SAmadei

Looks like a sweet car. I think Lamar has a slightly newer one... a 2001, IIRC. As for smart decision, even though it is 9 years old, it only has 71K, so that's like having a 5~6 year old car. I think the big question here is how much the car will cost. The best place to poke around for opinions and troubles would be the BonnevilleForum.com. One specific complaint I am aware of is that some of these were prone to water leakage in the front... similar to the 2004 GP's. Otherwise, I have a 1999 Bonne, and its held up well to 196K so far. The next gen Bonne was much improved over the pre-2000 cars. I've been quite happy with the Series III supercharged 3.8 (in the '04 GP Comp-G). At 71K, I would suggest changing the supercharger oil if you get it, as it can be overlooked. Being that you are a South Jersey guy, IIRC, there is a 2001 in the local pick-a-part, if you needed any hard to get parts. PM me for the place.

And regardless of some folks' diatribes about rebadges, Pontiac was GM's third highest seller. To kill that, simply is absurd... when SAAB, Saturn, Hummer, Buick, Cadillac all sell less, they should have gone first... the niche plan of a G8/Solstice only Pontiac was fine with me. I don't care if GM is government owned or controlled. They already demonstrated stupicidial actions from the board. A chapter 7 or 11 would give someone (Penske, maybe) the chance to fix things properly. In any case, with the discontinuation of the G8, I'm out of the GM buyer demographic. With the discontinuation of Pontiac ( and still annoyed with the loss of Olds), I will be boycotting the purchases of new GM product while a Pontiac is not available for purchase. Used GM cars are still possible... at least until they are boring or too small to get in to. Its sad, but the entire US car industry is headed to oblivion. At least, unlike 99.9% of Americans, I can still build my own car from nearly scratch.

You definitely mean shoes, like on the rear of the car? Rear shoes usually don't make noticeable noise due the drum blocking/absorbing the noise. The front uses pads, which wear out five times as fast, and bad or improperly installed pads can definitely make noise. I wanted to get this clarification, as the suggestions will be very different depending on it being shoes or pads, and some people use the terms interchangeably.

I really prefer the Goodyear Assurance Tripletreds. Its a bit noisier than the Comfortreds, but I think the wet, dry and snow handling would make you happy. I don't notice the noise at all. I really have to work to get my tires loose, even in the wet or snow, and I've gotten crazy life from the tires... they are rated to go 80K, but one of my tires was still good at over 100K. My GF put these on her Corolla after the somewhat worn OEM tires hit some standing water and nearly put the car into a guardrail... the new tires are like night and day. The car can virtually drive across a lake now. I realize you are looking for comfort and quiet, but I really feel the difference is negligible.

I wonder what country that is... doesn't look like North America. Also, the speedo looks like km/h, so they're not really going that fast. It's certainly quick... but I don't like that they used the same footage over and over. There are so many of these old B-bods in the 11s and 10s that its no longer that unusual.

When they are predicting 157,126 Sparks 4.5 years from now, it fails my "numbers pulled out of the rectum" test.

Looking at the photos, I'm impressed how well it held up. The roof looks pretty straight... looks like the driver's door would even open and close. Looks like the third member didn't move. Granted, who knows how hard the hit was, but that looks pretty hard to have basically stopped at the rear wheels. Still sucks though. Wouldn't have happened if GM made a Firebird! JK ;-)

I'm not as impressed. With the ability to disperse the battery weight and power any wheel, I'm disappointed that its FWD. The Volt, IMHO, needs to be more akin to the ideas Tesla motors has, and not a EpII with batteries. With the whole cost issue, I fear the Volt will not lead to a craze. The idea of electric cars is like public transportation... we're all for other people using it. Oddly, as someone who loved his electric golf cart as a kid, I'd love to have a modern, quicker version. The Volt just doesn't thrill me, however.

IMHO, most of GM's cupholders are awful, and I still need to hold my beverage and drive.

LOL... the second coming of Franco-American Motors.

Which isn't such a bad idea... doing the project in stages so you could get the parts that become obsolete fastest last. Because the actual electric motors are pretty much as developed as they are going to get. Perhaps, you could work on getting a controller and the electric motor installed... but power it with a diesel with a huge generator. This would require less batteries (just a couple lead acids as a buffer), and likely would still be more fuel efficient that the drivetrain you are replacing. When the batteries get cheaper, dump the diesel/generator combo or leave it as a range extender.

As I've seriously looked into this, I feel that making an homemade electric vehicle is still too impractical for two reasons... 1. You can't afford the 6600 Li ion batteries, so you are saddled with a overweight pile of cheap, lead acid batteries. At the time, I was still looking at $40K in Li ion batteries. 2. There are no easy regenerative braking systems for the homebrew set. Sure, you can build an electric vehicle... in fact, I really like the pickup that was built with a big wing on top of solar cells, to help extend its range... but in the end, it will either have little range or will be too slow for regular use. I would have expected more parts to be floating around now that the Prius has been around for 5+ years. That said, you may have different expectations, so don't let me dissuade you.

Very good salad bar. Ruby's are usually very good or very bad... depending on location. Barely between restaurant and fast food, I really have been hooked on Five Guys burgers lately.

I would not recommend any change at this time. I'm not convinced the DexCool thing is over with, but I also agree that using green is not a solution. I prefer the Prestone yellow that is compatible with both. I hate being locked into one antifreeze brand, but as it turns out, its cheaper than real DexCool. Of course, I don't have a lot of '00-'09 cars to experiment on... but I'm watching the 2004 GP like a hawk. At the first sign of nastiness, its going yellow.

GM does not own the Pontiac or BPG dealerships to sell. So, in actuallity, GM is selling the dealer contracts/licensing. If GM sold Pontiac, the dealers would have the option to stay with the new buyer or leave. Having a non-GM brand selling at a BPG dealer is nothing new... a lot of BPG dealers are combined with non-GM brands. My local BPG dealer also has Mitsubishi. Don't matter. Killing Pontiac will be a death sentence for 90% of the remaining Buick-GMC dealers unless they get a new, non-GM brand. That's how our local Olds dealer survived... now they are BMW-Honda.

Neither do I. Waldron wants to license cars... so I figured he wants to continue bringing G8s in. Perhaps G5s, as well, since they are virtually identical to Cobalts. I thought it would be interesting if Waldron inherited the Vibe and its contract with Toyota.

Not sure what you are saying here... G6 is outselling the G6? ;-) I can contort myself into the G5/G6 and Malibu, but I am clearly not comfortable. Driving the car is likely to lower my opinion of the car. Does the UAW charge more per hour to built Pontiacs? Does the split grill require a licensing fee to be sent to BMW? Does the use of the arrowhead emblem cost more due to them being produced by native Americans? How the hell does Pontiac not make a profit selling 95% of the same car as Chevy or Buick on the same assembly line? The only thing I can see is marketing, but GM ain't doing much of that, anyway. GM needs to fix its labor and pension costs before anything. Then they need to start selling Chevys at a loss to get sales back from the imports. It doesn't matter. GM as a whole is poisoned, and is set to be disassembled at the junkyard. Not selling Pontiac just shows that GM management is spiteful.

I started a pest control business that specializes in catching those little Geico google-eyed money bundles. ;-) I was already stocked up on personal and undone project supplies before the employment stopped... so I'm catching up on the cheap. Not really cutting back, just using up the stash of food and parts.

I'm not so sure that rust is that big of a deal with rotors, except appearance-wise. The bottom line is that rotors (even expensive ones like my cryo-treated Power Slots) rust fast. They heat cycle so much you can't help it. It's the same with exhaust... you need special coatings otherwise they rust... fast. And generally you don't get these on consumer-grade automobiles. On rotors, you can't really coat them, otherwise it wears off or affects the cooling process. It also sounds like they cut the rotors pretty aggressively. To be honest, I've stopped cutting my rotors, because the results are too thin and warp quickly. Unless the rotors are warped or seriously uneven, which I haven't seen in a while, I just put the new pads without doing anything to the rotors. On that, I'm still getting satisfactory braking performance, sound, vibration and wear. I am beginning to think that cutting rotors, while occasionally justified, is generally just something mechanics try to sell us on. Same as wheel alignment. My Bonne has 200K on it, and the alignment is untouched... yet I've gotten incredibly long tire wear. Of course, I don't run over curbs. Just my 0.02.

And you're on your second set of rotors? Rotors should last a lot longer than 25K miles (41000kms). I would be afraid that they were damaged before being installed, the lug nuts are seriously overtightened or maybe something is rubbing badly. Or you could be riding the brake. ;-) I usually get about two brake changes out of rotors... 40K miles on pads, 80K miles on rotors.

What car is this? Mileage? Details, etc? In my experience, I agree with Ocnblu, its rotors. And replacement rotors are notorious for being cheap, so I always buy quality ones. In my experience, one thing about warped rotors is that they will vibrate more as they heat up.

I swear I see 4 G5s to every Cobalt... but then at the junkyard I see 4 Cavaliers for every Sunfire... and the sales numbers seem to bear this out... so I have to dismiss my seeing of more G5s and G6s as selective automotive ogling. The more I see the Malibu, the less I think of it. It just fades in with everything else... which is what the sheeple want.

Cadillac was trying to offer a performance car at the time? Not really. I drove the 300M... Nice styling and gauges. I'd rather have a Cadillac. The guy who owned it had a long history of Cadillacs, and only bought the 300M because his business was failing and Cadillac wouldn't give him credit. OTOH, one can compare Yugos to Cadillacs. Apples and Oranges. Looks like a Dodge truck to me, call it a D-100 or a Ram, a rose by any other name.... Where is the cross-hair grille on the Polara? The Aspen? The original Charger? Stealing from their truck line. IMHO, it could have stayed there. I'm not accusing Dodge of a crime, only of using something from another source. People have been stealing ideas for millenia. You can say Pontiac stole it from BMW... but of course BMW was barely heard of when Pontiac started using the split grill. Did you not read _MY_ post? I said that the Neon was worthy, but had reliability problems. I give the LX credit. I give the Viper lots of credit, but I doubt the Viper shares many garages with other Dodges, unless its a Ram or a vintage musclecar. Remember, we are talking dilution here. The cloud cars and the cab forward cars were all shared amongst Dodge, Chrysler, Plymouth AND Eagle... and did not differentiated. I know my cars pretty well, and I have to drive up close to the cloud cars to tell one from another. I have my "1990s Cloud Car Spotter's Guide" in the glovebox just for such a reason. ;-) Capable handling in a large car... uh, the 1992 Bonne SSEi is pretty capable. Cab-forward... yes, just like Chrysler had... and the great cab-forward experiment lasted one model revision. The cab-forward look wasn't even given to the mid-sized Dodge to give them family resemblance. Dilution. Plastic is plastic. Takes an engineer a week to make a new mold. When everybody shares a roof line and door lines, its dilution. The Bonne and Grand Prix had more than just plastic. Unfortunately, the cars look kinda plain without the cladding... but that's because GM was designing platforms for Avis (with apologees to Moltar/Cubical for stealing his line... again). So please list... in detail... the differences between the Dodge Neon and the Plymouth Neon. First, its not brand-specific. That's like Chevy suddenly having GXPs or GS Stage 1s. Second... Caliber SRT-4. Diluted. I would argue the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 is diluted, as well... but going full bore against one with the Caprice on the freeway demonstrated it was NO joke. However, I feel like trucks are not "Street Racing Technology"... whereas some trucks might be "Super Sports". I agree, however, that SS is diluted by sticker-only upgrades. I know that. But we're talking design language... and one has to play devil's advocate. In any case, the Challenger _was_ shown off with the cross-hair grill and could have gone to production with it, to help tie in a brand identity, history-be-damned. In 1970, however, the old Challenger egg-crate grill was fine to have on most of the other Dodges. Of course not. Someone has a opinion that clashes with yours, they must be brain damaged or illiterate, right. Well, I have my opinion, you have yours. Dodge, Chrysler, Buick... all as diluted or more than Pontiac was. Maybe. Keep in mind, historically, I _am_ a Buick fan... so I talk Buicks with other people who have then, strangers or not. I have never found one who was into them as I was, unless they had something really kick-ass, like a GS or a GN. OTOH, to my surprise, I have had people approach me (remember, I have a build that dwarves football players and usually, I 'm wearing scrappy clothes or have mussed up hair. I am the one people usually avoid.) on tens of occasions and cheer on the Pontiac I had... regardless of condition or generic-ness. Edit: I swear this auto correction is inserting garbage into my typing. Ugh.

There was. Hurst cars came with a specific Gold and White two-tone color. DeLorean was a Duesy fan, so he stole the J, SJ and SSJ from them. The long nose and big chrome grill are also Duesy cues.

I have advocated bringing the longer Statesman over as a Buick, to give them a flagship, but not a performance version. A Holden-built Zeta GN/GNX would get Cadillac's panties in a bunch, stealing sales from the vaulted CTS... and a LaCrosse/Lucerne based GN/GNX would get the GN/GNX faithful rioting in the streets. OTOH, I love some of the other ideas posted here about Confederated Motors... Saturn/Saab/Pontiac/Holden. I think that if those brands were managed independantly like in GM's heyday, they could become world beaters. Sure... here's the platform you need to use. Here is the engines and transmissions you should use. Now design an exterior and interior that suits your market and tweak the mechanicals to taste. You get run slightly in the red while getting on your feet... 7 or 8 years... after that, if you die, you die for real. I know GM does not what the competition, because they aren't competitive as is... but the common enemy are the imports. I would love to see GM's abandoned children beat the ill-managed parent at its own game. But its a dream.