I probably won’t blow any money I make on a pricey car, but that’s why I’m in the fantasy zone: 'cause I might be able to. If I wanted to splurge.
But I am being pushed out of the fantasy zone by the offerings out there. It’s really depressing.
The Pontiac Solstice looked cool, but the reviews make it seem like a weakass plasticky POS. The Corvette is a bitchmobile. Let’s face it: GM sucks complete. (Now the 1963 Stingray–that was a car!)
The Dodge Viper is for balding dipshits who don’t know what a real sports car is. Does Ford even make any cool cars any more? Does Ford still exist? You call the modern Mustang a pony car. Fuck that. Fuck American cars. They may be catching up in quality, whatever, even as the makers go under, but there are just no cars out there that thrill.
Porsche? The “saucy” roofline ruins it for me. Anything from VW or Audi is also bullshit. Mercedes? None of those bug-eyed cheap-looking things for me. BMW might as well rename itself “Oldsmobile”–it’s got the clunky, plastiform look down pat. German cars are shit.
Let’s forget Italy and England, Lamborghini and Aston Martin. Again, we’re talking conspicuous consumption for rich Viagra poppers.
Japan. Well, I respect Subaru and Honda, but do they make any cars that are actually “cool”? The Z–so righteous back in '82 with the ZX–is now a cartoon car; where’s Betty Boop? Infiniti, Acura, Lexus–all solid brands, all decent, all a little boring.
You know, I think my only route to fun and excitement is to go old school and get a 1974 Mercedes or something like that. A 60s Beemer. Or maybe dig up an '82 Datsun.
Dunno. Help me out here. Am I missing something or are the cars out there total shit?
You said fantasy. Now getting more realistic. New cars? I like the mini, but not sure it fits your fancy car idea. All the other cars out there I agree with you. Not much to get excited about. Trying to think of any car that looks cool The Dodge Magnum? Looks like a station wagon with a himi badge on it. Mustang? Looks OK, but something just dosen’t work. I can’t place my finger on it.
shrug I like my 2001 Dodge RAM3500. Will drive it till it dies, then push it.
The Nissan Skyline GTR.
Da-yam, thats a seriously awesome car. It’s fast as stink, handles like you won’t believe, and can seriously embarrass a porsche or ferrari coming off the line. The only minus is that you might come off like one of those morons who watched ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and then thought they were car modders and quarter-milers with NOS and GReddy decals on their cars. :rolleyes:
Although I dont agree with your dismissive approach to Mercs and Aston Martins (you’ve got to be a cold-blooded bastard not to drool over the new Merc SLR, Aston DB12, or the Aston Vanquish ), I do like the fact that you respect Subaru and Honda. The Subaru Impreza is one of the sweetest cars out there today. Likewise the Honda RSX-S.
Since you’re fantasizing, why not go the whole hog while still maintaining an element of reality (aka affordability)? (basically: no over-exotics, like the Bugatti Veyron, or the **Koenigsegg **that Otanx mentioned. Good one, Otanx!)
Here’s something to get you started:
You’re totaly all over the map with this car thing. You’re comparing sport coupes to sedans, low/mid price to luxury cars, rusty classics with lap belts to bleeding edge performance and technology. I mean, you’re comparing the Solstace to a Corvette? WTF?
Stop and FOCUS on what you really need/want/can afford.
Also think about cutting down on the caffein. Speed kills.
Quit trying to subliminally get him to buy a Ford, QuickSilver. :dubious:
Jeez, you can’t trust anybody these days.
Now personally, I’m pretty Imprezad with some of the Japanese cars. I won’t name any names, but the other day I was driving around Tribeca and I couldn’t help but noticing the snazzy number of riceburners that really rocket. And the think about Jap cars is not only to they have a good Legacy of building reliable vehicles, but they’re also very easy to WoRX on. They’re really the kind of cars you can take Outback and get under the hood. Again, not naming names, but some of them have Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, which really comes in handy when you’re driving around Baja.
Whatever you do, though, don’t get to Cavalier about certain American-built products. When I was in Corsica I saw some real junkers built by a certain American manufacturer that are popular with the Suburban set, especially my cousin Jimmy who lives in Tahoe. You don’t want a car that is going to crash and burn like a stellar Nova, do you?
I think your problem is that you have not driven any of these cars. I’m a car nut, and I agree that there’s nothing thrilling about looking at photos of cars online, even million-dollar exotics. Cars are meant to be driven. You have to see, hear and feel them in real life to get the full effect. It’s easy to be apathetic when you’re looking at JPEGs, but when you’re in the car and can hear and feel the engine, steering response, handling, and so forth, it’s a different story entirely.
Why don’t you go out and test drive something? A Viper, a Corvette, a BMW, a Porsche? Hell, go all out, and test drive a Ferrari. If they won’t let you drive the F430, find a used 360 Modena. It is impossible to drive one of those and not be thrilled, regardless of how many fat balding geezers buy them.
The Lotus Elise is also a freaking amazing car, and it’s not that expensive either.
Also, let’s be honest, all that stuff you’re complaining about is rather petty. You can’t dismiss the fact that Porsche produces the most reliable, and among the best-handling and most comfortable sports cars on the planet because you don’t like the roofline. I don’t even know what “saucy” means in this context. Hell, buy a Boxster and keep the top down, then you’ll never even notice.
I looked it up. It is cool but not in the “realistic” realm. Thanks for the info, though.
I have a conceptual problem with buying a race car for street use. Performance is great and is of genuine use in many driving environments, but don’t racing cars belong on the track? To put them on the street seems to me too much like man playing racer. Vroom.
I have done a bunch of PR writing for both companies and thus understand their major technologies in a layman+ fashion. Both companies’ AWD systems are some serious tech; I don’t have the driver’s knowledge, however, as to how helpful that all is on the road: My guess: Pretty helpful.
According to what I just read, that was never exported (officially) from Japan and is right-side wheel only. Pretty exotic, methinks.
Which reviews are those? I’ve read the major reviews from Road and Track, Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Edmunds, Automobile, and they all gave it raves. It’s losing in comparisons to the Mazda MX-5, but not because it’s a ‘plasticky piece of junk’. Merely because it has no trunk space and is 500lbs heavier. But in its own right, it’s a great car. Especially for the money.
No argument about the 1963 Vette - I love those old 1963-1967 Stingrays. But the new Vette is an awesome car. The Z06 is the fastest Vette GM has ever made, both in acceleration and handling. The build quality and interior is much, much better than any previous Vette. And the thing puts out 505 HP and still gets almost 30MPG on the highway. Let’s see your old LS-7 engine do that.
Do I need to point out the hypocrisy of you making this statement, and then bagging on Subaru and Honda because their cars aren’t ‘cool’ enough?
Mustang, Ford GT, Ford Fusion. All great, world-class cars. The F-150 truck is the class leader. The Escape and Escape hybrid have above average reliability, are good on gas, and fun to drive.
Oh, please. The modern Mustang spanks most of the Mustangs in history in build quality, acceleration, handling, features, and value. The car is comfortable, practical, and the GT version goes like stink. What exactly is your problem with that?
To each their own.
Yeah, that Audi RS-4 sure is a piece of junk…
Jesus, who pissed in your cornflakes? BMW makes awesome cars. The new M series are phenomenal. Just don’t get the iDrive and the active suspension junk.
So far we’ve learned that if a car looks too racy, it’s for ‘balding dipshits’. If it doesn’t look racy enough, it’s shit. And the roofline better not slope too much, or it’s ‘saucy’. And a bunch of excellent cars have been dismissed out of hand.
This from the person who might ‘blow a lot of money’ to ‘splurge’ on a car. Thorstein Veblen would be proud.
The '82 ZX was ‘righteous’? By 1982 the original Z-car had morphed into a bloated, overweight boulevard cruiser with crappy handling and performance. It had 180hp pulling almost 3000 lbs of weight. It was also a rust bucket, and almost none of them are left in any location with a wintry climate because they’ve all rusted to pieces.
The new 350Z has 300HP, a six-speed transmission, and is built much, much better than that old squeaky, flexy 280zx.
The G35 is an awesome car. So is the Lexus IS350.
You want fun? Get yourself a WRX STi or a Mitsubishi Evo. Or a Mazda RX-8. Or a 350Z. Or save some money and get a rip-snortin’ SRT-4 for 20 grand. If you want to spend a little more, get a G35 coupe. The Pontiac GTO is 30 grand and has a 400HP Chevy small block in it, independent suspension, and a great interior. Awesome car. Hell, even the family sedans coming out these days have 200-300 horsepower. You thought that 180HP 280ZX was righteous, and yet the new Fusion comes with 221HP, and reviewers say it should have more. The Nissan Altima has 280HP, and the Honda Accord 240HP. Our middle of the road cars now are better and faster than the ‘sports cars’ of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
You’re apparently missing everything. You’re living in a golden age for car enthusiasts. You want performance? A $30,000 STI will accelerate faster than a Boss 429 Mustang or an old Hemi 'Cuda. And it’ll do it on snow and ice. You want track performance? A $60,000 Vette is faster than any road car from 20 years ago, regardless of price. You want styling? There’s oodles to choose from. Retro styling, futuristic styling, aggressive styling, ‘sleepers’… You can go to a Dodge dealer and buy a brand-new 425HP Hemi Charger. Next year you’ll be able to buy a new Shelby Cobra from Ford that will have almost 500HP. You want doo-dads? You can get everything from satellite radio to navigation to backup rear-vision cameras to automatic cruise control systems that use radar to maintain a fixed distance from the car in front of you. You want fuel efficiency? You can buy a 500HP car that gets 30mpg.
This is our car: Saab 9-2x. For the equivalent of about $22,000 US, we got a car that goes 0-60 in under 6 seconds, the quarter mile in 14 and a half (both much faster than that old 280zx), will pull almost .9 g’s on the skidpad (also much better than that 280xz), and yet it has heated seats, automatic climate control, six speaker stereo with a 6-disc CD changer, all-wheel drive, 17" V-rated tires with alloy wheels, a power moonroof, ABS brakes with electronic brake force distribution, a 227HP turbocharged engine, and it gets 29mpg on the highway. And with the rear seats down, it has 61 cubic feet of cargo space. It’s also way, way safer than those older cars. It has six airbags, active head restraints, seatbelt pretensioners, crumple zones, a reinforced roof for rollover protection, and huge brakes that can stop it faster than many supercars.
Show me any car from 20 years ago that can come anywhere close to matching that car for value, quality, and performance.
I don’t know how old you are, but I felt the same way you do a few years ago. That’s because I became jaded and disillusioned by spending 20 years of my youth watching a parade of incredible crap come out of the auto industry between 1975 and 1995. There were no exciting designs - everything was ‘cab forward’ and looked like an egg, or was a plain vanilla 3-box design. The cars flexed too much, had lousy suspensions, and horrible performance. The fastest Camaro you could buy, the IROC-Z, only had 195 horsepower. Pathetic. So I was a ‘classic car’ nut, convinced that anything built after 1970 was junk.
But things changed a few years ago. Innovations like variable valve timing, engine computers, CAD/CAM, new manufacturing techniques like hydro-forming, ABS, dynamic stability control, Xenon headlights, and others came along. We learned out to make chassis much stiffer, which allowed us to make better, tighter suspensions that could be precisely defined. Revolutions in manufacturing made tolerances tighter, and new materials made engines more reliable and turbos easier to manage. The result of all of these things has been nothing less than a renaissance for the automobile. They’re now better than they ever were, and not just by a little. It’s not even close.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with loving old cars for the style and for nostalgia. I’ll always love that old '67 Camaro I had, and the '57 Chevy, '63 Vette, and the Shelby GT350 are classic designs. I’d love to own any of them. But don’t fool yourself into believing that they were in any way better than what you can buy today. They aren’t.
Yes, but that information’s slightly outdated. Its now possible to get one of these babies exported. Check with any major Nissan dealership, and they should be able to clue you in. But yeah, it is right-side wheel only.
Yes it is, its sold in the US as the Acura RSX . The general consensus is that its one of the nicest ways to spend 23 grand.
Fair enough. I’d still recommend that you go to your friendly neighborhood dealership, get behind the wheel of one of these, and take it for a spin. You might change your mind when you get up close and personal with it. Also, damn, its dependable.
I have a 4-month old Honda-CRV and while I am not “thrilled” with it, I like it more and more every month. However, considering the types of cars you are mulling over, I would likeely fall in a mere pedestrian category. Alas, after reading this thread, I conclude that:
Sam Stone qualifies as an expert witness, a’la Marissa Tomei in My Cusin Vinny.
With such discriminating automobile asthetics, Aeschines is destined for a lifetime of public transportation.
I’m gonna go with a few others and say, “So basically, everything sucks, right?” Sheesh. You’re ‘comparing’ luxury cars to freakin’ lambourghinis to entry level cars. And saying anything by Audi is shit? Uh huh. :rolleyes:
), I do like the fact that you respect Subaru and Honda. The Subaru Impreza is one of the sweetest cars out there today. Likewise the Honda RSX-S.
