Blake Noble

Yes, and please sticky the results thread. Thanks Camino.

Everyone, for some reason, Mr. Gizhost's chop was not among those in the voting thread. Not wanting to make Gizhost feel as if his efforts were in vain, we have extended our apologies to him and we would like to take this opportunity to give him an honorable mention in this post. Thank you so much for entering Gizhost and we hope that this error does not deter you from creating any future entries.

Deadline extended to the end of the month. Voting will be underway in January.

What is there to worry about? Seriously.

+1

Be afraid. Very, very afraid. Bahahahahahahaha!

I've already posted the results for the last Photoshop competition. The sketching competition is still open, though. Maybe we should extend the deadline until the end of the month and let the voting run next month?

I'm going ahead and shutting this down, even though I can't lock the thread. Results coming in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...

And the winners are... 1st Place Dodgefan (19 pts) 2nd & 3rd Place MRDETROITMETAL (16 pts) Congratulations to Dodgefan for another victory in our Choppin' Competitions with his modified Buick Riviera concept! Stay tuned for the next Competition ... :wink:

Don't want to sound, ya know, greedy ... but I think we're going to need a little yes?

Same $h!, different thread. It's vanilla now.

"And All That Could Have Been" has to be one of my favorite songs from NIN. I've found such an incredible amount of personal meaning in the lyrics. When I had first listened to it at someone else's house, I recall it being the first time in a long time I had ever listened to a song and it's lyrics and really felt as if the song was speaking directly to me.

That's a very nice Syclone. If I didn't find a regular cab truck completely useless to me, I would be considering one of those as well. Now the Typhoon, though ... that's another story.

Consider Alpha's substantially lighter weight, and the 3.0L looks pretty enticing. The 3.6L would be used in mid-level models. :AH-HA_wink:

What to replace the Sonoma with ... hmmm ... http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/953009909.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/ctd/959443844.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/961876873.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/962837096.html http://louisville.craigslist.org/cto/936370571.html http://louisville.craigslist.org/cto/942771317.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/963706345.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/963592794.html http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/963386325.html Much like myself, my options are slightly bi-polar (although admittedly I am leaning towards seriously buying a 3er or 5er). In any case, when I do finally purchase the replacement for my truck, it will not cost too much. I have to keep paying for the Cutlass and the money I've used to fix it. I know for a fact the Sonoma will not suffice to get me through my four years of college. Something new on it breaks just about every other week and I've grown tired of repairing it. The repair list grows larger and longer constantly it seems. I mean, the engine and transmission are mostly fine, but interior bits and pieces are breaking, cracking, and falling off, and other people have beat the exterior to $h!. The gauges sometimes work, sometimes they don't. I'm almost convinced that the driver's side door, which has been repaired once already, is going to fall off of the hinges right as I'm driving down the interstate.

I believe we need a little love for NIN in here, just because I said so.

The 3.0L sounds like a good base engine for an Alpha Camaro, I think.

I'll just go ahead and say that I think it would be nice for us to take turns handling all aspects of the artist showcase forums. PM me with your thoughts Dodgefan.

Well, I most certainly wouldn't mind doing it. Just choose if you guys would rather have Dodgefan or me take control of things. I know I would figure out a way to overhaul the judging, though.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Elantra either. It's an epitome of very bad styling cues taken from a host of indifferently designed cars. But, as Dodgefan said, to each his own. If I were in the market for a compact car, either the Mazda 3 5-door or the Saturn Astra 3-door would be calling my name, in black and with a manual transmission of course. (The Cobalt SS Turbo would be on that list too, if the price is right.) I'm not really much for new cars, or front-drive cars, but I do appreciate a fun-to-drive small car and wouldn't totally write one off of my list, if I could buy it exactly the way I want it.

I had begun to wonder what was going on with you, PCS. Good to hear everything is all sound. +1

It's quite hard to decide on who I want to direct my frustration at. Do I put the blame on the UAW? Do I put the blame on Mr. McConnell and his band of miscreants in the Senate? Both do have their share of the fault to take. And although Bush has stated he does not want to take away a chunk of the 700 billion in TARP funding to aid the Big 3, I think it's in his best interest if he does so. If GM, Ford, and/or Chrysler go down, it would only fuel the downward spiral the economy has been following for what seems to be an age now. We're dangerously flirting with an economic depression here. Maybe I should get out of the United States by next year and see if things are better in Europe.

I just wanted to throw this quote out there as well. This was said by Ross Perot in 1988, who was the CEO of EDS which GM, under Roger B. Smith's leadership, attempted to "merge" with. It is in regards to GM's management and why EDS wasn't helping them successfully challenge and overtake the Japanese competition. "My question is: Why haven't we unleashed their potential? The answer is: the General Motors system. It's like a blanket of fog that keeps these people from doing what they know needs to be done. I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get a committee on snakes, and then you discuss it for a couple of years. The most likely course of action is -- nothing. You figure, the snake hasn't bitten anybody yet, so you just let him crawl around on the factory floor. We need to build an environment where the first guy who sees the snake kills it." Things might have changed over the past few years as Wagoner and Co. tried to return the company to profitability, but honestly, I still think that this particular kind of thinking is partially to mostly still in place at GM, and it's that way of thinking that will do GM in.

Roger B. Smith. There isn't a whole lot more to say, other than just explaining the reasons why I believe it was this man and his actions as CEO at GM that has lead us up to seeing GM in the condition it is in today. The business model that he tried to put into place at GM during his tenure to try replace the Alfred Sloan business model (which, in reality didn't need much more than a few revisions to bring it up to speed) was a failed one even before it had a chance to completely prove itself. It is because of this man and his decisions that GM eventually would wind up losing $2,000 dollars on every car it was producing. And that's just for starters. I know GM had already been slightly damaged from the few rough patches the company experienced in the 1970s, before he came online as the "big wig" in charge of the whole game, but he only aggravated and made those damages worse, as well as creating new problems for GM to face. I've said it before in the past and I'll say it again, this man should have never been CEO at General Motors. If only we could turn back the hands of time ...

And perhaps make the performance trim GNX to boot?