Hard to say - for a while it looked like they'd put this into full production, that is, makea bout a hundred of 'em. I'd guess with the ME-412 supercar - embarassingly to Mercedes designed in record time by Chrysler using mainly American suppliers, though Mercedes itself has been unable to come up with anything as market-leading - the Tomahawk will be allowed to fade away, wtih just the Neiman-Marcus ones produced. But ya never know. For publicity, it'd make more sense to do a Hemi version - esp if the rumored 6.1 comes out.
OK...and how are we supposed to know you were being ironic / sarcastic, exactly? Lots of dumb people out there. Admittedly, most of them seem to be running corporations, reporting on the news, playing records, and working in record companies...and designing user interfaces for Microsoft and Apple...but there are still lots of extras out there to post.
That said, if your post had been labelled in any way as being ironic...it would have been rather amusing.
Notice how the press made a big deal out of the MS source code slipping out, with the direct implication that it was a tremendous security problem ot have your source code public? Rather amusing - MS could almost have leaked it intentionally just to get the idea planted in our heads that open source = insecure!
I firmly disagree. Lots of dealers are dishonest or incompetent - there's no shortage of evidence to back me up there. Lots of independent mechanics are far more skilled. (Indeed, a study showed that the best-trained and most-experienced mechanics are LEAST likely to work at a dealer). Dealer mechanics get poor pay and often poor treatment. Why should they put up with it?
Modern car computer are incredibly good at diagnostics. Even the aforementioned Chrysler vehicles that show codes, though, have some codes you can't get with the key-turning method. That information is pure gold to a good mechanic - or a home mechanic who doesn't want to pay $90 per hour for someone else to work on his car. (The labor rate in my county varies from $50 per hour at local garages to $90 per hour at the dealerships.)
I prefer to work on my own car because (a) I found my local dealers to be incapable of using their computer code readers and (b) frankly, most of these sensors that go bad take abuot five minutes to replace. If I buy the sensor myself from Pomoco in Virginia, I get a good discount off list; if I buy it from the local dealer, I pay double list. If I install it myself, 10-15 minutes; if I go in and have them do it, $90 plus I spend about an hour going back and forth. Gee, I agree, only the original manufacturer can really fix it. Oh, and I must be disreputable, too, for wanting to save time and money!
Darned straight. Though some credit goes to CAD and such, and better materials (Dodge Neon was the first with a plastic intake manifold that is now common - easy to make without restrictions! Nice and smooth...), computer control is essential to the combination of fuel economy and power. And sometime people forget that the muscle cars, mostly built before 1972, were measured in GROSS horsepower while today cars are measured in NET horsepower.
That said, there are lots of people who have hot rodded their cars by fooling the computer - Gus Mahon and his turbo minivans and 12 second Dodge Spirit is one example. He did it all on a budget that would shock many in the 12-second-Civic crowd - and could use his drag car as a daily driver (seating five in comfort). Still got very good mileage as I understand it - and passed the emissions tests. (I think you can find examples of how to hot rod computer controlled cars at http://www.turbovan.net)
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Hard to say - for a while it looked like they'd put this into full production, that is, makea bout a hundred of 'em. I'd guess with the ME-412 supercar - embarassingly to Mercedes designed in record time by Chrysler using mainly American suppliers, though Mercedes itself has been unable to come up with anything as market-leading - the Tomahawk will be allowed to fade away, wtih just the Neiman-Marcus ones produced. But ya never know. For publicity, it'd make more sense to do a Hemi version - esp if the rumored 6.1 comes out.
OK...and how are we supposed to know you were being ironic / sarcastic, exactly? Lots of dumb people out there. Admittedly, most of them seem to be running corporations, reporting on the news, playing records, and working in record companies...and designing user interfaces for Microsoft and Apple...but there are still lots of extras out there to post. That said, if your post had been labelled in any way as being ironic...it would have been rather amusing. Notice how the press made a big deal out of the MS source code slipping out, with the direct implication that it was a tremendous security problem ot have your source code public? Rather amusing - MS could almost have leaked it intentionally just to get the idea planted in our heads that open source = insecure!
I firmly disagree. Lots of dealers are dishonest or incompetent - there's no shortage of evidence to back me up there. Lots of independent mechanics are far more skilled. (Indeed, a study showed that the best-trained and most-experienced mechanics are LEAST likely to work at a dealer). Dealer mechanics get poor pay and often poor treatment. Why should they put up with it? Modern car computer are incredibly good at diagnostics. Even the aforementioned Chrysler vehicles that show codes, though, have some codes you can't get with the key-turning method. That information is pure gold to a good mechanic - or a home mechanic who doesn't want to pay $90 per hour for someone else to work on his car. (The labor rate in my county varies from $50 per hour at local garages to $90 per hour at the dealerships.) I prefer to work on my own car because (a) I found my local dealers to be incapable of using their computer code readers and (b) frankly, most of these sensors that go bad take abuot five minutes to replace. If I buy the sensor myself from Pomoco in Virginia, I get a good discount off list; if I buy it from the local dealer, I pay double list. If I install it myself, 10-15 minutes; if I go in and have them do it, $90 plus I spend about an hour going back and forth. Gee, I agree, only the original manufacturer can really fix it. Oh, and I must be disreputable, too, for wanting to save time and money!
Darned straight. Though some credit goes to CAD and such, and better materials (Dodge Neon was the first with a plastic intake manifold that is now common - easy to make without restrictions! Nice and smooth...), computer control is essential to the combination of fuel economy and power. And sometime people forget that the muscle cars, mostly built before 1972, were measured in GROSS horsepower while today cars are measured in NET horsepower. That said, there are lots of people who have hot rodded their cars by fooling the computer - Gus Mahon and his turbo minivans and 12 second Dodge Spirit is one example. He did it all on a budget that would shock many in the 12-second-Civic crowd - and could use his drag car as a daily driver (seating five in comfort). Still got very good mileage as I understand it - and passed the emissions tests. (I think you can find examples of how to hot rod computer controlled cars at http://www.turbovan.net)
What is listed at http://w ww.allpar.com</a> is not reverse engineering. Chrysler made these codes public - you can find them in any service manual. Some other companies did the same in the past - you can get GM codes on some models by using a jumper, and Nissan for a while had their codes available via LED, though you had to take out the computer and go through an odd process first (no odder than the key-moving of Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, and Jeep vehicles!).
I think the main reason for Chrysler to make their trouble codes so visible was their issues with the Lean Burn system. It was the first on-board computer control system in a car (unless you count electronic ignition, which Chrysler also invented), starting I think in 1974, and had lots of problems. So the Huntsville engineers who developed the fuel injection control computer made sure it would be easy to figure out anything that went wrong with the new system...so it wouldn't be bypassed, junked, or give the company an awful reputation (which they got anyway from the 1989-1994 four-speed automatics and 1995-98 Neon head gaskets).