As you can tell, despite the presence of an official GM commercial for the 2011 Buick Regal, I have a very low opinion of that particular car. Observe the tachometer at 0:09:
(note that this is a longer version of the commercial that I saw last night while watching TV. It doesn't look so bad here, but when GM has cut all of the "cruising" out of the commercial and all you see is aggressive driving, and then it cuts to the tachometer at idle... not so swift.)
This is the other reason why the new Regal isn't so great:
I don't know about the reader, but I don't want to be out-accelerated by a 24-year-old car in my brand-new one.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Whoa Times Two.
I want one of these too.
And one of these. Unfortunately, I have disgustingly expensive tastes. Of course, on the other hand, nobody can really use the performance those two cars have to offer on the street, whereas with the 2011 Mustang V6...
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Only in a restaurant drive-through...
I've circled the roof spoiler, huge wheels/tires with negative camber that isn't going to do the driver any good since the car drives and steers via the front wheels, not the rears, the Japanese-style tow hook, the coffee can, and the "HYBRID" badge that was evidently pulled from a later-model Civic hybrid, as this generation Civic had no hybrid option. Bahaha. This is hilarious. I believe this car also has fake hood pins, but I'm not sure if the car I saw was the same as this one. The only thing preventing this from having full-rice status are 1) no huge rear wing, the window one doesn't count, 2) body kit isn't low enough, 3) needs more scratches and dents, 4) the body kit and preferably some of the fenders need to have copious doses of Bondo and primer, and 5) it needs a giant Honda emblem across the rear window. Having "2EXTREM", "XTREM SI", or "2FAST4U" as the license plate would help also.
What?
Episode II: The Return of EMBD!
All units with driver's licenses had Memorial Day off, so we took a trip back to Enormous Mucho Biggo Dealer (hereafter referred to as EMBD). Unlike last time, when we were simply browsing and I hijacked the occasion for photography purposes. This time, though, we had a set purpose and a list of specific cars to test drive.
That isn't to say that all the excitement occurred at the dealer itself, oh no. Something very interesting happened on the way up...
---
We were stuck behind a truck with 3M logos on its trailer on two-lane roads for quite a while. Since we only got close enough to read the license plate once, we didn't really know what it was and speculated on what it could be. I guessed it was just a truck owned by 3M that displayed their products, but that didn't seem quite right. After all, who stops by the roadside to look at tape and sticky notes?
Later, we passed it and discovered its highly unusual cargo... since it didn't want to pass us again for pictures, we pulled into a rest stop so it would go by.
Whoa. What was that? Almost looked like a race car...
A nail-biting chase ensued...
Yep. Race car. Note the cardboard cutout of Greg Biffle on the wall of the trailer, as this is one of his cars.
Notice the very worn sidewall lettering. This tells me that the car was likely returning from testing, or was loaded onto the truck with old tires. Regardless, it looks well used.
The hauler, on the other hand, was pristine and glistened in the sun, like it was freshly washed (which was likely what had happened).
That was the first (and as of now, the only) time I have ever seen an actual national-league NASCAR race car in person. The closest thing was somebody's ancient oval-track car being lugged around by a Chevrolet truck that looked to be on its last hundred miles. Not quite the same thing.
After that little adventure, we continued on our way to EMBD. My aforementioned list contained seven cars to test drive, so as to narrow down our list of potential candidates for new-driver's-daily-driver.
The list was as follows, in the order that we eventually drove them. My comments in italics, the potential main operator's in regular type:
1: Used 2011 Ford Mustang V6 Premium Convertible (Grabber Blue! Drove this one largely for fun, although I checked later and found that it was a company fleet car, which explains why it smelled thickly of smoke)
Potential Driver's thoughts on Car #1: "Too hot, and it smelled bad."
2: Used 2010 Ford Fusion SE 4 cylinder (Smokestone, which was a very fitting color name for a rental car like this one. Poor thing had the wear and tear of a car three times its age, complete with smoke smell, cigarette burns in my seat [right rear], and a badly worn dash)
Thoughts on Car #2: "I hate it."
3: New 2011 Hyundai Elantra Limited (Red Allure didn't turn out to be so alluring after all, although the rest of the car was quite good)
Thoughts on Car #3: "I like it."
4: New 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid (don't know the color, but I expected my first hybrid ride to feel more sluggish. The car acquitted itself rather well, although it felt slower than the Elantra)
Thoughts on Car #4: "Eww! Hybrid!"
N/A: New 2012 Ford Focus, Mazda3, and Mazda2 (the jerk salesman that attached himself to us at the Ford and Mazda departments wouldn't even let us test drive these three. Not only that, but he made us sit in the back of a Fiesta even after we told him the Fiesta was essentially a pile of junk [which it is])
However, it wasn't all that bad, despite the absurdly hot weather. For example:
Bullitt! I love the understated looks of these cars. Dull-finish wheels, no emblems, no stripes, dark green paint, hardly anything to distinguish it from another car to the undiscerning eye. Except for the exhaust, which is gloriously loud.
The pseudo-aluminum finish of the dash panels is unique among 05-09 Mustangs, as is the rear deck badge and gauge cluster, which features crosshairs in the gauges and a different font than the usual. The steering wheel is from the GT500, which you can tell from the handgrip area. The standard steering wheel has a panel gap between the wheel and the spokes, whereas the GT500 wheel has no interruption on the sides. This example also demonstrated the metal shift knob, which normally I would have run through the gears except for the fact that I like my right hand very much, and don't care to lose it. Plus, this Bullitt had been smoked in, and it was very obvious. I snapped this picture and shut the door.
GRABBER ORANGE! I must restrain myself to keep from fainting. My goodness, this is a gorgeous car. Just look at it!
Compare this interior to the Bullitt, especially the dash, steering wheel, and what you can see of the shifter. The two cars were very similar in one area, though: they smelled atrocious, although the Grabber Orange smelled of cleaner with a small bit of smoke in the background. I'm getting tired of people ruining these cars by letting toxic fumes permeate every bit of the car's interior. When I rode in our Shelby GT a couple days after this, I took great pains to inhale lots of its interior smell, as it smells like leather instead of smoke. I think Mustangs that don't smell like smoke on the inside will become valuable collector commodities.
This was the V6 fleet car that we drove. It had a unique set of side pinstripes that were falling to pieces already, and the little Mustang emblem above the rear wheels was crudely done and looked more like a lump than a horse. An EMBD salesman had told us before that a man who lived in the area did custom stripe work on their used cars. Of course, that was in response to a complaint that the Grabber Orange they had at the time didn't have black stripes, so it's likely he was lying. In any event, it's still a pretty car.
When we drove this car, I was in the back seat, behind my parental unit, who was driving. The automatic transmission in these V6 cars comes with a mandatory 2.73 rear axle ratio (or at least this one did). It was very evident in driving, as every other car we drove was more responsive to a sudden flooring. This was likely the combination of a dim-witted transmission that was geared for fuel economy, and the fact that it was an automatic, after all. When the engine reached the upper RPM ranges I was pinned in my (rather comfortable for what it was) seat. Of course, I was always pinned in it, as I'm a bit big for the rear set of seats in a 2+2, but it was tolerable for our short trip nonetheless. I would grow to wish for those seats later. I was pleasantly surprised by the 3.7's yowl and pull at high RPM, although fuel economy is still disgustingly high on the priority list. Darn oil barons.
Here's the Elantra Limited we drove. Although we drove a Limited, if we bought one it would be a GLS, which would have smaller wheels, which would mean bigger sidewalls, which would mean more tire howl under hard cornering. As it was, the Limited held up rather well during our driving, with an engine that sounded good and was smooth (not always a Hyundai strong point), and comfortable seats that didn't have the Potential Driver and myself sliding about as much as in the Fusion. Speaking of the Fusion, the Potential Driver wants me to reiterate that she hates the Fusion, because she might not have made it clear enough when she said "I hate it.".
I am not the biggest fan of Hyundai's current design language (dubbed "Fluidic Sculpture", although I think it looks more like "A draft got in while the sheetmetal was cooling, and we liked the distortion so much we left it that way"), but the Elantra wears it rather well. I just wonder about the merits of such a steeply raked rear window. I'm sure it helped immensely with fuel economy, enough that the car likely couldn't achieve the vaunted 29/40 MPG without it. It's just that it compromises headroom for tall nutcase writers, like me. I can't be letting this giant brain be crushed against the ceiling, after all! /sarcasm
After the Elantra, which was liked by all (including, regretfully, your humble blogger, who now wishes very hard that Ford would hurry up and release the Focus ST so that I can have a different compact to likely grow up driving... hurry up!), we drove a Sonata Hybrid.
All three Sonata Hybrids that EMBD had in its possession were on a raised section of pavement. The sales guy thought that my parental unit's general gesture to the Sonatae was actually indicating a specific vehicle, so he started and moved one of them out of the way so that he could get the other one out. Since I had read up on the car specifically, and hybrids in general, I knew that it was likely that when the salesman moved the car, it would likely be running on battery instead of gas, and thus be mostly silent. However, I wasn't ready for the turbine-like noise the electric motor made, which was... eerie. It was definitely the first time I'd seen a car moving almost silently under its own power.
I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the car was, although the passenger seat was mounted VERY LOW in the car's frame. My parental unit couldn't have driven it from that seating position, as she almost couldn't see over the hood. Thankfully, the driver's seat adjusted for height, so the seat was pulled forward and up so my parental unit could drive it, I stretched my legs out limousine-style behind her because I had the room, and we were on our way. The car was very smooth and quiet, but it was obvious where one compromise in particular had been made. For aerodynamic reasons, the Sonata Hybrid gets its own set of exclusive wheels that are mostly flat with the sidewall of the tire, reducing drag. Hyundai's choice of rubber was a set of low-rolling-resistance tires, to help optimize (pun intended) fuel economy. Where's the compromise, you ask? I'll tell you.
Low-rolling-resistance tires are designed to create less friction between the tire and the road, thus allowing the vehicle they are mounted to to maintain momentum more easily and allow the vehicle to use less power to continue moving, thus burning less fuel and increasing fuel economy. The downside to this is that less friction = less grip, and therefore means the vehicle's handling thresholds are decreased severely. This was evident during our test drive of the Sonata Hybrid, where moderate cornering was met with loudly voiced protest from the tires, as well as leaving rubber on the track. The howling noise was something I had heard of, but never actually heard, as we take a conservative approach to tires, i.e. no burnouts.
Overall, it was a good day, despite the jerk salesman that prevented us from achieving higher than a 57.2 percent drive rate of vehicles on the list. The incident that stood out the most to me about him was when I made a candid observation that the back "cushions" in the rear seats of a 2012 Focus hatch I sat in were, shall we say, firm, the sales guy informed me that the Focus "ain't a Cadillac, baby!". "I was well aware of that, you idiot. You're the guys who are marketing this thing as a premium small car anyway, so why can't the back seats be comfortable? Explain the Titanium trim level, now will ya? Punk?"
Okay, so I didn't actually tell him that. I think my facial expression conveyed it well enough. I wish I had said it, though, and loudly too. Oh well. I had high hopes for the Focus, but it seems that the Elantra has implicitly destroyed it via Hyundai's vastly superior service. Now, I don't doubt that there are decent Ford salesmen and scumbag Hyundai salesmen out there, but we got a good guy for Hyundai and a crummy guy for Ford.
Score one for Hyundai. Round two: MANUAL TRANSMISSION VERSIONS! MWUAHAHAHA...
That isn't to say that all the excitement occurred at the dealer itself, oh no. Something very interesting happened on the way up...
---
We were stuck behind a truck with 3M logos on its trailer on two-lane roads for quite a while. Since we only got close enough to read the license plate once, we didn't really know what it was and speculated on what it could be. I guessed it was just a truck owned by 3M that displayed their products, but that didn't seem quite right. After all, who stops by the roadside to look at tape and sticky notes?
Later, we passed it and discovered its highly unusual cargo... since it didn't want to pass us again for pictures, we pulled into a rest stop so it would go by.
Whoa. What was that? Almost looked like a race car...
A nail-biting chase ensued...
Yep. Race car. Note the cardboard cutout of Greg Biffle on the wall of the trailer, as this is one of his cars.
Notice the very worn sidewall lettering. This tells me that the car was likely returning from testing, or was loaded onto the truck with old tires. Regardless, it looks well used.
The hauler, on the other hand, was pristine and glistened in the sun, like it was freshly washed (which was likely what had happened).
That was the first (and as of now, the only) time I have ever seen an actual national-league NASCAR race car in person. The closest thing was somebody's ancient oval-track car being lugged around by a Chevrolet truck that looked to be on its last hundred miles. Not quite the same thing.
After that little adventure, we continued on our way to EMBD. My aforementioned list contained seven cars to test drive, so as to narrow down our list of potential candidates for new-driver's-daily-driver.
The list was as follows, in the order that we eventually drove them. My comments in italics, the potential main operator's in regular type:
1: Used 2011 Ford Mustang V6 Premium Convertible (Grabber Blue! Drove this one largely for fun, although I checked later and found that it was a company fleet car, which explains why it smelled thickly of smoke)
Potential Driver's thoughts on Car #1: "Too hot, and it smelled bad."
2: Used 2010 Ford Fusion SE 4 cylinder (Smokestone, which was a very fitting color name for a rental car like this one. Poor thing had the wear and tear of a car three times its age, complete with smoke smell, cigarette burns in my seat [right rear], and a badly worn dash)
Thoughts on Car #2: "I hate it."
3: New 2011 Hyundai Elantra Limited (Red Allure didn't turn out to be so alluring after all, although the rest of the car was quite good)
Thoughts on Car #3: "I like it."
4: New 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid (don't know the color, but I expected my first hybrid ride to feel more sluggish. The car acquitted itself rather well, although it felt slower than the Elantra)
Thoughts on Car #4: "Eww! Hybrid!"
N/A: New 2012 Ford Focus, Mazda3, and Mazda2 (the jerk salesman that attached himself to us at the Ford and Mazda departments wouldn't even let us test drive these three. Not only that, but he made us sit in the back of a Fiesta even after we told him the Fiesta was essentially a pile of junk [which it is])
However, it wasn't all that bad, despite the absurdly hot weather. For example:
Bullitt! I love the understated looks of these cars. Dull-finish wheels, no emblems, no stripes, dark green paint, hardly anything to distinguish it from another car to the undiscerning eye. Except for the exhaust, which is gloriously loud.
The pseudo-aluminum finish of the dash panels is unique among 05-09 Mustangs, as is the rear deck badge and gauge cluster, which features crosshairs in the gauges and a different font than the usual. The steering wheel is from the GT500, which you can tell from the handgrip area. The standard steering wheel has a panel gap between the wheel and the spokes, whereas the GT500 wheel has no interruption on the sides. This example also demonstrated the metal shift knob, which normally I would have run through the gears except for the fact that I like my right hand very much, and don't care to lose it. Plus, this Bullitt had been smoked in, and it was very obvious. I snapped this picture and shut the door.
GRABBER ORANGE! I must restrain myself to keep from fainting. My goodness, this is a gorgeous car. Just look at it!
Compare this interior to the Bullitt, especially the dash, steering wheel, and what you can see of the shifter. The two cars were very similar in one area, though: they smelled atrocious, although the Grabber Orange smelled of cleaner with a small bit of smoke in the background. I'm getting tired of people ruining these cars by letting toxic fumes permeate every bit of the car's interior. When I rode in our Shelby GT a couple days after this, I took great pains to inhale lots of its interior smell, as it smells like leather instead of smoke. I think Mustangs that don't smell like smoke on the inside will become valuable collector commodities.
This was the V6 fleet car that we drove. It had a unique set of side pinstripes that were falling to pieces already, and the little Mustang emblem above the rear wheels was crudely done and looked more like a lump than a horse. An EMBD salesman had told us before that a man who lived in the area did custom stripe work on their used cars. Of course, that was in response to a complaint that the Grabber Orange they had at the time didn't have black stripes, so it's likely he was lying. In any event, it's still a pretty car.
When we drove this car, I was in the back seat, behind my parental unit, who was driving. The automatic transmission in these V6 cars comes with a mandatory 2.73 rear axle ratio (or at least this one did). It was very evident in driving, as every other car we drove was more responsive to a sudden flooring. This was likely the combination of a dim-witted transmission that was geared for fuel economy, and the fact that it was an automatic, after all. When the engine reached the upper RPM ranges I was pinned in my (rather comfortable for what it was) seat. Of course, I was always pinned in it, as I'm a bit big for the rear set of seats in a 2+2, but it was tolerable for our short trip nonetheless. I would grow to wish for those seats later. I was pleasantly surprised by the 3.7's yowl and pull at high RPM, although fuel economy is still disgustingly high on the priority list. Darn oil barons.
Here's the Elantra Limited we drove. Although we drove a Limited, if we bought one it would be a GLS, which would have smaller wheels, which would mean bigger sidewalls, which would mean more tire howl under hard cornering. As it was, the Limited held up rather well during our driving, with an engine that sounded good and was smooth (not always a Hyundai strong point), and comfortable seats that didn't have the Potential Driver and myself sliding about as much as in the Fusion. Speaking of the Fusion, the Potential Driver wants me to reiterate that she hates the Fusion, because she might not have made it clear enough when she said "I hate it.".
I am not the biggest fan of Hyundai's current design language (dubbed "Fluidic Sculpture", although I think it looks more like "A draft got in while the sheetmetal was cooling, and we liked the distortion so much we left it that way"), but the Elantra wears it rather well. I just wonder about the merits of such a steeply raked rear window. I'm sure it helped immensely with fuel economy, enough that the car likely couldn't achieve the vaunted 29/40 MPG without it. It's just that it compromises headroom for tall nutcase writers, like me. I can't be letting this giant brain be crushed against the ceiling, after all! /sarcasm
After the Elantra, which was liked by all (including, regretfully, your humble blogger, who now wishes very hard that Ford would hurry up and release the Focus ST so that I can have a different compact to likely grow up driving... hurry up!), we drove a Sonata Hybrid.
All three Sonata Hybrids that EMBD had in its possession were on a raised section of pavement. The sales guy thought that my parental unit's general gesture to the Sonatae was actually indicating a specific vehicle, so he started and moved one of them out of the way so that he could get the other one out. Since I had read up on the car specifically, and hybrids in general, I knew that it was likely that when the salesman moved the car, it would likely be running on battery instead of gas, and thus be mostly silent. However, I wasn't ready for the turbine-like noise the electric motor made, which was... eerie. It was definitely the first time I'd seen a car moving almost silently under its own power.
I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the car was, although the passenger seat was mounted VERY LOW in the car's frame. My parental unit couldn't have driven it from that seating position, as she almost couldn't see over the hood. Thankfully, the driver's seat adjusted for height, so the seat was pulled forward and up so my parental unit could drive it, I stretched my legs out limousine-style behind her because I had the room, and we were on our way. The car was very smooth and quiet, but it was obvious where one compromise in particular had been made. For aerodynamic reasons, the Sonata Hybrid gets its own set of exclusive wheels that are mostly flat with the sidewall of the tire, reducing drag. Hyundai's choice of rubber was a set of low-rolling-resistance tires, to help optimize (pun intended) fuel economy. Where's the compromise, you ask? I'll tell you.
Low-rolling-resistance tires are designed to create less friction between the tire and the road, thus allowing the vehicle they are mounted to to maintain momentum more easily and allow the vehicle to use less power to continue moving, thus burning less fuel and increasing fuel economy. The downside to this is that less friction = less grip, and therefore means the vehicle's handling thresholds are decreased severely. This was evident during our test drive of the Sonata Hybrid, where moderate cornering was met with loudly voiced protest from the tires, as well as leaving rubber on the track. The howling noise was something I had heard of, but never actually heard, as we take a conservative approach to tires, i.e. no burnouts.
Overall, it was a good day, despite the jerk salesman that prevented us from achieving higher than a 57.2 percent drive rate of vehicles on the list. The incident that stood out the most to me about him was when I made a candid observation that the back "cushions" in the rear seats of a 2012 Focus hatch I sat in were, shall we say, firm, the sales guy informed me that the Focus "ain't a Cadillac, baby!". "I was well aware of that, you idiot. You're the guys who are marketing this thing as a premium small car anyway, so why can't the back seats be comfortable? Explain the Titanium trim level, now will ya? Punk?"
Okay, so I didn't actually tell him that. I think my facial expression conveyed it well enough. I wish I had said it, though, and loudly too. Oh well. I had high hopes for the Focus, but it seems that the Elantra has implicitly destroyed it via Hyundai's vastly superior service. Now, I don't doubt that there are decent Ford salesmen and scumbag Hyundai salesmen out there, but we got a good guy for Hyundai and a crummy guy for Ford.
Score one for Hyundai. Round two: MANUAL TRANSMISSION VERSIONS! MWUAHAHAHA...
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