Top: the distribution of luminosities of LMC C-rich (solid) and extreme (dotted) AGB candidates from SAGE. The classical AGB luminosity limit is also shown (dashed line). Bottom: the range of luminosities and dust mass-loss rates covered by the GRAMS carbon star models. As discussed in Sect. 3.3, only models with T_in < 1800 K are shown. Gray symbols show the luminosities and mass-loss rates of LMC carbon stars as calculated from detailed modeling by van Loon et al. (1999) (triangles) and Groenewegen et al. (2009) (diamonds).