z28luvr01

Caprice or 500SEC, as long as you promise to make the 500SEC run on veggie oil. Personally I think all cars should emit exhaust fumes that smell like french fries.

Well, if you can't get what you want from what the insurance company gives you for the Fiesta, I'd consider buying a cheap beater for a few hundred and running around with that until you can get what you really want. I'm with DF, and if you can get another Fiesta, do it since you know you like the car. Those on here who have Cruzes all seem to be happy with them. What about a Fiat 500? (waiting patiently for Sixty8 to tell me it's an overpriced POS ) Sonic isn't that far off.

Bill, I'm so sorry. I know you loved that car, and its final act was saving your life. I'm glad you're OK.

The best excuse I ever heard was when my friend and I went to look at a '95 Taurus for $500 that he was going to use as a beater to keep the miles off his Monte. We get there and the fuse box is literally ripped out from underneath the dash and wires were hanging out everywhere. The owner was trying (and failing) to diagnose the reason for the brake lights not working. His best effort to try to convince my friend to buy it: "Just buy the fu*king car!" I don't think I have to tell you that he didn't buy it.

Eh, beauty's in the eye of the beholder. I've always been a fan of the STS - I like the styling (especially the 08-up refresh) and it kind of fit in as the CTS's bigger, more formal brother. I agree that GM was way too ambitious with the pricing, but that's neither here nor there now as the car is out of production. Frankly it's one of the best used car values out there today.

Well, one thing in favor of doing the head gasket yourself is that it is a Jeep, designed to be repaired and back in service as quickly as possible. I would imagine a longitudinally mounted inline engine is one of the easier configurations to deal with. Pick up a Haynes manual for it at your local AutoZone and see if you can find out how much of a PITA the job would be. Couple of pointers: 1. When you get the head off, check it for warpage (or have it checked) anyway. I'm assuming it's an iron head so it's probably OK, but since you'll have it off, you might as well rather than put the whole thing back together only to find out it was warped after all. 2. Make sure you clean ALL of the old gasket/residue off the mating surfaces of the block and head 3. Torque wrench, torque wrench torque wrench. Find the proper torque rating and tightenng sequence for the head (should be in the Haynes manual), and do not deviate.

I don't think it's necessary to have this thing make record laps around the 'Ring. If it comes to market as is, it's already by far the best looking electric car, ever. If meets or exceeds what the Volt can currently do, and looks this good, they'll sell very one of them. AFA the ATS, I'm sure it's easy enough to drop eAssist into it.

Nice! Glad to hear that things are going pretty smoothly so far. Have you been able to locate a black donor Cherokee? I wonder if seats from a Liberty or Nitro would bolt in

LOL good point. BK - you might want to look underneath for a Power Wheels logo.

Nice find! Any Jeep with the 4.0L I6 will last forever with basic PM. Even if getting it cosmetically perfect doesn't work out, it's the ideal vehicle to keep the Challenger safe in the winter. Lots of luck with it.

And, considering it's a Crown Vic, you're using the term "performance" rather loosely, right?

Isn't that a Suburban/Blazer bumper? I agree about it looking way better. This is a really nice truck save for the color. Hopefully it's not beat to snot. I'd almost want to use this as a base instead, and pull parts off the Mothertruck as needed.

All engines are getting direct injection. I'd expect significant improvements in both power and economy despite the fact that they're keeping the same displacements.

There's probably very little on this car that would actually be of any use for your Corvette. It the interior were in good shape it might be worth a couple of grand. But this really needs to be killed, with fire. And I never thought I'd say that about a Corvette.

Thanks guys!

I think the lineage between the Citation and today goes (roughly) something like this 2.8->3.1->3.4L->3.4L DOHC->Northstar->3.6L The non-DOHC 3.4L eventually spawned the 3.5L and 3.9L The Northstar spawned the Aurora V8 and Shortstar V6. The Northstar itself was redone around 2004-ish, and the revised engine may actually be the basis for the HFV6 family. Or, I could be completely full of it.

I really don't have much of a problem with this. A 4 cylinder engine in a well balanced car can actually be kinda fun to drive. And I personally like the sound of the Ecotec - one of the best 4cyl exhaust notes in the business. To be honest, I could see the V6 dying before the V8. In practice it's just not as efficient as either the 4cyl or V8. For all the kudos GM gets for having a 300hp V6 that get 30mpg highway, they were doing that a long time ago with the LS1. There's no doubt in my mind that with the advances GM has made with its V8s in the 14 years since the first LS1 was dropped into a C5, that they couldn't build a lower displacement V8 that would easily exceed the fuel economy of the current 3.6L while keeping up with the Joneses in terms of horsepower. My only caveat WRT the transition to smaller engines is this: In turbo'd applications where premium is required, the increased cost of operations offsets any fuel economy gains.

I immediately thought of this thread after I flashed #1 this morning to some prick in a 3 series coupe who came within inches of clipping my handlebars with his mirror even though I was as far to the right as I could safely be on an otherwise empty road.

I'm not sure what you mean - it's the same targa-type roof like in the Corvette. The engineers on the progam told me the roof was 31lbs. Not terrible, but it's probably a two man job to get it stowed in the trunk safely. I'd love to find one, even an auto.

I know it's just a prototype, but the beltline and rear fasca are an absolute mess. I'm glad this didn't make the cut.

I swore I'd never go smaller than a Cobalt, but this little runt of a car has come kind of unexplainable pull on me.

What about the Equinox/Terrain, or even the last Saturn Vue (if he doesn't mind owning a dead brand)?

In any event, this is a nicer looking and more SAAB-ish looking vehicle than that other Saab rebadge - the 9-7x. I'd have pushed the 9-6 through and given the 9-7x interior to either the TB or the Envoy.

Would something like this be too far out of your price range?

The post originallly said 3K. He must have changed it. I agree on the wheels. A set of Olds Rally wheels should fix that.