trinacriabob

The original rendition works better for me. This dude is sort of scary looking. However, WV cloaked in fall colors is anything but scary.

I do not like Lexus. Not my thing. However, this is, at the very least, interesting ... Lexus's equivalent of the Smart Car. Hopefully, there's a nifty low price to match its size. I have driven Smart Cars about 5 or 6 times ... as rentals in Europe. Twice they were a "For Four" (better) and the remainder of the time they were the two-seaters. Let me tell you, if you have one small suitcase and a small backpack or personal item, there is nothing finer for tooling around Sicily or making your way through the small streets of Lisbon, and all the better with a (nevertheless sh!tty) automatic trans. While the Smart's trans is dismal, the ride is surprisingly okay for being so damn small. They feel like slightly bigger cars, until a truck goes whizzing by you in the adjacent lane on the highway! To own one would be a NO.

Chrysler 300, right? I rented one. I liked it. I didn't love it. I expected it to be a much more refined experience than the Charger, to differentiate itself. It wasn't. It was all in the sheet metal, seating, and shape and finishes in the dash. I know I've reviewed one here. I certainly think they are much easier on the eye at the end of their run than what the initial (now a "gang banger") version looks like. Got to be careful with the 300, too. It really needs toned down colors, wheels, options, and such to keep it classy. It can go pimpy real fast. This is my idea of nice as far a 300 goes. Yes, folks, L.A. does have an ugly side ... or two ... or three. That would be in the revitalized arts district right next to the concrete culvert that is the L.A. River.

I read that the Italian government "officially" collapsed. I don't exactly know what it means. But is it any surprise, given that they've changed presidents and prime ministers as frequently as normal people change their underwear? Sad. You put the synergistic force of a bunch of pompous Italian bureaucrats who like to hear themselves talk in one big room and you expect something to get done?

I cannot. I think that, right now, a CT6 with a 3.6 would be the closest thing to a GM heirloom. I know that it would be wonderful for about 7 years and then give me fits with all the expensive gadgetry that will go sideways every other month after that.

Cadillac will need to overhaul its design vocabulary sooner than later. It did a formidable job of this, having come from trunks and deck lids that were too long, fins, and engines with over 400 cubic inches.* However, Cadillac's current styling is etched in consumers' heads as "oh, it's a Cadillac," which is not necessarily a bad thing (thinking of the CT6 et. al.) It will still need to reinvent its own wheel. * I think I told you all about a black woman named Velma I worked with as a teen who had this beautiful Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was a '78. Of the '77/'78/'79 grouping, the '78 was the best looking. Hers was the extra cost Cerise Firemist Metallic with a burgundy landau and a burgundy interior. Too bad it had wire wheels instead of some more toned down Cadillac alloys. I told her she had a 425 under the hood and showed her some features on her car. I also helped this other lady in the office buy a smaller Cutlass Supreme coupe instead of a Monte Carlo coupe and she was real happy with it. These ladies liked me, for some reason. We had one of those hippiesh office to office lunch vendors working out of some wicker basket who came around daily and she was from Germany. They howled at my German accent impersonation. Everybody was given carte blanche to be a little crazy in SoCal. Those were the days, baby. Whereas I couldn't tie break between which GM car I wanted in the past, I am now hard pressed to find a GM car I want to own. I am not a happy camper in this regard.

It was supposed to be released in 2020. Now, the release date is 2021. This means it should be in the showrooms in late 2020, just a little over a year from now. It (probably) is going to be built at the Brampton, Ontario, Canada plant. That's a good thing! Canadians built my current and last car! Mum is the word. Complete silence. Any ideas as to when we will see what the next-gen Charger is going to look like inside and out? By the end of this year? As a Christmas present? I'm frustrated. When a Malibu LT with a 1.5 L (90 c.i.) start-stop turbo assisted L4 would sticker for $26K and a Charger SRT with a 292 hp very familiar Pentastar 3.5 L V6, along with loads more room and substance, stickers for around $29.9K, my loyalty to GM wanes and the Charger it is. I just hope I like the next one because my current car doesn't even have 100,000 miles on it and is just "broken in" ... well, not quite.

Circular vents really depend on the overall dash design. On the venerable '76 Cutlass Supreme, they looked great. On the '04 to '07 Pontiac Grand Prix, they really looked great. Loved that dash board, except for the orange back lighting and the low build quality of the materials. I think it has to do with the shape of the dash AND how the circular vents are distributed and placed across the dash.

Spot on. It said Olds 88 all the way. I'm guessing those were 350 powered. Most of them. I don't think that hood design lasted very long on the LeSabres and Parks of that era. We had a family friend who had a triple burgundy Park Avenue coupe, one of the first and with an oversized rear quarter window, that he cursed up and down. Mechanically okay, but it nickel and dimed him with so many ancillary things going so wrong so early. I believe he kept it until he passed away. 'This (whatever) went out on the Buick. I took it to the dealer. You know how much they wanted for this stupid piece? Can you believe that?' Yes, he was Italian. I saw a bunch of good reviews for these and then a couple of unflattering ones. I know someone who has one - low $ 30K --- 4 cyl. and no AWD. I sat in it. Sits too low for my taste and visibility out the back is challenging. I also don't like the three circular vents in the middle of the dash. Are these based on already familiar architecture? Any ties to the Optima and/or Kia engines? If so, it makes it less of a "first year" wild card.

The Boeing 737-Max situation is so dire. It's as if we've forgotten. This makes the teething problems of other commercial aircraft seem like child's play. Thinking back, I've actually flown on one. It was on a Southwest leg from Denver to L.A. It even had to be deiced. Once it got going, it majestically climbed up over the Front Range with negligible turbulence and continued on for a smooth flight to L.A. I thought this was a joke, but it's true. Southwest Airlines will soon cease flights to EWR (Newark). They will consolidate their New York flights into LGA (LaGuardia). I didn't read whether or not Islip (Long Island) would be affected but their dropping out of Newark does not make me happy. It's easier to use than are LGA or JFK if you are only flying domestically. I see part first-gen Riviera and part early 70s Olds 88. I don't see any Pontiac in the mix and I certainly don't see any Chevrolet.

Economic downturn? I like to look at real estate sites. There are already residential properties (not the mansions Robin Leach would tour) in California, Washington state, et. al. that are showing "reduced" in their prices. We've only seen this recently. We certainly haven't seen this in a long time. I would agree that there is a downturn coming.

Here's my trivia on this. The '75s and 76s came standard with the 4.1 liter 250 ci L6. I've seen a couple. Mostly in the '75s. Advertised for $3,999 and with no air. I'd have taken one off their hands. Just for '77, the 3.8 liter 231 ci V6 was standard. It was odd firing and I wish they had never put them in there. Just say I came across the big Cutty like these with the inline 6, I'd gladly have kept it. How can you destroy a Chevy inline 6? It's not easy. On the other hand, Regal/Century used the odd firing 3.8 liter 231 V6 in '75, '76, and '77. And it was unfortunate to see a rare and beautiful Regal S/R coupe with the trestle shifter between the buckets sometimes powered by one. I didn't have a problem with 3.8s from 1978 on, when the crankshaft revision made for smooth idling and an inherently more durable engine. I also feel that the Regal/Century should have always had the 260 V8 option if the LeMans/Grand LeMans always had it in those same years. That made no sense. Pontiac had something like 5 engine choices for the slower selling vehicle among GM's opera windowed coupes.

On a better note, these were the days! Oh yes they were! One of Detroit's finest moments ... and so perfectly timed for our bicentennial year. Haha ... from the UK? I think NOT.

No one saying anything about the Jeffrey Epstein thing? What a thing to wake up to upon turning on the computer. But it doesn't surprise me. He was living beyond large for too long a time and it caught up with him. Now, of course, they have to do an inquest as to what happened to him and the protocols around that. It looks fairly obvious to me. At any rate, this circus will continue as many will now come forward, perhaps with more ease and it will get a lot of air and media time, which I will not be watching or following. Within the last 20 years, Trump, in his glad handing and glib style, said Epstein was a 'great guy' and that they had similar tastes in women, and he even mentioned that he tended to like them on the young side. This would all still be bad. I just wonder how much "less bad" it would be if this dude hadn't dipped below the age of majority. In a couple of photos of him I saw, he looked suitable to be cast for the role of a turtle neck wearing, wife swapping husband from some bad 70's movie filmed in, you guessed it, the Hollywood Hills. What a horrendous week - El Paso, Dayton, Epstein, and God knows what else. How am I supposed to even think about cars?

Why the hell not? The era of the Cutlass Supreme, Greg Brady and Marcia Brady hair, and this! "Satisfaction ... ... came in a chain reaction"

@dfelt Love that convertible GTO you posted. There is still a group of dealerships named DOUG up in Lynnwood? Haha. Does he have a last name or is this like a Cher joke? Even Cal Worthington could do better than that. Never mind Cal Worthington. I have been seeing a lot of base Dodge Chargers in black/black. You can only get black cloth seats on the base model. The black makes them look more trim though I have not owned dark colored cars and prefer not to. The white/black Charger conundrum is analogous to "do this outfit make me look fat?" You wouldn't believe the discounts on current non-specialty Chargers. Wow.

On the plus side, after decades, it looks like a completely different car yet still identifiable enough as a domestic and a Corvette. It would be nice to see a cut-away showing the placement of the engine and how it meshes with the transmission.

"Laptop left open" look ... nah. And the ridge segregating the only other passenger in the car is too much. I can only hope that the "laptop left open" look does not appear on the 2021 Charger. It's everywhere these days.

Twizzlers are "dangerous." Twizzlers on sale are even more so.

For my parents and relatives, comparatively speaking, that would be early. I only did it to know if I had much in the way of input from countries and regions other than the one my parents come from ... and I don't. I most definitely did not do it to trace relatives. For the last 4 generations, I know they all came from within a very tight geographic radius and knowing that is good enough for me.

First, considering Tacoma WA has been a much maligned city that has only recently been looked at for a renaissance because Seattle has become so congested and expensive, I have to snicker when I see a Toyota Tacoma and that Toyota named a truck that. Meh. It sounds good. It's an alliteration. I wouldn't say I'm ashamed of liking this car, but if I had to putt around in an econobox, I'd putt around in a Hyundai Accent. When I did rent one, I was surprised how much I liked it. I got in synch with it right away. Anytime I think of an old Mercedes, I think of the ones my first-gen German-American childhood friends' parents hung onto for eternity and kept in mint condition ... or Irma Bunt.

I always look for this type of information when I read biographies about interesting or important people. In the U.S., only people in the most ethnic and diverse metro areas or who are well traveled tend to tune into this. I'm sure it's much more prevalent in Canada, especially in Toronto and Montreal. There, it's almost reflexive to do it. I think it's good. In most of America, it's considered weird ... and maybe even in Canada's prairie provinces. Anyone who thinks it's weird is probably a hick in my book. Then, why are people interested in Ancestry-dot-com and 23 and Me all of a sudden? It's because people want to know "what they're made of."

What? Be bold. Speak up.

@oldshurst442 I hope you're not a fan of Montrealer Gino Vannelli. Haha ... as '80s as they came! Actually, he's a McGill grad, as is William Shatner. That's impressive. I found it! Summer of '96 and putting around in a rented Peugeot econobox in Portugal's Algarve ... (I believe it's Alex Natale and not Bob Marley)

@dfelt Thank you ... thank you. I love it. So, then, Snohomish and Pierce Counties are in on the deal. Good to see it might eventually reach Everett and Tacoma, respectively. I'm having trouble envisioning light rail to Issaquah, to the base of the "Issaquah Alps." You'd think NIMBY. I remember misty, foggy mornings having breakfast when there were empty fields near the Bob's Big Boy that was once there. It was amazing to ride it from Downtown (Westlake station) to the new University of Washington station in all of about 6 minutes. In gridlock, driving that can take 36 ... or 46 minutes. Also, Fife is a great name for a dog!