Beautiful Cars Appreciation Thread

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[G. David Felt]

That Supra and Mitsubishi were the only models that I liked of all the various versions of those cars they built.

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[G. David Felt]

R.I.P. Skyline

Nissan bids fond farewell to R35 GT-R as final vehicle rolls off the line

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

[Drew Dowdell]

Can we stick to cars please?  I'll clean up this thread later today.

[Drew Dowdell]

Okay, back to the regularly scheduled beautiful cars thread.  Please keep it to cars.

[ccap41]

 

In all seriousness though, the Hyundai Genesis R-Spec 5.0 is a really cool car. I saw one of these the other day and completely forgot they existed prior to Genesis being its own brand. I do love me a large sedan with a V8 under the hood.

[G. David Felt]

While I always loved the Crown cars of Japan, it is crazy to see them here at the prices they are asking.

1996 Toyota Crown for sale near Cadillac, Michigan 49601 - 101849404 - Classics on Autotrader

[ccap41]

2 hours ago, G. David Felt said:

While I always loved the Crown cars of Japan, it is crazy to see them here at the prices they are asking.

1996 Toyota Crown for sale near Cadillac, Michigan 49601 - 101849404 - Classics on Autotrader

It also has less than 6k miles on the odometer…

[G. David Felt]

1 hour ago, ccap41 said:

It also has less than 6k miles on the odometer…

True, if the Odometer has not been played with, but you still have a 1996 tech auto in 2025. 30 years later, hard pass.

[Drew Dowdell]

5 hours ago, G. David Felt said:

True, if the Odometer has not been played with, but you still have a 1996 tech auto in 2025. 30 years later, hard pass.

I’m perfectly fine with 1996 tech. I’m getting more suspicious of modern tech because of the issue of spying.  I think my 300C hits a sweet spot on technology in that it has things like car play , automatic braking, and adaptive cruise, but it’s not calling home and telling mom every time I accelerate too hard.

[Drew Dowdell]

13 hours ago, ccap41 said:

In all seriousness though, the Hyundai Genesis R-Spec 5.0 is a really cool car. I saw one of these the other day and completely forgot they existed prior to Genesis being its own brand. I do love me a large sedan with a V8 under the hood.

Similarly, the 2019-2020 K900 was a proper luxury sedan that looks imposing going down the road. These are the years of its only refresh and it lost the V8 in favor of a turbo V6 but it gained tech and looked great.

[ccap41]

3 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

Similarly, the 2019-2020 K900 was a proper luxury sedan that looks imposing going down the road. These are the years of its only refresh and it lost the V8 in favor of a turbo V6 but it gained tech and looked great.

I prefer the Hyundai's exterior styling quite a bit more, but this is still a handsome sedan. 

Ideally, I much prefer the refreshed Genesis more, too. 

[oldshurst442]

I do not want tech in my cars. I do use apple car play for google maps or waze while I am driving to baseball parks I do not know where they are.  But I could just as easily find them the old fashioned way of using google maps at home, like a regular McNally paper map, and just hop into my car and drive and observe the roads...  I did use google maps earth street view to observe landmarks.  So I am not entirely agaisnt modern technology.  Its just that I do not want modern tech gadgetry in my damned car.  All waze/google maps did in my car is that it made me lazy. And I hate that.  Plus its more dangerous because now, I look at the car's TV screen more often that just observing the roads and street signs...  So I guess I WILL be nixing GPS mapping in my car soon enough.  

I like digital gauges. But I find it soooooo stupid that digital gauges mimic analog ones.  I would rather do the 1980s digital than today's. If we are just mimicking analog, Id rather the analog.  Looks better too.  1980s style digital still seems futuristic and awesome to me. Id rather that for digital.  Imagine how much nicer 1980s digital  would look with LED  greens and reds with the bars and stuff???!!!  

LED lighting with the analog gauges rock.  It looks more luxurious. Especially with the high end analog gauges of a couple years ago in those high end cars. 

Of course this is just the aesthetic that I prefer. 

Ive ranted about push button start before.  Hated it then with my Acura, hate it worse now with my Honda.  I tolerate it with my Honda as its just a shytty 4 cylinder car.  At least with the Acura, it was a V6.  I prefer to start a more or less, powerful engine the old fashioned way. 

Insert the key.  Turn key and feel the engine come alive through the ignition. 

Ironically, Ferrari with their F1 racing push button starting tech  just made starting a vehicle like turning on and off  an appliance. This kinda thing REALLY hits home with the advent of EVs...

 

 

[ccap41]

Using Google Maps isn't exactly an "old fashioned way"... 

CarPlay for maps, be it Apple Maps or Waze, is just far too convenient to not use, IMO. Also, you don't even need to look at the screen. You can just listen to the directions without ever taking your eyes off the road. 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

 

Is this a reason why American cars did/do not need to handle the curves?

That is a very long stretch of straight road.  

That is a lot of speed carried by the bike. 

That was scary just me watching it.  I would want to experience that kind speed in a motorcycle some day. But as the days move on in my life and I get that much older each day, that want and need to experience that kind of naked speed disappears slowly in proportion to my aging...

I guess I survived this long in my life BECAUSE I did not have access to that kind of speed when I was younger and stupider. 

[Drew Dowdell]

17 hours ago, oldshurst442 said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s a great evolution! Someone who  at the Sam’s Club near me owns one of those final ones

[oldshurst442]

15 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

That’s a great evolution! Someone who  at the Sam’s Club near me owns one of those final ones

I love those last 300s. Probably my favorite of all the 300s in history.  Then would be the '55 and then follwed closely by the '61 and '62.  Sometimes I like the tailfins, sometimes I do not.

 Mopar Hellcated everything. Too damned bad they didnt Hellcat the 300. 

Edited yesterday at 05:29 PM by oldshurst442

[Drew Dowdell]

1 minute ago, oldshurst442 said:

I love those last 300s. Probably my favorite of all the 300s in history.  Then would be the '55 and then follwed closely by the '61 and '62.  Sometimes I like the tailfins, sometimes I do not.

 Mopar Hellcated everything. Too damned bad they didnt Hellcat the 300. 

They got pretty darn close with the earlier SRTs.

My partner is really putting the miles on ours. He does a lot of business travel and the thing just works. I know they had a reputation for being unreliable, but we've had very few issues with ours now at 82k miles. The only thing mechanically I've had to do to it outside of standard maintenance was a thermostat about a month ago, it was stuck open. It would have been a 10 minute job if I hadn't also taken time to detail a bit under the hood.

[oldshurst442]

21 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

They got pretty darn close with the earlier SRTs.

My partner is really putting the miles on ours. He does a lot of business travel and the thing just works. I know they had a reputation for being unreliable, but we've had very few issues with ours now at 82k miles. The only thing mechanically I've had to do to it outside of standard maintenance was a thermostat about a month ago, it was stuck open. It would have been a 10 minute job if I hadn't also taken time to detail a bit under the hood.

I think the reliability mess is with the 5.7 Hemi and the DoD part of it.  The 6.4 SRT is bullet proof. And I havent heard any problems with the Pentastar.  Maybe the transmission?  

Yeah...the earlier SRT 300s were a stepping stone for the Hellcat versions.  I get it why they stepped back from offering a hotter version 300

1. 300 styling was becoming stale at that time and sales were slipping and preferred to revamp the Charger instead. While doing so, because Dodge, the need was more pressing to offer potent muscle car power for the Challenger to outdo the two other pony cars from Ford and GM. 

2. The 300 was not a muscle car. It was marketed as a luxury car with style. Mopar probably was not interested in re-inventing it as a muscle car and especially when they had the 4 door Charger and 2 door Challenger in their stable all ready to fill that niche. 

3. I guess the idea of of expanding SRT did not cross their minds even THOUGH they offered a SRT 300 anyway.  I guess they didnt want to go toe-to-toe with Cadillac Vs. 

[Drew Dowdell]

1 minute ago, oldshurst442 said:

I think the reliability mess is with the 5.7 Hemi and the DoD part of it.  The 6.4 SRT is bullet proof. And I havent heard any problems with the Pentastar.  Maybe the transmission?  

Yeah...the earlier SRT 300s were a stepping stone for the Hellcat versions.  I get it why they stepped back from offering a hotter version 300

1. 300 styling was becoming stale at that time and sales were slipping and preferred to revamp the Charger instead. While doing so, because Dodge, the need was more pressing to offer potent muscle car power for the Challenger to outdo the two other pony cars from Ford and GM. 

2. The 300 was not a muscle car. It was marketed as a luxury car with style. Mopar probably was not interested in re-inventing it as a muscle car and especially when they had the 4 door Charger and 2 door Challenger in their stable all ready to fill that niche. 

3. I guess the idea of of expanding SRT did not cross their minds even THOUGH they offered a SRT 300 anyway.  I guess they didnt want to go toe-to-toe with Cadillac Vs. 

SRT as a brand got canceled. They were a separate operation inside of Chrysler (the corp). They operated sort of like how AMG did/does.  They still use the SRT badge, but now it's just a trim-line, not a full department set free to go around hellcatting all the things.

[oldshurst442]

2 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

SRT as a brand got canceled.

Oh yeah... I forgot.   Stellantis dismantled the department. Some engineers from the SRT division (if you will) were taken to work for Stellantis' EVs including Kuniskis.  And since then, Kuniskis is now head of Ram?  Lots of movement in a short period of time...