Blake Noble

I think this will shape up to be an excellent soundtrack. My pleasure.

Oh yes. And everything I want to do is right within my reach, provided the yard I get my new seats from lets me make a swap (because what else am I going to do with the current interior after I swap everything out?) and maybe pay a slight difference between cloth and leather with some change. I'll be stuck with this car for a few years to come, might as well make it special. I'm also going to just work my way from the inside out and (maybe) back inside with this car. Knock the interior out, dress the exterior up, and tend to what the engine may need. I don't think I'll go for a set of YearOne's 18" Z/28 reissues. Instead, I think a set of chrome Z06 wheels and tires would look excellent and I could snag a set for under $400 bucks including rubber. I changed the oil a few days ago and the old oil was starting to finally look like dirty engine oil. I didn't really see any of the previous milkiness anymore. Honestly, I really don't know what's going on here. When I brought it home from Jack Burford, oil pressure was sporadically all over the gauge and the engine temprature would reach 210 to 220. Now the oil pressure hangs around 60 and I don't see the temp gauge moving beyond 180. I mentioned that I might be getting a hand in all of this, well, someone in the family knows a guy who is a hell of a body man and mechanic. He'll be assessing the level of damage done to the Cutty's bad paint job and let me know if wet-sanding, buffing, and actually clear coating the car will correct anything. I'll also have him give me a final opinion on the Camaro as well.

Agreed. I had some plans for this car when I bought it, so why not act on them? Things are slowly making a turnaround for me personally. I'm making excellent grades in class, I've managed to dig up some extra cash to spend automotive-wise, and in other news I found a solution for my home recording problems (maybe now I can make some serious tunes that people will actually, you know, listen to lol).

One step at a time. I'm gradually building up my confidence on working on this car. I may also get a hand in doing that job as well. The next few weeks will hold more on the progress of this. My next project is going to be ditching the dingy old cloth seats for some nice leather ones and swapping the taillights out for a set of '93 - '96 style ones. Also not to be forgotten: More on this as progress develops.

Yes, that's a Sabbath reference. Here's one change I made just 15 minutes ago. HD Radio is the shit. The Hurst T-handle shift knob also improved the throw of the shifter over that pathetic leather-covered billard ball. Sorry for the low-res pic. My iPhone is only a 3GS (still better than the 4 IMHO).

Dept. of Eagles is just as brilliant as Grizzly Bear.

Well, I see a big improvement from what you started with. I have never seen cigarette burns in seats that huge before, so the new seats are one good improvement as was getting rid of the mismatched front fascia. By any chance, would one of your next projects be swapping the tan dash out for a black one?

One more thing about the Camry's interior: hooded one-piece instrument clusters are so 1999.

Ah, not really. I just like arguing. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't be a lawyer, but I look like crap in a suit and tie. Plus, I'd rather not dress like it's the day after I died everyday. Here's where we ... mostly agree. I caught that last bit there about the Malibu and I won't completely beat a dead horse. The only real quips I have about the Aura's interior are: The door pull handles. The pull handles are painted with a vinyl coating that has begun to wear off from normal use. It's sort of like some of the late '90s to early '00 model GM pickups you get into and see splotches of black on the steering wheel and dashboard where the same exact material has begun to peel due to temperature and poor adhesion. The fact that the rear interior door handle scallops are not backlit to match the front ones and the rear passenger window controls aren't lit. And that's it. The interior is in fact pretty handsome and has always had a certain German undertone to it that makes me think of VW a little. It isn't what I would call undeniably Teutonic, but you can really tell it's a product of a German-American relationship. I've also always liked how GM applied a nice, woven cloth to the A and D-pillar trim to make each piece match the headliner. I wouldn't mind redoing the Camaro's headliner in the same material in the future (I've always hated rat fur).

Seriously, though, congratulations.

A member of the family owns one of these. Traded a Mini to it, actually. I can sort of see the appeal.

SAmadei's post, I think, can draw this to a close. Well said, sir.

If it isn't an epic failure, it's borderline: !!!TED!!! went to an auto show a few years back and could easily remove trim pieces without any force. Am I the only one who still remembers that? There's a lot of hard plastic used with mediocre textures. The switchgear feels cheep. The gauges have sort of an early '90s S10/Blazer thing going on when they're backlit, especially the tach. Who wants a cheap Timex alarm clock sitting on top of their dashboard? The design looks tall, fat, and flat (from a head-on view). It's also kinda awkward like everything else tall, fat, and flat. I typically see a lot of inconsistent panel gaps IRL. Yes, I have checked out a current-gen Camry in person. When we bought the Aura, we bought the car during all of the "us versus them" hooplah. Quantrell Saturn of Lexington had a Camry sitting out in front of the dealership for demo purposes. I also can't remember the last time I went to Georgetown and didn't park next to one of these things. When I do I sometimes give the car a decent stare-down inside. Well of course. It's Toyota's fanbase you're talking about here, not Honda's. In my case, the family reunion comfort food you would be talking about would be potato salad. I always avoid it and I can think of plenty of bad things to say about it. It's hard to leave anywhere hungry when you were starving to begin with. As for the Camry's "quiet and unassuming" personality/metaphor/stereotype/profile/whatever, well, Ed Gein was considered to be pretty quiet and unassuming before they found out what he was up to and wrapped him up and sent him to the funny farm. I don't trust anything quiet and unassuming. I don't want to be a seat cover. Source? What's so special and unique about it that we haven't seen before? That's the question I'm not getting an answer for. New CTS, GMT-900s, some later Saturn products ... just off of the top of my head since it seems to me like this is more so a question of "Which GM products sold to the press well because of a pretty interior design?"

Someone who works at Advance who actually knows something about cars? All of the AAP, Auto Zone, and O'Reilly's employees in Madison Co. are complete idiots. I had to buy a fuel filter for the Cutlass a few days ago (POS glass filter started leaking everywhere), so I chose to go to Advance for the first time in a few months since Auto Zone recently sold me a set of front brake pads for the Aura when I actually needed the back ones and the two O'Reilly's in this county usually stocks a lot of defective parts from my experience. So anyway, I told the guy at the counter I needed a complete fuel filter for a 1972 Cutlass Supreme since they don't keep the decent metal Mr. Gasket ones on the shelf anywhere. The first thing he asks me is, and I'll swear to this on whatever stack of religious goodbooks you want me to swear on, "Cutlass ... Cutlass? ... Didn't Toyota make that?" I stumble a bit and tell him it's an Olds. Then he locates the part number, walks to the back, and comes back with just the filter without the casing. See where this is going? I won't continue.

Honestly, I'm not expecting much from the Toyota crew. As for Honda, I do expect high quality material and nice fit and finish, but a design so awkward you won't be able to notice. But, I could very well be wrong. I'm not going to strut around and act like I'm 100 percent right about a car I know very little about.

Pretentious aren't we? Very. Perhaps the '12 Malibu will be nipping at the Sonata's heels or eating its lunch. We don't know yet. THE CAR ISN'T ON SALE YET. Let's not dress up for a supreme act of futility here and eagerly play the role of Ms. Cleo, Reggie Boy. Additionally, what do the Sonata's current sales figures have anything to do with how a car that isn't due out for another year will sell? Nothing. If I'm reading your statement correctly, you seem to think the current Camry's interior is superior to the upcoming Malibu's. Good one. Seriously. How about you do me one better and tell me what is so special about the competition's interiors that makes this interior so dated and inferior. Granted, you'll be bitching about an interior you've seen from an awkward angle in a photograph taken by a spy photographer, but still. Go on. I'm in the mood to be entertained. I'm not giving any sort of in-depth analysis because I haven't even seen the damn thing in person. What would be the point? Completely stupid statement, but okay. Whatever.

Ah, I'm not worried about it. I'll just eventually repaint the Cutlass Viking Blue, like this car ... ... And throw a few bucks the Camaro's way. I'll have the Cutty out on Monday to have the driver's side upper seat cushion matched to the rest of the interior. I'll take a photo and show you guys how horrible the paint job is. I'll never go with enamel again. It's already chalking in places, fading from the sun, and every speck of dust and drop of bird$h! stains the color. It doesn't help that a proper clear coat was never applied to the car (something I recently discovered; a BIG thank you to the assholes who painted this car who I should probably sue like hell). $1100? 100k? V6, 5-speed? ... Now I want to get rid of the car again.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think I'll just waste some money on the Camaro. There's a 30th Anniversary car in the junkyard down the road from me. I think I'll swipe the gauges out of it. Maybe. Would that even look right? Anyway, I do think I'll trade my cloth interior in for a leather one, pending I find one in decent shape.

Dude didn't e-mail me back, so ... That's alright. I think I'll pick up a set of Z06 five-spokers for the Camaro instead.

Hence why I posted in it.

So I actually had one small detail wrong about the Sonata (the four-pot isn't blown). It still doesn't change the fact the buying public at large won't know the difference between 180 horsepower or 198. It also doesn't change the fact that that's not a real significant gain. In fact, I had actually forgotten about GM's upcoming family of new four-cylinder engines. I think the Malibu will actually get a 2.5L four-cylinder as its standard engine that may be good for more power than the Sonata's 2.4L. As for performance and hybrid variants, the Malibu will have those as well. I also remember a GM engineer saying in a news article previously that they would like to reintroduce the BAS system on cars, so maybe the Malibu will have a BAS option in addition to a true hybrid model.

At least it bumped the member count up to an even number.

Does anyone else get a Jaguar XJ vibe from the back-end of this car? It looks worlds better than the Sonata.

I see the Caprice name sticking around. Then again, with the proper sheetmetal differences, the Chevelle name would be an excellent choice as well. When I read the information regarding the Chevy sedan in the article, I can't help but to think of the '03 SS concept.

That's an opinion based on photos of a prototype interior. Again, something else I don't get. Someone in the neighborhood picked one up, deep red in color. I had a friend over and his first comment when he saw the car coming down the street was, "Your parents are back in the Aura." For the sake of things, I'll check one out should the next dealership I go to have one on the lot somewhere. But I don't think that will explain much. Again, that's an opinion based on photos of a prototype interior. Wait until you can fondle the dash in person before you write it off as a rehash of the '04 - '07 Malibu interior. I'd expect this car to carry a base price of about $21k, maybe a little bit under that. The Sonata starts at just a slight notch below $20k, but that car has a manual transmission (not that I'm complaining) and only one engine: the 2.4L 198 horsepower turbo four-banger. This Malibu will wind up with the 2.4L Ecotec and that engine has 180 horsepower, naturally aspirated. Who knows? Maybe GM will throw a slightly detuned 2.0L turbo in this car, making it good for 200 horses. It will also have an automatic transmission as standard. Standard equipment should be close. So, the basic Sonata that really would be competing here would be the model with an auto trans. The base price on such a Sonata rings in close to 21k in that case and you're only getting 18 more horsepower compared to the Malibu, not that any of the sheeple who will be buying either car will be able to use that extra power or even know the difference in how it feels. So what exactly is the bargain? Highly unlikely.