ShadowDog

oooOOOooo, the drAAAmaaa! :gay:

Yeah BBC and CBC and everyone else in the planet is reporting it now. I really liked his early work and his Thriller album. Songs like Black or White were pretty provocative. He may have been nuts, not having the kind of upbringing a normal child would have, but his music was epic.

Ruh Roh.

A friend of mine recently picked up a black G6 GXP coupe with the Street Package. Her husband and I got to talking about the possibility of it having collector status, of course, depending upon how many of them have sold, will sell, or continue to even be built. I weighed the pros and cons and determined that, even with the demise of Pontiac, the car really isn't that much of a high-profile auto that deserves collector status; and that it might as well be a daily driver instead of a garage queen. Any thoughts?

Nope, it sucks. ... almost as much as always finding one of my wife's long hairs in some of the strangest places around the house.

Hmm, unless I've been taught poorly, I grew up understanding the difference between "animals" and "insects". PETA continues to downgrade their organization by upgrading their stupidity.

OOO, I know, let's call it... ...uh, G1 !!!

I certainly haven't been seeing any major discussion here on mainstream basic transportation cars, which is why I asked.

Even in the perfect world, not every car would be RWD with no less than a V6 under the hood. Not every car would have sport-tuned suspension; bright, over-sized wheels, wrapped with rubber bands for tires. Not every car would have hip-hugging and shoulder-bolstered seats for the canyon-carving, four-lane freeways. There will always need to be the class with Aveos and fuel-efficient, practical and inexpensive, entry-level general transportation about the size of a Cobalt. There will always need to be the simple family-mover cross-over that has 'good-enough' acceleration and half-decent technological gizmos with more focus on safety. There will always be cars the purist and fan-boy will scoff at and think was a waste of time designing, engineering and building because it isn't 'cool' enough. People need those kind of cars, and GM needs to have these cars sell in order to provide the purist and fan-boy a performance-based and sporty, 'cool' variant or stand-alone architecture. Every manufacturer has its groaner-mobiles. Not building them would mean shutting out the majority of your consumer-base. Yeah, this is all common sense; however, after what I've been reading, I get the feeling that the only cars people here want are tire-smoking, road-thundering, V8 powered, pant-soiling, performance cars from Chevette to Corvette. It doesn't matter what decade or generation, it isn't going to happen and I wonder why this reality isn't acceptable?

Darned thread ate my edit... anyway... I was going to add that sometimes the worst respect comes with no damage. While in a parking lot a few weeks ago, my wife and I were just leaving when we noticed a multi-month pregnant woman with an infant in her stroller suddenly with a look of despair because some dillhole in a Grand Cherokee parked right up to her Escape with less than a foot for her to get in. It was really hot outside, so my wife and I both immediately thought we should help her. I parked behind the GC and the very appreciative woman allowed me her keys. Even my skinny ass couldn't fit into the driver's side, so while the woman began setting her daughter in her carseat on the passenger side, I crawled over to the driver's side to get it started and cooled down. Unbeknownst to us, a lady had walked up to my wife and, according to her, asked in a snippy tone, "Could you please move your car so I can get out?" My wife said she just smiled and pointed, saying, "As soon as my husband helps move the car of the pregnant lady and her infant you parked up against, sure!" She said the lady darted her head to look at the Escape, slightly sneered her upper lip and got back into her GC. I had no clue she was even there, so I continued to chat it up with the woman about her pregnancy since we have a 21-month old and my wife is due to give birth any second of any minute of any day now. I probably chatted with her for three or four minutes when I heard this car horn next to us and saw the woman in the GC toss her hands up and mouth, "Well?!" I just smiled, nodded and pointed my finger up saying, "Just a minute." We slowly ended our conversation, I backed her Escape out, chatted the woman up a moment while slowly walking back to my car. I had a heck of a time trying to put on my seat-belt and figure out where "Drive" was on my shifter before idling away from the GC. I figure we made the lady wait about 5-6 minutes in all of this. Revenge is rare, but always sweet.

Three particular incidents that chapped my ass: 1) My very first car, okay, an '85 Ford Escort (ha ha); anyway, was painted, lowered, new aluminum wheels, and had a few extra bits'n'pieces for show'n'shine condition. It was in perfect condition, so naturally, I parked in places to prevent the natural order of stupidity from damaging it. Even when parked in the very first stall next to the yellow-curb zone (corner of street) by a stop sign on my driver's side, someone managed to park on my left and press the lower door corner of my fender inward. I figure they did it when attempting to park and took a really bad angle into my car. They must have immediately known they did it and took off because I was only gone for a few minutes. 2) I've had about three paint nicks on each side of my car on the door moldings from those lazy-ass and/or old people whom insist that their door be swung WIDE open to get out of their vehicles. 3) In my Monte Carlo, I was parked just outside a nightclub while waiting for the others to come out. Rather than having to double-park, or force the others to walk many blocks in the freezing cold winter to another parking spot, I was lucky to find a narrow spot to sit in the no-parking zone next to the entrance with my hazards on. I saw some friends on the curb so I left the car running to defrost the interior, got out, locked my door and took my keyfob with me to get back in. I was only twenty-feet away from my car when two, happy-drunk-laughing, middle-age couples came out of the club onto the sidewalk. Apparently one of them thought to admire my car as he walked around and looked at it. I had him in the corner of my eye while talking with my friends. The sunnovabitch had the stones to try my door handle! In surprise, all I could do was yell, "Are you kidding me?!" His response was, "Oh sorry... nice car." His wife had a kind of shocked look on her face while the other couple just laughed at their friend. Now, the only question is, if the car hadn't been running, do you think he'd have tried to open the door?

I enjoy virtually all racing forms, NASCAR included. It's just racing. Why is it that there must be a technological benefit from racing? There's other reasons for it all than that. The stubborn rarely poke their heads out from this bias. It's useful to manufacturers predominantly as marketing where millions of viewers are locked in hours on end to a manufacturer commercial. Toyota didn't take a gamble with jumping into the mix of manufacturers, and they contribute a heckuva lot more than just money. They're certainly receiving the benefits from it. Besides this, there is a lot of parts engineering meant to develop components for sustained 9k+ RPM racing. Many of these parts came from the manufacturer, or had development teams and engineers directly from the manufacturers to support the racing teams. One of the main reasons you would never see a fuel-injected engine in NASCAR is simply because a carb-engine, fuel and electrical system are more easily scrutinized to help prevent for too much cheating among the teams. What did the sanctioning body do when F1 teams continually violated the no-traction-control rule? They gave in. That was disappointing. Too much technology and too little resources to scrutinize all of the software and coding ... wait a second, and we're talking about cars and racing here? With software and coding? What happened to just strapping in, turning on the engine and going fast by manual control? That's NASCAR's advantage. Understandably, GM is in a position when they have to consider their expenses and race funding altogether. I can only imagine that dramatic changes are to come. I guess we'll see how it all develops for the future of racing in general.

I see half a sports car and half a hearse.

Not only how, but what. For their test, they wrung the piss out of the Prius and just had the M3 play keep-up. Nobody buys a Prius to drive it like a race car.

DF, you're one crafty Mo-Fo. I'm too lazy to requisition a new office chair. The last time that happened I ended up with one with arm rests that were painfully uncomfortable on my elbows. I traded it with another rookie for his that was the same as the one that broke on me. Now. a wheel has been falling out of one of the legs for over a year because it's somehow missing the bushing insert that is meant to be permanently part of the leg. I fixed it once by hammering in two steel wedges on either side of the wheel shaft, but they eventually worked loose. Just a couple of days ago I screwed in two drywall screws through the side of the leg against the notches in the shaft and it seems to be holding like new again. I'm probably the only guy with a set of tools in a drawer of the desk. Sometimes I feel like I probably spend more time fixing other people's crap than I do work!

Interesting pics, but I'll hold out until we see what new images Hubble sends to us. Those are the kind of pics I love to look at. Even as interesting as they are, there's still a heckuva lot left to explore on our own planet to begin betterment of our species, our society and our planet as a whole. The answers aren't out there, but right in front of our faces and in our hearts. Our planet will just be another floating rock in nothing unless we focus more on what it will take to make things better and equal for all. I'll save what I really think for a different thread. This one is meant to show some technological and natural marvels and they are appreciated.

But then, all he'd see is 'black' around him... OH THE HORROR OF HIS WORLD! I pity the old fart. Too old to learn anything outside of is sad, stupid existence.

All good points and all worth exploring. The Quad 4 had promise, if not for its reliability issues. Same goes for that lovely VIN "X" 3.4L - GMs most expensive engine development at its time. I still miss the feel of that engine, despite it being mated to a lousy 4T60-E / 65-E automatic. Which leads me to your last point when it concerns the V6 lineup... "I would have had a manual tranny availalbe (PERIOD)!" That fact alone cheesed me off during my teen years.

Sorry, just a poor choice of words on my part. Oldsmoboi narrowed things down a lot with his comment for which I tend to agree with. Eh... I'm sure it's all looked at like sticks-n-stones. Critical feedback is easy for anyone to dish out.

Big impact? Certainly. But there is a big difference between downsizing and surviving.

It makes me wonder why some choose such high-risk investments in the first place. "Ooo, cheap cheap, buy buy!"

So, would this mean they will be US-based dealership network only? That doesn't sound too promising.

I get the feeling more people spend more time thinking about what to eat for breakfast than the name of a car. I also get the feeling Jack and Jill Consumer will think the name is just fine.

I'm not questioning the right to say anything, but one person's viewpoint rarely reflects the will of a nation or consumer-base. The manner in which some choose to offer their viewpoint also plays a big role in whether they will actually have an audience other than the echo of their own words in a garbage can.

I think because it has been taken out of context in today's world when it was originally applied to the post-war era. This came up in another article here a few weeks ago.