NAIAS - my random thoughts

[97regalGS]

sent this in a PM to a fellow C&Ger last week. thought i'd post for those that are interested.

......show was good.

my dad and i went with a colleage of mine from work. i drove my dad's 2003 Benneville SLE there and back. we stayed in windsor and took the windsor transit over on saturday morning. we were at cobo at 8:30. it was packed. there was a huge line for ticket holders to get in and a separate line to buy tickets. i jumped in ticket holder line while the rest bought tickets (my friend's nephew lives in windsor so he tagged along as well). by the time 9am rolled around there were several lines of ticket holders. it was really quite a mess. i should point out that they ended up walking to the far end of cobo and walked up and bought tickets without waiting, meanwhile others were in line for 30 minutes. silly. on a sidenote, dad was happy as they sold him a seniors ticket and he's only 61!!!

we went straight to the GM area and checked out the Enclave, Cadillacs and Camaro, then down the back side toyota, nissan, lexus, bmw, prosche, audi, infiniti, mercedes etc. break for lunch. philly steak at cobo arena, then back to finish up ford group and then once more thru GM.

will just add some random thoughts as they enter my head (would take way to long to make a nice sensiblle and organized document anyway)

Enclave - very nice!! it is big, but not massive. will prob look bigger when your standing beside it instead of it being on the turntable. the exterior paint is actually light than in the pictures. same with the wood and leather in the interior. but i was quite impressed. i'd showed my wife the pictures before we went down and she likes it as well. would be on our list of next vehicles, although the saturn version might have a better price point given all of our other expenses. but, we're holding out on new cars for as long as possible. i like the look of the vehicle. the interior was amazing. it seems gm is finally getting the interiors sorted out. everything seemed to 'fit right' if that makes sense. very cohesive. a solid 9 out of 10.

xlr-v - was open and we sat in it. very nice as well. i've never been a fan of that half circle guages on that car, but rest of car was nice. i think i like the ecalytus (too lazy to fix spelling) in the xlr better than the stain in the 'v'.

sts-v - i like the olive stain in this car though. i also prefer the overall look of the sts-v over the sts. amazing how just wheels, spoilers and skirts can make such a difference. where the sts looks bland, the sts-v looks elegant. the sts interior is growing on me, although the way the center stack seems to 'sit' on the console is not as flowing as it is on the new escalade. in time, and with abuse a used sts interior might not line up as well.

sts- this car is not cramped, but certainly not big. when the new CTS comes out with that beautiful interior, i'd question why anyone would buy a v6 sts. it seems many of gm interiors have that nice graining texture in the interiors, the way vw has for years. some are fairly hard to the touch, but some are a little more spongy.

cts-v -still a great looking car from the outside. guage package is a lot nicer than on the original car with the odd font and orange colour. however, the rest of the interior with that presario centre stack is getting a little dated. i'd love to own a cts-v with the LS6 or LS2. couple things holding me back on a used one (aside from price and availabilty) would be the manual transmission (wife doesn't drive a stick - not that i'd let her drive it anyway!) the insurance, and the interior - although i'm sure i could handle the interior. a sad reality is that i would much prefer the 6spd auto from the STS-v for my driving style. kinda best of both worlds type of scenario (sixty8 would beat me about the head and shoulders for that).

impala SS - like the car. however, the damn steering wheel cuts right across the top 40% of the guages. very annoying, and i'm less than 6'. also, what's with the goofy guages. a little too simple and racy. i prefered the guages in the base model. also, what's with that ridiculous shifter. it is so damn boring. and the lack of PRNDL makes it look unfinished - no matter functional they letters are or aren't, it just looks out of place that they aren't there. an impala Lt would be a very nice car for me if the regal was to suddenly disappear.

chevy had a nice line of all the ss models in a curve on both sides of the camaro. unfortunately, it was so damn packed in there no one would ever notice that. they'd just kind of stumble onto cars as they move around.

camaro - wow. good job. i like it. much better than the challenger (more later). it looked very aggresive, esp. the front end. i'm not a coupe guy anymore, but i'd love to see that car on the road. wasn't a big fan of the interior as much. was a little too retro with the square guages and such. would have preferred a more modern look, but i suspect it will change before production (i know, i know.... No RFQ, No car!!) also, loved the silver colour. look forward to seeing it again in toronto.

escalade - couldn't get in one. very disappointing. maybe in toronto if they are lots by then. regardless, you were bang on. the attention to detail over previous gen. is outstanding. all the little things were taken care off. had 3 black ones ESV, EXT and Escalade on a ramp and a white one spinning around. only issue with the 900's, which i can understand why they didn't invest the dollars is the 3rd row which are the slickest in terms of functionality and removability.

lucerne - nice car. had one all cut to pieces to show various things. interior is nice. not a big fan of the quasi j-gate shifter. makes no sense to me. other than that not much to say. really need to spend some more time in one in toronto.

sky - was not accessible, but still looks great, better than solstice imo.

aura concept was there. looks good. can't wait to sit in production model.

vue - sat in redline. nice vehicle. the power windows in the middle is silly.

relay - whatever. gm vans are boring. hope the new lambda vans make an impresion

allure/lacrosse - didn't spent much time in this one either. we circled back to buick at the end of the day. only saw the enclave in the morning. i do like the looks of the cxs in black with chrome wheels. other models are a little vanilla.

solstice - nice. again, very packed. the GXP in red was hot. two tone dash was also cool. lots of guys were looking at that car, which surprised me a bit as it seems more femine to me.

srx - needs the new CTS interior, like, yesterday. do that, tweak the exterior a bit and lower the price and they might sell a few more.

dts- nice. i like the old one actually. the new one seems more comfy/limo-like to me, whereas the old one had a sort of hunkered down presence to it. plus that chrome trim obove the rear bumper reminds me too much of the impala. it is certainly a big comfy vehicle. i think if they can just move this to zeta it would make a fantastic lower priced LS430. the question is, where does it fit into the rest of Cadillac's line-up and what will LS460 etc do to improve.

by the way, i've generally noticed that all of gm's newer cars generally look cleaner/better. i think it's because the panel gaps are tightened and there are some nice accent pieces that highlight that.

LS460L - wow. now that is one comfy back seat. and new look is much better than the old one. interesting to see how many L versions they'll sell.

camry - had a black one on a higher turntable. it was a sport model with skirt package. looked more aggresived than previosu camry SE versions. it's an interesting look, very simlar to avalon. but it doesn't do it for me. the interior is nice. there was somethng there that bothered me, but can't recall what it was - will have to wait until toronto.

didn't look at much else from toyota.

nissan - that little concept was pretty neat, but far fetched. altima SE-R interior did nothing for me. i don't care much for 350. but as has been the case for years, nissan/infinit only makes one steering wheel and they stick it in evry one of their cars. and the three circle guages are in most vehciles as well. no wonder carlos did wonders there. he only has on platform FM and he makes 14 flavours of cars by changing body panels and making it fwd, awd or rwd.

bmw coupe looks silly. M6 was hot. 760iL was nice!! saw the M5's last year.

cayman is nice. looks like every other porshce has for 30 yrs. cayene - whatever.

mercedes had their cars all locked up. GL class is big. Rclass is a pacifica. new S55 looks better in darker colours as u can't see the large wheel wells. the interiors are just crazy! slr is silly. maybach 57S was very nice. the black/tan interior was way cool.

audi - like the S8 and the A8L W12. thinking about selling my house and getting one. RS4 was also nice. will check out A3 in toronto.

scion -didn't bother

mini-didn't bother

aston martin concept was nice, but almost looked too long. all aston martin's lookk the same. i can't tell them apart. in fact i don't even know how many they make vangusih, vantage all mean something, just variations on the same car.... carlos must have worked there beofre he went to japan.

mercury - now that monterey was very nice!!!! not. nothing mercury has has any relevance to me. none.

fusion - very nice. that will do well for ford. 500 - whatever, boring.

edge - no new inventions here, but it will do well.

aviator - who decided on the huge front gille and large taillgihts. both are ugly. oops, i meant MKX. dumb name

zeypher taillights are silly too. interior is very lincoln.

MKS - welcome to the alphabet soup. big car. the lincoln logo on the grille was huge and what a new idea, sticking a sort of cut or port in the fender and putting the lincoln logo there. that's never been done before. it could have been carved from a bar of soap. get rid of the waterfall grille and you'd never be able to tell who's car it was.

landrover - whatever

jaguar XK - much better looking in person than in photographs. that oval grille looks simple in pictures, but not so in real life, mostly because it is so low to the ground u don't realy see as much of it. as for the gorgeous nonesense.. they used the word gorgeous 100 times, it was getting tiring.

volvo - S30 concept was cool, but who will pay that much for a focus/mazda 3. C40 also nice, but a pricey convertible. S40 T5 looks like it would be a fun car, but again pricey.

i'm sure i'm forgetting stuff but it's later

oh right the challenger. looked just like a 1970 but with neon lights. and those tires looked huge and cartoonish. car also looked massive. looked like it was twice the weitght of the camaro. of course, it was on a higher stand so that could be a perception issue as well. but my impression is if you lined up both cars on the street, the camaro would spank it down the track and when they got to the twisties, the camaro driver would be having a beer before the challenger driver made it back to the finish line. makes me wonder how challenger concept, which is nothing more than the 1970 car could win an award. there was barely an original thought in there.

cailber was good looking on outisde, but typcial chrysler on the inside. seems to be gm has got them on the interior materials these days - or is that just my gm bias again???

next year i'm going down mid-week, probably a wednesday so it's not so bloody busy and i can linger around some more. will also leave my dad at home. he's been to 3 of them, but he's not as interested anymore. and there bloody well better be some good stuff from cadillac there. next-gen CTS and some sort of fantastic conept.

finally, on way over on windsor transit we past the ren-cen. in the front window was a silver STS-V and the Sixteen. Man that Sixteen is awesome. it does look a little off from one or two angles, but it looked specatcular as we dove past.

i'll just add this to the bottom to see if you actually rad this far. i was thinking about the malibu. it can really be the car that turns chevy around. impala is doing well, but if malibu is as good looking as the talk was earlier, it could be a real winner. got any pictures of what it's supposed to look like??

finally, stopping bursting all those bubbles on the GTO front on C&G!! you constant dose of reality is not helping with their addiction to everything GM!!

good night!