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I dont understand the emotive reactions regarding EVs and their lack of music making engine noises.... Last week, I was enjoying a nice quiet jaunt to a neighborhood park, all by myself, for a brief but necessary me time, when a 2012ish Hyundai Elantra drove by me at a snail's pace while I was walking and not a hint engine noise came from the car. I did hear the tires rolling, but no mechanical noises. The Elantra was as quiet as it could be, not just as a modern vehicle with quiet mufflers, but just as quiet as an EV is. Considering North American cars being bought are of the appliance variety, that triggered me...about this nonsense of engine noises and how the internal combustion engine makes music...because there are hardly ANY sweet sounding sports cars being driven daily anymore... When I got home, I got into my wife's ecoboosted Fusion of 1.6 liters of shytty 4 cylinders to see how quiet the Fusion is and I immediately said to myself what is it that we are going to be missing again? Certainly not the shytty 'ps' 'ps' blow off sounds of little turbos and muffled and restrained 4 cylinders that inherently sound like crap. The Fusion too is quiet at idle inside the cabin. A tiny wee of engine noise comes through. Its quiet on the outside too, although it wasnt as near as silent as this particular Elantra was. The V8 pick-up trucks do have a nice burble to them, but the mufflers today on them have a droning sound to them inside the cabin and anything less than full throttle is very very muted on the outside. Which in turn, comes to the reason why I made this post today... YESTERDAY, I served a young gentleman, a good looking bloke around 25ish, with a very very sexy young lady companion of his. I didnt notice the car he drove when he entered the restaurant, I didnt even notice the car being parked in the front while he and his lovely lady friend ate, but I certainly did notice his 2020ish Camaro ZL1 when he was leaving. I rushed outside to see it, he got out of his car when he saw me, laughing that I was like a little kid wanting to see his car. He started it up, drove away and the glorious LT4 was making these glorious sounds... Or so I thought... Although I did appreciate hearing this particular V8 and I long for a similar V8 myself, I dont have this sense of loss regarding Chevy small blocks, Mopar Hemis, Ford DOHCs and screaming Ferrari V8s and V12s when EVs rule the world. Dare I say, after seeing and NOT hearing soul sucking CUVs, day in and day out for the last 10 and even 20 years now, the occasional V8 I do see and hearing it that loud, now just makes me think its a relic of the past. EVs have got my juices flowing in other ways, including how our future is being shaped up with EVs in mind and the loss of a V8 and the smell of gasoline cant go away fast enough... I was listening to a Porsche Taycan review this morning And Porsche's electric motor 'whine' isnt a 'whine' at all. It sounds like a Star Wars space ship trying to go to hyperspace speed. And I think Im starting to appreciate that sound more than I do internal combustion engine noises. Maybe I still prefer a Hellcat supercharger whine over an EV whine, (GM's supercharger whine is similar to the Mopar's) and I maybe still prefer the good 'ole big American V8 burble, and let us not forget the Ferrari symphonies, but an EV motor whine does sound like the science fiction future we have all been promised since the 1960s, actually... Ironically enough, an EV sounds like a fossil fuel burning jet engine with its afterburners full on... Looking at Chryslers Jet powered concept as to why I say wee havee been promised this future since the 1960s... Also...robots.

Spotting at the very end of the month. This was a good one. I'm walking out of a place I had just eaten at and there's a car show. Most of the other cars (too garish and not stock enough) didn't interest me. I headed over to this Buick Reatta. This is a view of the rear of this convertible with about 50,000 miles on it. This is the leather interior with buckets and console as seen from the driver's window. For a 2-seater, it's nicely detailed and the dash is substantial. This is an even nicer view of the dash. The volumes are appealing and you can see that it's related to the Riviera produced by the same GM division This shows both the Reatta badging on the door and the typical alloy wheel seen on this specialty 2-seater. Being a 1990, I am thinking this is a Series I 3800 V6. In my '92, I had a series I 3800. My ignition coils on the ignition module were round. There are rectangular. I wonder why there's a difference. This is one clean engine bay. This engine is set up with a very direct connection from the air filter box to the throttle body. Here is the main under hood placard and serpentine routing diagram. It said 3.8 liters at the very left of this sticker. Here is the original sticker. It was built out in Lansing, MI. For 1990, this was a fairly high MSRP. It was about twice what a basic Regal coupe would had on its sticker. This is the owner's manual - "Premium American Motorcars" indeed. This was an interesting item the owner showed me - each Reatta came with a certificate of the people who worked on its hand assembled aspects. The Reatta name is different, but the font is cool. I have seen some of these folks around this car show before and not many of them are very friendly. It seems like a clique that regularly gets together and some of their talk is kind of crass. However, the retired gentleman who owned this car was very polite and enjoyed talking cars. We must have talked GM for about half an hour! A truly random occurrence. I really like the unique Buick Reatta, but am not sure I'd want to own one. But they're great eye candy.

That dash was a little lopsided, and I thought that when they released the last Bonne, but it could be rearranged into shape, somewhat, and convey the same idea. Pontiac has always had the best dashboards of the GM stable, except when they went overboard with them ... just like they did with ribbed cladding. Thank you. I'm totally content with my current car, but understand that I will have to part ways with it sooner or later. That said, if I am going to buy something, I'd like to buy into the current base Charger platform as late as I possibly can. Sadly, my GM rewards points will be thrown to the wind. I do not believe that Chevy/Buick can't support 1 or 2 sedan lines. Perhaps it's that they can't design some smart and appealing ones that would divert customers from being potential Cam-cord buyers.