place.
I mean, if it sounds like I'm negative on it, I mean the exact opposite. It's all those things in the coolest way possible. And the interior's ridiculous too, with all the different lighting that it's got for its modes. It goes from just like in-your-face blue lighting to like super sinister red lighting when you go into the performance modes. So that really stood out to me as well.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that one, I think it's kind of wild, some of the GTR vibes they were trying to bring back. I don't know. I love it when you get crazy concepts, so to me, more power to them. I thought that was cool. The Land Cruiser SE, all electric, it looked kind of like a like a really sleek, like svelte refrigerator, maybe. I don't know.
That one, I was a little disappointed when I saw. Like Land Cruiser, I'm like yeah. That I looked at it. I'm like, OK, all right. Kind of looks like a Defender warmed over, not in a good way, because I generally like the Defender. But I don't know. I wouldn't say it's a miss, but it wasn't my favorite thing.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, no, I agree with you. It's oddly toned down for a concept. Did you see EPU? I don't know. Do they say "E-P-U" or do they say "Epooh?" I have no idea.
GREG MIGLIORE: Who knows?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: But the small midsized electric or small-scale electric truck.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that was a sleeper, I think.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: That one looks way cooler to me than the electric Land Cruiser does. Like, it's got like kind of angular lines, but not boring. You know, the Land Cruiser, the electric Land Cruiser concept is a little bit boring. This EPU is actually interesting. It's got these kind of bulging fenders and this kind of like bulldog or pug face nose. That was pretty cool. I like that. Kind of a sleeper for me was the Mitsubishi DX concept. Did you look at that one?
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that was different.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah. Like from the outside, it just looks like a Jawa, big, you know, Star Wars sand mover. But from the inside, I think it's super cool. I love the open front end. It's kind of got a little bit of a forward control look to it, where the passengers aren't actually sitting at the very front of the vehicle. They are behind the front wheels.
However, when you get inside, you see that it's all open to the outside. Well, through windows, not open to the outside, but it's all through transparent panels to see outside. And the steering wheel actually attaches-- it comes from the side of the door, not the front of the vehicle, to leave as much open space as possible. How cool would it be to see something like that, you know, actually?
I mean, obviously, it wouldn't be this forward, this crazy of a take on it. But if it really does preview something, like they're saying, potentially the next Delica van, I really hope to see something like that make its way into actual roads. Not US roads, sadly, but you know, even if it's Japan and other markets, that'd be cool to see.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that was pretty quirky. I like that one too. All right, so that's the Tokyo Motor Show. By the time you hear this, our editor's picks should be up. A lot to choose from this year. Yeah, give Joel and John a follow on Twitter, X, whatever it's called these days.
And let's talk about what we've been driving. You spent some time in the Sienna, long-termer. You know, it's bounced around from Byron to you. I was in it until literally like three weeks ago. I was in it for a very long time, which was awesome. I believe this was your first time in it, and you took it up north. What did you think about it?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: It's a great vehicle for road-tripping. Super spacious inside. It's a minivan, sliding doors on both sides. I mean, just the utility aspect can't be beat. You know, even as a suburban owner, I'd say that it's so much easier to take a minivan on a big trip. So that's obviously a standout. The other standout is the fuel mileage. I never got less than 31 miles per gallon out of the thing, and I don't even know how--
I know that some of our drivers did get less than 30. I don't know how they did it, because I mean, I wasn't driving slow. I packed it full of cargo and people, and was driving 80 miles an hour down the expressway half the time and around in the cities. And it was chilly, so I had the engine running, the heat going. Like, I got great gas mileage out of it considering the way that I drove and what I was doing with it.
Demerits, that efficiency comes at the cost of performance. It is real slow. And it's not just that it's really slow. It's droney, especially when you got it packed like I did. Getting up to speed on the highway is like borderline irritating because it's like, there's not a lot of power there, and when you do get your foot into it to get the acceleration that you're looking for, you know, you just hear the engine hit its power peak and just stay there, not in a good way.
Honestly, though, driven, and taking it for what it is, It would be hard to choose anything else if I were buying a minivan. Just a plugin Pacifica would also be super interesting if you did the majority of your driving around town, but using it as a road trip vehicle, I don't know how you choose something other than the Sienna. It's just so practical, so useful, so efficient.
I mean, it's the most efficient way of transporting a small family and their stuff. So the other demerit is it's so low to the ground, and I think that helps it have decent driving dynamics. It doesn't drive like a minivan. It drives like a family sedan, in a very positive way. It's not top-heavy at all. I think a lot of its weight-- its center of gravity has got to be really low, and one of the ways you do that is by lowering the entire vehicle.
But even just driving on like rutted roads, you hear like every twig that you drive over. If there's like some tall grass on a dirt lane, two-lane dirt road, you hear everything scuffing up against the bottom of the car. And I unfortunately had to drive over a deer that had been hit in front of me, and that made solid contact with the bottom of the car.
It's just, again, because it sits so low. And the reasons for that are increased efficiency and better driving dynamics. So in the same way that it's difficult to throw stones at the powertrain for being underpowered when you look at its efficiency, it's hard to be angry about that super minimal ground clearance when you're getting the benefit of really good driving dynamics out of it, and a low center of gravity.
So you know, it's like, it is what it is. I hate using that term, "it is what it is," because what does that even mean. But with one positive comes the corresponding negative. And I would absolutely consider buying a Sienna hybrid all-wheel drive like that one for a people mover if I had kids, which I don't. But if I did, that would be very high on my list of vehicles to consider putting my own money down on.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. You know, as somebody who's part of the minivan set, you see a lot of Siennas, especially the hybrids, because--
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Well, they're all hybrids now.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yes.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: That's a good point. Very good point. You see a lot of Siennas. You see a lot of Pacificas around here in Michigan. You see a lot of the Honda Odyssey. You see a few Kia Carnivals, not quite as many, although I think, frankly, that might be the best-looking one of the whole segment.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Agreed. I didn't touch on style, Greg, because as we always say, anytime we touch on style, It's very subjective. But I don't like the way the Sienna looks.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, it's pretty boring.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: It's boring, and the parts that are designed to stand out stand out in a bad way to me.
GREG MIGLIORE: Fair, fair.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: It's got like a fishy face, which I think a lot of Toyotas and Lexuses have a little bit of a fishy face. And I don't really like the sculpting down the side either. But you know, for the purposes of moving people around, I don't get why you'd buy a Carnival or an Odyssey and not the Sienna.
You know, like it just makes more sense with its hybrid powertrain and available all-wheel drive. Like the only thing, you know, that would dissuade you is if you really hate the sound of the powertrain when you're driving, because it's not great.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I think for me, the other two, like the two that sort of separate themselves from the herd are the Sienna and the Pacifica, because you could get that plug-in hybrid. And if you drive, say, 30-ish miles, you probably don't need to use a lot of gas on that thing. So I think we had a long-termer three, four years ago. Everybody really liked it. I like the styling a little bit better. I like the interior a little bit better.
You know, there's a lot to like, but it does also depend on your driving style. So if you don't want to have home chargers or use the infrastructure, which I don't think the Pacifica has any sort of like quick charging capability--
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I don't think so.
GREG MIGLIORE: You know, the Sienna is just almost an easier choice.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: It is, yeah. If I'm being picky about it, it really needs Toyota's latest infotainment system too.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: The one that it's got is like, you know, you don't realize how behind the times it is if you don't drive a lot of other cars. But since we drive a lot of other cars, we instantly see like the buttons are all over the place. It's like half button, half touchscreen, super low res.
Like even the backup camera, when I was backing out of some of the driveways, I was like squinting to try to clear my vision. It's not my vision. It's just low res. So that really needs an update. I'm sure it'll get the latest infotainment in the next update. If it had the latest infotainment and twice the sound deadening in the engine compartment that it currently has, it would be darn near perfect.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. The navigation in the Sienna is not great, and I drove it a lot. I had some pretty long road trips, like all the way from Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico, from Metro Detroit all the way to the UP. It seemed like it was always adding time, getting confused. I mean, just anecdotally, it was a real pain.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I stopped using Toyota's navigation and used my Google Maps instead.
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Just vastly superior to it. I'll tell you exactly where it happened. It happened about 15 minutes into the trip where Toyota sent me on a wild goose chase to try to get on the highway, because there was a road closed, the on-ramp, and it could not figure out how to get me on the highway past that.
And I fired up Google Maps, and it immediately was like, oh, this avoids a closed on-ramp. And I'm like, oh, perfect. So I tried it a couple other times past then. It always gave me different directions than Google did, and Google's were always superior, so I just stopped using it.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, so we'll just close out the reviews here with a few thoughts on the Subaru Ascent Onyx, which is Subaru's like large three-row crossover. It starts at a little bit over $35,000, so you a lot of SUV for your money. Onyx is pretty nice. It gives you like captain's chairs. This one had like green stitching, which I thought kind of dressed up the sort of Subaru interiors, which can be a bit dull. They're not always, but they can be.
You get 20-inch wheels on the Onyx as well. So it looked pretty good. You know, all-wheel drive, 260-horsepower four-cylinder, and the CVT. So pretty much what you would expect. I put a ton of stuff in it, you know, soccer practice, grocery store, all the things you would expect. It definitely has more of that SUV vibe.
You know, try to contrast it with the Sienna that you mentioned. That's like driving a car for sure, along with Pacifica, which has a very low to the road stance, low center of gravity. This is a little more upright. But you know, I wouldn't say it's my favorite in the segment at all. That's not even a knock against it.
It's just to me, it's tough to separate it from the herd. Unless you're like a diehard Subaru fan, just I feel like there's other options out there that you might get some more for, more stuff for. You might get a little more capability. It's just, it was OK. It didn't blow my mind.
You know, I was looking at some of our competitors. A wide variety of them don't particularly rank it anywhere near the top of the segment, so I think I'm not totally off, going crazy here. I would honestly look at like a Palisade or a Telluride ahead of this, Honda Pilot. And frankly, it is fairly large. You know, maybe even think body on frame, like Chevy Tahoe or something. So have you driven the Ascent?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I have. Yeah, I have driven. I was on the initial launch, which I don't know, four or five years ago, in the very first ascent. And then when they did the refresh on it, I've driven one since the refresh as well. I like the ascent. I mean, this is kind of a stupid way of putting it, and people say this stuff all the time. It's another one of those like things that people say.
But to describe it as the Subaru of seven-passenger SUVs, I can't think of a better way to describe it than that. Like, if you're a Subaru person, this is going to feel super comfortable to you. You know, it's like a Forester but bigger. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I like Subaru. I like Subarus and I like the Ascent.
GREG MIGLIORE: Me too.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: The cost of the Onyx Edition, it's expensive, isn't it?
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, it you get up into the 40s. So a lot of the value that you're getting from an Ascent, which I think starting at like 35, I think it's really a pretty good deal. You get a lot of crossover for that kind of money. You know, how much do you like some of these like accents, badging and stitching? I like them. I don't know if I want to pay that much more for them.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, because the Premium, you can get a Premium for 36 if you get the bench seat in the middle. Oh, it's more like 37. It's more expensive if you get the captain's chairs, not quite $1,000 more expensive, I think. That is a good deal. You get a lot for your money at that price stepping up to the Onyx, that gives you know some of the cool stitching, some of the trim features, that they are cool.
Are they worth it at, you know, 45, 46, $47,000, when for more than $5,000 less, you can get all the things that you want without those little extras. So that'd be my only thing, is it a little bit overpriced for what you're getting. But yeah, I like it.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, so let's just close things out with a fall beer update. Steven writes, "Up in the Pacific Northwest, fall beers equals fresh hops." You lived in the Pacific Northwest for quite some time. So yeah, I think that's a different take on the vibe and the genre, but I like it. And he also continues with, he's from the Midwest originally, so more used to like Oktoberfest style beers. So this kind of was a surprise for him.
Little did he know, the vast majority of hops grown for craft beer are in that region, the Pacific Northwest. So if you drink fresh, definitely the fall is the season to do it, I guess. I think that's kind of cool. Yeah, hey, thanks for writing in there, Steven, and sharing your take. I might try a hoppy beer here at some point this month. I'll try to clear my nose out a little bit before I dive back into some know heavier booze, but yeah, I don't know. IPA or something like that might be kind of fun.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: What do you think?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: In my refrigerator right now, if you were to open it, you'd find a mixture of hoppy beers from pale ales to IPAs. I've got a bunch of Rhinegeist right now, their Vision Pale, I really like a lot. They have a Kiwi IPA, which I never-- and by "Kiwi," I mean New Zealand, not kiwifruit. Really enjoying that.
I don't know if that's a limited edition or something that they're producing regularly, but you'll also find several Ambers and Oktoberfest beers. Oddly enough, Oktoberfest happens in September, not October, so we're actually well past Oktoberfest season despite the fact that we're recording this in October. So a lot of the freshest Oktoberfest beers are already sold out near me, but I can find a few here and there. I really enjoyed the Great Lakes Oktoberfest.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, it's a good one.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, Great Lakes out of Cleveland, Ohio. Their Oktoberfest was especially good, real malty, and kind of didn't have that traditional German marzen or Oktoberfest taste. It was a bit maltier. a bit darker, a little more roasted than that. And I actually really appreciated that when the weather started to turn. So that's what you'll find in my fridge right now, a mix of, as our Pacific Northwesterner states, a mix of some fresh hoppy beers and some more Midwestern-style autumn Amber beers.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, I would recommend it on a [INAUDIBLE]. I think that's by Schwartz. Also, we're getting to that point where Amber ale, beers get a little more robust as sort of the calendar flips to November. And yeah, those are my two choices. And that's the only time--
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Oh, I was just going to say, I'll throw one other thing into the mix. GREG MIGLIORE:
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: ESBs, extra special bitter.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, they really start hitting home around fall time for me.
GREG MIGLIORE: I'm trying to think, is it Red Hook? Is that the one?
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Red Hook does an ESB.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's a good one.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: One of the local breweries here in the town I live in does a real good ESB that I like.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's a really good point. I kind of forgot about them, sort of an underplayed genre.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: There you go.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right, so now, that's all the time we have. Thanks for the ESB mention. A little value add there in the closing seconds. If you enjoyed the show, that's five stars on podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your Spend My Moneys. That's podcast@autoblog.com. Shout out to our producer, Eric Maier, for making us sound good every week. Be safe out there, and we'll see you next week.
JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Bye, everybody.
[THEME MUSIC]
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