Frankly unless i was in a winter/snow climate i would not bother with AWD (added weight, complexity etc), Myself living in northern Wisconsin with snowy winters, i actually moved from an AWD to this FWD ES350. I don't NEED to drive daily so can sit out snow dumps if needed. I also noticed the ease that these tires lose traction upon accelleration, I attribute it to these energy saver tires that have a traction rating of only "B". Decent semi-performance all season tires would perhaps help a lot. My guess is these are gonna be pretty crappy for winter driving and i may change to a winter or the newer "all weather" classification.

 

The V6 has more than enough power.
I just wished the gears weren't so tall. 5th gear's ratio is good enough for highway cruising. But the car has 8 gears. At 80mph my engine rpm is 1,500.
The car's acceleration could probably be better had the gears been closer and not as tall.

But yes, these cars can be monsters. A clown in a Honda Accord wouldn't let me merge... like he owns the road. I stayed in my lane, gunned the pedal and passed everyone ahead and then merged on the lane where he was at. The idiot then jumped on the other lane as if he wanted to catch me and cut me off. WTF is the problem of people like that? I stomped on the gas and next thing I knew I was close to 120 mph and my wife was paper white. The Honda was gone, no trace from the rearview mirror.

Seriously, what are some people's problem of not wanting you to merge? If he's unhappy with his car, buy a better car.

 

I often wonder why so many people on the on-ramps don’t seem to understand they must yield to the highway traffic.

 

I've been driving in MA for 30+ years and it's always a cat and mouse game with on-ramp traffic thinking they have the right of way.
Also expect at least one car to run the red light at every intersection.

 

Be careful with those Honda Accords. They had one for a few years with a V-6 (a two-door, I think). A friend of mine had one for a while, and it was quite peppy, but she was a retired nurse in New Jersey and never caused anyone any trouble.

 

In fairness, fair play in driving does sometimes mean giving your buddy on the on ramp the room tomerge, especially when he is running out of space. Of course, if the guy has the power to come up to highway speed it means he needs less room to merge ( you don’t need to hit the brakes because he merged into 60 mph traffic going 40).

 

Its strange but some normal well adjusted folks seem to change when their perceived vehicle's personal space gets "invaded", such as when a vehicle actually wants to merge AHEAD of them....somehow that's an affront to them. Or those aggressive tailgaters that think 1/2 car length space is proper at 75mph. I've gotten so i just avoid these folks, don't exchange 1 finger salutes, etc. Don't trust the crazies out there and there are way too many serious road rage cases that were set off by pretty benign situations. Saw a recent utube of a van in Oregon deliberately taking out a motorcylist, kinda horrifying. They were side by side, motorcyclist was making arm guest motions at the van for some perceived affront, and the van just swerved and took out the bike and rider.

And true, some folks never learned how to drive, they merge to 65-75 mph traffic at 40mph, they are a hazard.

 

Dual (Port and Direct) injection is getting much more common these days, my lowly Hyundai pickup had dual port injection, it definitely was not a performance vehicle, reliability was not great as many/some folks had problems in that one of the injectors (don't recall if port or direct) was prone to failure, to make matters worse replacements were scarce.

 

I refrain from interacting with road crazies and do not do bad traffic maneuvers to incite anger because you never know if those drivers are in the not too complementary category of they think they are confident but are not capable of proper reasoning and just react with dangerous emotion. And they might be carrying.

 

I believe each overly aggressive driver will one day meet their "equal" and it won't end well for either of them.

I think one of the most aggravating forms of behavior is when cars drive 95 MPH+ in an S shape on the highway swerving between lanes while cutting people off. I see this on a regular basis driving on 93 into and out of Boston.

 

I have heard that style of driving called “checker-boarding”. I was on the freeway here a few years ago and there was a car in front of me doing that in heavy traffic. He cut off the car in front of me, and the car in front of me brakes hard, I braked hard but the guy behind me wasn’t paying attention and my Nissan Altima was (in retrospect happily) totaled. No one was hurt but the SUV behind me was a heavier car so I took the brunt of the damage. The car was a write off. So those guys definitely cause accidents!

 

Equally aggravating is the driver doing 58 in the left lane who won't pull over to the right for any reason. For some reason, these cars are seldom V-6 or V-8s - those cars are usually just passing them dangerously on the right as quickly as possible.

 

In Pennsylvania the law is "keep right pass left". I was in a police car behind one of these idiots and he still wouldn't move to the right. I finally put the lights on and he pulled over. He also went home with a citation that cost $$$.

 

Most get the message when their wallet gets hit - the confident stupid's incapable of reason march on, yikes!

 

Did you ask him why he didn't pull over to let you pass? If so, what was his answer?