Blake Noble

Chalk that up to the piss poor build quality of the '97 to '03 F-Series trucks where everything feels like its made out of paper mache glued together with old dog turds. The interior plastics certainly felt emaciated. "Chintzy" would be one way to put it, "cheap" would be another. I'm going to say to hell with politeness and mildness and say "$h!ty."

The technology behind this truck is certainly impressive. In fact, it's what I hoped GM would do with their new generation big pickups, but alas, GM stuck with traditionalism and conservatism. While I would like to see GM (or even Ram) edge Ford out of the top spot for truck sales, the likelihood of that happening is going to be slim. Wishy-washy truck buyers (yes, there are a few of them) are going to flock to this thing because Ford is going to really push the technology behind it. I can just hear them now, bragging to their Silverado-driving buddy that their truck "is made from the same alu-min-em as one of them there military Humvees." I'm also impressed that Ford pretty much kept the styling from the Atlas concept intact, including the double-domed roof and that funky top cut on the windshield. Granted, that big cow-catcher grille looks pretty ... well, tacky in top level trims, but then again vulgarity is sort of the name of the game with a luxury pickup. It's fine in other trims that don't make an excessive use of chrome. There's also a certain quality about the design that harkens back to the old boxy F-Series trucks of the '70s, '80s, and early '90s.

Almost a decade has passed since I officially joined Cheers and Gears in 2005. In that time, I've graduated from high school, quit work, started work, started college, and what seems like several dozen cars have been in my ownership. Despite the multitude of variables in my life right up until today, this website has strangely been one reliable constant. I've even contributed to this site beyond my mere musings with a small host of articles and opinion pieces that have managed to find their way onto the front page of the site. While Cheers and Gears has been a constant in my life, my activity 'round these here parts has been fairly -- hmmmmm -- quiet here lately, more variable if you will. It's not by choice. That's why I felt I would share what I've been getting into the past few months and what I hope this year will bring. What Was the Deal with the Jeep Thang? I'm sure that's the question some of you might be wondering about. Back in November, I made this thread mentioning that I was likely going to trade my 2011 Dodge Charger in for a Jeep Wrangler. Well, that didn't come to pass. Long story short, I found a very low-mileage 2008 Jeep Wrangler Sport for a good price, but the dealer wanted to stack the existing loan for the Charger on top of the loan for the Wrangler. That's the only way I managed to make the 2,000 dollars down and roughly $500 a month payment for 72 months work out other than calculating it at 20 percent interest. So, the Charger is still here. No big deal. The Jeep bug is pretty much out of my system anyway. A New Project No. It's not another car. I'm aiming for this project of mine to get off of the ground by Summer. Most of the frame work is in place (without regards to the social media aspect of the whole thang), now I'm going to spend a little more time fleshing everything out, acquiring currency, and buying cheap ass equipment. Everyone needs an outlet to let loose. As I begin to adapt to my new schedule (more on that later) for the year, you'll be "hearing" from me (shouting out at you) and hearing more about it soon. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. #crypticoverload #cocksdaily? A New Direction Okay, okay. Get the boy band jokes out of your system. Feel better? I couldn't think of a better title for that bullet point so I went with the cliche. Let's continue. For a year and a half, I've worked in a Pharmacy. I'm now a Certified Technician (took muh test in the summer), so cork open the campaign and roll out the stripper cake. In all seriousness, though ... well, I don't know how else to put this but ... at the end of the day this sorry old sumbitch actually likes his job. So, I guess I'm going to make something out of it in the end. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop writing or going to throw in the towel on pursuing my previous aspirations of journalism. What that does mean is that I feel that whatever scrap of writing "talent" I haven't really wouldn't benefit much from a degree associated with it. Turning this into a serious profession to pay my bills would really suck all of the fun out of it. Besides, I'd actually like my raw talent to get me somewhere rather than a piece of paper I shelled out $30,000 fat ones for. I'd feel more accomplished that way. Either way, I'm relaxing the reigns a bit and digging my heels into a new career path. Yeah, About the Charger ... I'm actually thinking about, you know, putting the dang old rang on 'er finger, man. By that I mean, "Dump a couple of Benjamins on the old girl." We'll see. I want the end result to be more this ... ... And less, "Yes, sir, we're actually out of our offerings in the compact class, so we've upgraded you to a full-sized car. Here's the keys to the Charger outside." Yet a part of me still tells me I can buy something else that runs, drives, and would be a very entertaining piece of crap for the price of those 20 inch rims and tires. Anyway, I'm going to try and repress that urge and I'll post up the mods I'm considering later on when I don't have to post by candlelight. So that's pretty much everything in a nutshell except for a few smaller bits of info I'll share later when it isn't almost three in the morning. What's shaking around your part of town?

I dig that all black All Terrain model I've seen in other press shots. Honestly, you can't go wrong with either truck. The Colorado is handsome. The Canyon is handsome. This is the first time in a long time that you can say that Chevy's pickup looks just as good as GMC's and vice versa. I'll add, though, that my tastes are very partial to that Canyon All Terrain version I mentioned, but my wallet would probably vote Colorado.

If you're out there lurking, this seems like it's right up yer alley, sir. http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/4282543084.html It's not a Ute, but it still seems like a sweet ute all the same.

I'm going to agree with Allpar's assessment here. From Allpar:

I think it's a pretty nice design. It's like the current Challenger in a way. It's a retro design and it looks unmistakably like its forebearer, but it in fact shares only a small handful of direct design cues. On an unrelated note, I just sort of realized Fiat's place in the Chrysler hierarchy sort of picks up where Plymouth left off in a way. It's a brand full of small and cheap retro-styled cars meant to appeal to the elusive "yooth market." That's what ChryCo wanted to do with the Plymouth brand before Daimler shoved it up the company's butt. Yes, sir. Fiat needs to do something other than take the Mini approach to everything, which is taking the 500 formula and adapting it to whatever set of perameters the brand needs to fufill. "Oh, what's that? We need a small SUV in the line up to replace that rebadged Suzuki we've been selling? Fine then. Take the 500, put it in a pair of overpriced North Face brand hiking boots, and throw an X on the end of name." Yawn. Borning. Played out. Unoriginal, etc., etc.

I'd rather see something like this concept roll out instead:

What sort of plug did you remove? Regular, platinum, or what? You're getting into some tricky territory here if, say, you wanted to go from a typical Autolite standard plug to a Bosch Platinum one. Just to give you some food for thought, when I had my XJ Cherokee, the 4.0L inline-six was happier with cheap Autolite truck plugs over than anything with a platinum tip. In fact, the 4.0 would burn the diode right off of the platinum plug (and it's something that most 4.0s do). You might have to change the plugs more often, but you could be better off going with whatever came factory for your 5.7L Hemi. Also, when I had my '08 Astra, GM recommended changing the plugs in the 1.8L Ecotec every 30,000. It's more uncommon these days to do a plug change at that interval, but it isn't really that rare.

Really? It reminds me of a Tesla Model S, which is a car I would actually buy if I had fifty grand in the bank and a good paying job right now. Say what you will about its powertrain, but you'd have to be outright crazy to say its an ugly car.

I'll agree with you that GM should have put the W-Body and G-Body front-drive large-car platforms out to pasture long before 2004. The W-Body platform especially is the perfect amalgam of what was wrong with pre-bankruptcy General Motors and the cars they were building. It wasn't that GM hadn't put the cards on the table before the early and mid-2000s rolled around to replace those platforms with rear-drive cars. In fact, GM had flirted with the idea of introducing new rear-drive cars by the turn of the 21st century during the mid-90s (see the Buick XP2000 and Chevrolet Intimidator concept cars). As always, though, they managed to warm their feet at the last moment, and wound up at the party by the time the beer had almost run out and the bedrooms were all occupied. GM didn't leave itself much of an option, I'm afraid. When the Global Rear-Drive platform finally became whole, that was around 2004 and GM North America didn't start seriously investiagating using it until probably early 2005. I think we all know what happened soon after. As much as I can criticize GM for keeping the W-Body cars around for longer than I've been alive, they really had no other choice by the time the last W-Body cars rolled out in the mid-2000s.

Already posted this in the other thread, going further in depth on the subject at a later date.

Huh? I remember the Great $h!storm too and I don't think it was quite that long ago. Circa '06 maybe? Regardless, AH-HA's information wasn't incorrect. When the VE Commodore neared completion, GM North America began investigating how to use GM Australia's global rear-drive platform (aka Zeta) for cars outside of domestic production for the Australian market and the exportation thereof. The Buick Velite was one of those studies, as was the GMC Denali XT and original Chevrolet Camaro concept. They were also looking into replacing the Chevrolet Impala with a rear-drive model and introducing a flagship model for Cadillac, all using some version of the VE's platform. The 2008 financial crisis halted these plans, with only the Pontiac G8 and Chevrolet Camaro squeaking out. A year later, in 2009, GM went bankrupt and the rest is history. Well, except I would like to point out that GM would have likely picked those studies back up if it wasn't for government influence (see Pontiac, for example) and possible corporate infighting.

Hmmmm ... You don't say? Interesting ... hmmmmm ...

The only official announcement from GM so far is that GM Australia is ceasing producting there as late as 2017, if not earlier. GM hasn't outright said what's in store for the Commodore's future yet; there's still a lot of housekeeping to do before that. However, I don't see GM just walking away from what makes the current Commodore a Commodore. True, it was number four in sales last year, but it was still the best selling large car there. It beat the Toyota Camry by a fair margin and only lost to the smaller Corolla by just a few thousand units. Ford's Falcon didn't even register anywhere near the Commodore's sales numbers.

Well, someone better pick up that phone because I called it. Full story at 11.

The Caprice is popping up on the used market and I think dealers will sell leftover inventory to civilians to clear it out.

Here's how I see the Holden Commodore conundrum playing out. However educated my guess may be, it's still just a guess but one I hope comes to pass all the same. It's a hell of a mess to unravel, so stick with me and let's try to be optimistic. Let's break it down. The next-generation Malibu moves back up in size closer or precisely to the circa 2008 to 2012 model to properly address the size criticism plaguing the current model. The next-generation Malibu will certainly be sold down under as a Holden and will likely serve as the defacto replacement for the basic Commodore Evoke models. It will not carry the Commodore name and continue to be called Malibu ( ... hopefully, anyway) . Supporting evidence for this claim can be found in the Middle Eastern market where the current Malibu has already replaced the Commodore-based Lumina. The current gen Malibu is also already built in China by GM Shanghai (and, if I'm not mistaken, Australian market Malibus come from there) so if the next-generation model is to serve as a replacement for the current Commodore in Evoke trim, it would make sense the next-gen "Commodore" (meaning Malibu) would be built there in the future and sent downstream to Australia as per the rumors currently circulating. The next-generation Commodore arrives on a decontented version of the Omega platform (aka "Zeta II") that will serve as the basis for Cadillac's flagship model. A Ute will likely not appear this go-around. Perhaps it's possible that, since the Malibu is likely to grow in the future, the Chevrolet SS/Holden Commodore will merge with the next-generation Chevrolet Impala so that Chevrolet doesn't essentially have two flagship sedans. That's what makes sense to me anyway, because building the next-gen Impala on a rear-drive platform is the only way I can see GM effectively eliminating the overlap they delt with when the Malibu and Impala were close to the same size. It also gives them a better entry into the market for law-enforcement vehicles. It will be built in North America, possibly Oshawa. That's just how I see this situation playing out, I dunno.

That's only the tip of the iceberg, too. The rabbit hole goes so deep, you can go probably for years without seeing the light at the end of it. I mean ... what can I say? We really do have a one-lane, narrowed-shouldered hell of a future coming our way, and to put the blame squarely on our shoulders is true fool-hearted ignorance. We've graduated high school only to have been burdened with a mountain of debt the next morning after, most of us barely 18, the proverbial deck of cards stacked against our odds right out of the gate. We are set to inherit our parents' and grandparents' table scraps; we have been willed a complete and total mess. We will be handed what's left of a failing global economy diseased by the spread of consumerism and materialism, fruitlessly tolling our way through a job market that doesn't support us, regularly rejects us, and cannot pay us, virtually bankrupt before we even see our early to late 30s. We are a generation of wage slaves, at best. Our labor and productivity is worth nothing more than the dirt in the ground. Then, to top it all off, we are verbally spat upon by our predecessors who berate us by saying we're too lazy and unambitious, that we expect to have everything handed to us. Perhaps the best insult out of all of them is the claim that we are narcissistic. Imagine that, labeled narcissistic by two highly narcissistic generations that have essentially buried us alive. Hey, Pot, you're black, too. Sadly, I'm not even sure that there's even a real prospect that we'll be able to fix anything when we have our turn to sit behind the wheel. We'll be stretched too thin to manage to take control, our health dwindling under the stress of razorline financial resources, prematurely aged and burned out before our prime. ... Eh, I'll just shut the taps off on my rant now. I really don't like thinking about where the future's headed.

This. So much f@#king this. I'm sick and tired of automakers and industry pundits, month after month, belching out, "Blah, blah, gen y hates cars and doesn't buy new ones and probably maybe doesn't buy used, blah, blah. Damn kids are too lazy to work to buy a car and too busy texting to drive, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why can't they get on board like everyone else?" A tax like this -- where you're required to cough up as little as a few hundred to as much as a few thousand dollars a year -- in addition to the assinine prices you have to pay on insurance, gasoline, and a bank note year in and year out will certainly help to drive a big nail in the car's coffin with my generation, if it isn't indeed already true that we've just moved on to public transport and smartphones and probably aren't looking back. But, you know, I guess a car really is a privelege for the wealthy, right? Right Boomers? Gen X? It's for the financially established. It's not for us young'uns who have to deal with the prospect of a poor job market, paying off a mountain of student loan debt, and facing the bald-faced reality that, when we do get a job, we'll be earning far less for our productivity than any prior generation in the United States, right? Right? I'm asking you since you're calling the legislative shots now. So go ahead and tax away ... you bunch of stupid, self-absorbed, short-sighted pricks.

Gather 'round, boys and girls. There's a new one out.

The 4.0 was never known as easy on gas, AFAIK. In my GC (albeit heavier than an XJ) I've never seen more than 18 mpg. I'll just randomly start posting fuel economy ratings: My 2000 4.0 XJ got about 19 mpg on average. However, according to fueleconomy.gov, the double-not XJ only gets about 16 mpg on average. A 2005 4.0 TJ gets about 14 mpg on average, according to the government website for empee-guhs. How a smaller SUV that weighs the same as the XJ gets worse fuel economy completely baffles me. A 2007 3.8 (because Chrysler decided to go with a minivan motor over the 3.7L V6, by the way) JK gets about 17 mpg on average, as per fueleconomy.gov. The Hummer H3 -- despite weighing in almost 1,000 pounds heavier than the XJ -- somehow matches the XJ on fuel economy exactly. Once again, totally confused by this one. For S&G purposes, a circa 2008 WK Grand Cherokee with the 3.7L V6 is no better on fuel than the minivan-powered JK Wrangler, a circa 2001 4.0 WJ Grand Cherokee is no better than a Hummer H3 or an XJ Cherokee, and a KJ or KK Liberty is no better on fuel than the JK or the WK. Long story short, you really don't buy any of these for fuel economy.