trinacriabob

I'm picking out all the big opera windowed coupes! During the '70s in SoCal, I knew a black woman named Velma who bought herself a new '78 Coupe de Ville 425 V8 in the extra cost (get this) Cerise Firemist Metallic, essentially a metallic pink champagne color, with the maroon landau roof and a maroon leather interior ... and with wire wheels and the normal width whitewall tires. In its day, shiny and fresh from the showroom floor, this thing made quite a statement. The closest I've been to a long trek in a car like that was a ride from SoCal to Las Vegas in a friend's aunt's Riv coupe (RWD and based on the LeSabre chassis) with its 403 V8 silently humming across the Mojave Desert at 70 to 75 mph. Hers was tri-color light metallic blue and the seats were cloth, much nicer to get in and out of in the desert heat.

Saw some interesting newer Cadillacs in the last few days: I saw a Cadillac funeral procession car with the amber strobe light on top of its roof. It was not a hearse. It was a black CT6. It looked slick. An XT4 was next to me on the freeway. I like the way they have modified the tail lamps by taking them down along the exterior edges of the rear lift gate and then boomeranging them back toward the center. Nicely done.

The list doesn't surprise me all that much. You've got some expensive Middle Atlantic and New England states, some of the more isolated Midwestern states, and Montana (?). I thought people were moving to Montana. Movie stars and rich Californians were going up there to buy ranches. It's Wyoming they should be moving out of. Ever driven across it? Six or seven states (FL, TX, WA, etc.) have no state income tax. They are definitely picking up residents. If a state doesn't have one kind of tax, they clobber you with another one. While TX does not have a state income tax, it has high property taxes to pay for schools and services. For a $ 200,000 home in The Woodlands (nice suburb of Houston), the property tax is about $ 5,000. Then, some states don't have sales taxes (OR, MT, etc.). Oregon has one of the most steeply ascending income tax situations, essentially taking low(er) income earners toward the top bracket (about 9%) in no time flat. That's what you get when socialists run the place. In California, where the top bracket exceeds 10%, the steps up to that bracket are very well spaced apart and low(er) income earners are far from being levied that overall tax rate. Overall, Florida is a good state when you run the numbers - no personal income tax, their unique homestead exemption, reasonable property taxes, and average sales taxes, but not on groceries and pharma. They also have some sales tax holidays. They probably have the best combo. New Jersey is steep all the way around. I don't think the middle of it feels that crowded. To me, it's just the areas that cluster around NYC and Philly. New Jersey also wins the crown every year for having America's most dangerous city - Camden. Of those, Maine is really nice. It's not that populous. The southern part of the state has the more populous cities and the northern part of the state is pretty much empty. Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are incredible. The view from Cadillac Mountain is unforgettable. It also borders Quebec and there's a huge French-Canadian factor in its history and fabric.

In the U.S., mountains and beaches mean only 5 states. If it's beaches you plan to use (to swim without a wet suit), that means only 2 - California and Hawai'i. If it's beaches you don't plan on using and can settle for just looking at, that would expand the list to Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. I definitely like California's topography and climate. And, when I was a kid, it was laid back and people with broken filters got along just fine. Now, even California suffers from too much political correctness, not to mention exorbitant housing prices, polarization in its demographics, and overpopulation (soon to approach 40 million residents). Florida's beaches are way better than California's for recreational use. (Volusia County's beaches, however, are the ones that give me a little bit of apprehension about swimming.) However, Florida's monotonous pancake flat landscape is what I've got some issues with. I've thought of moving there since the '90s at one time or another and always keep pulling the plug on the idea. I definitely like vacationing there.

It got a L-O-F at the dealer. It's the car's birthday. They also washed it for me, free of charge. This way, I can wax it. I celebrated with food yesterday ... an annual ritual, if you will. I went to the nearby location of a famed Brazilian steakhouse for their Sunday lunch buffet and where the meat/poultry/sausage/lamb keep coming. I went at about 2 p.m. I came home and laid in bed unable to do anything after that sort of a meal. The salad bar is an incredible meal in and of itself ... and that preceded the arrival of the meat/poultry/sausage/lamb.

Happy birthday. I just saw this. Don't answer, but this has me wondering who wears the pants in the household ... in most households, actually. It's always an interesting dynamic.

This site has an "original" GM history or legacy but has morphed, which is a good thing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, of the various GM brands, Pontiac is the one that is most liked and most fondly remembered, given that it's gone and they were idiots to discontinue it. As a kid, Pontiac was definitely my favorite GM brand. Their front fascias were unique in the car business.

This morning, I got some groceries. I found a pineapple for 99 cents. I forgot how to cut these open correctly. I will have to look at YouTube. Then, there's another more upmarket grocery chain that had fresh loaves of Italian bread, bakery style, for 99 cents. I got one of those, too. I always say I'm going to eat the bread slowly over the week. I don't. Their Italian loaf is good. But their French baguette (sometimes 99 cents) is great!

This must have the 3800 V6. I had one in an early '90s Regal coupe that ran for 271,000 miles, but I was the original owner. A wrench was never taken to either the engine or transmission, unless it was to periodically change the spark plugs. I'm guessing that, at $350, you probably don't have its service records. Sounds like a deal, though. Old school codes were funny, with 2 digits. With OBD II, they are likely to have a letter followed by 4 digits. That's what my current code reader has pulled up.

I'm laughing at and loving these two specific cars. As for the Chevy, the license plate tells me it's a 1980 or 1981. That was the time that CA transitioned from a 6 digit license plate to a 7 digit license plate. This car must have been stripped down. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a 6 cylinder in it. It would have been a V6 more so than a L6 by 1980. As for the Cadillac, I can't tell the year, but I'm guessing early '80s. Anyone for a picnic on the trunk lid of this car? How about on the hood? I can't read the badging, but this could have run with a crappy V8-6-4, a Cadillac 4100 V8, or the "credit option" Buick produced 4.1 (252 c.i.) V6. We will never see anything like this again. Might as well enjoy the eye candy and the laughs while we can.

Thanks. What I'm wondering is if any engine codes that have been erased can be detected by their reader. I was looking at a great article or site and it was a lexicon of check engine codes, with each of them also ranked as serious (red), mid-range (amber), and minor (green). This one is a minor, intermittent, and seasonal one that has visited me in the past. I was impressed when, for something more involved than an oil change, one GM dealer was able to pull up my car's entire service history and had it on their clipboard along with the work order. I wonder if that's from the reader or something that the OnStar system transmits to them. I've rarely thrown engine codes in my last 3 GM cars. I know that the one that gave me any tangible drivability issues was in my last car and it was the knock sensor. For a lot of GM cars, and especially in engines they use for quite a while, it seems like they have their electronic engine control systems dialed.

Not just treated and released, but hospitalized. He really tore up the front of that Pontiac G8. Even if health comes first and he was an idiot, Pontiac G8s in great condition and with low(er) miles aren't exactly easy to come by.

I've got a question. When you take your GM car to the dealership, they are starting to write up the service order, and they insert some sort of device into where the OBD-II goes (under the dash, driver's side), what information are they obtaining with that?

Thank you for starting this thread for this month. On New Year's Day, I saw a 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix in near perfect condition. While not a big deal, what made it unusual and definitely a 2004 was that it was Fusion Orange (IIRC), or basically metallic rust, that was only offered that year. It had the base alloy wheels. None of the GP's W-body siblings were offering an orange or a rust paint job that same year. It's great to see so many of these on the road some 14 to 15 years later. This will always be one of my favorite dashboards, even though the build quality and materials aren't top shelf. It has always made this a fun car to drive (rent).

Their legendary pony car, their legendary sports car, and one midsize car that straddles the Cruze and the Impala. And the last one is tentative. Interesting. The price of the current LaCrosse comes way down from the way most of them on the showroom floor are equipped when outfitted with a 2.5 4 cylinder. I was surprised to see this engine added to the lineup. If it can pull an Impala, I guess it can pull a LaCrosse. One just thinks of LaCrosses as starting out with nothing less than the ubiquitous 3.6 V6. I wonder if I'll be deserting GM the next time I'm in the market. What a waste of accumulated points that would be.

I totally agree. This run of Cougars was really nice and had a level of refinement both inside and out that the Mustang fell a little short on. I'm not denigrating the Mustang in any way, but this was a Mercury and that was a Ford. I remember the "burled walnut" dashboard, per the print ads. Love the hideaway front lamps and the sequential blinking horizontal tail lamps. This started out with a 289 c.i. V8, am I right? - - - - - Back to GM - So, going forward, what regular cars (coupes and sedans) will GM be building through Chevrolet and Buick? (Not interested in Cadillac.) Say about 4 or 5 years from now ... What do you think?

The "Jaws" series marathon was on this weekend. I caught the second half of the first one, which I'd already seen several times. Much better to have a 007 marathon. I thought about this before and thought about it more this time. Is a shark wired to be that vindictive to want to come around repeatedly and raise hell? As in the constant pounding of the fishing vessel "Orca?" In videos in which people are aboard a boat, they'll breach further out or they'll come above the surface if people have thrown food scraps into the water, but I've never heard of their becoming obsessed with a boat and its passengers. If someone is inside a shark cage that's under the surface, they may keep coming around but, even then, they might not stick around indefinitely.

I was thinking Fernley, NV, but I believe they are in that same canyon area along I-80. That drive between RNO and SLC is one of America's ugliest.

I think Tesla is east of Reno, in some remote area along I-80. (I-80 interestingly goes from the Bay Bridge (CA) to the George Washington Bridge (NJ-NY).) There have indeed been waves of Northern Californians "going up the hill" and moving there. There are some Southern Californians, but not many. It's not for everybody. It's more akin to a Mountain West sort of place, which looks more like Boise or Salt Lake City, than it is a Pacific Rim sort of place. People also move there because there is no state income tax. Nevada is one of about seven states that offer that perk. That list also includes WA, TX, and FL. For some of these rich equity refugees in top tax brackets in CA, they can live on Lake Tahoe's NV shore, which is nicer than the CA shore, and jet around here and there when they want to get away.

^ meant to say by Eddy Grant.

At the top of the boom before the Great Recession, Nevada's unemployment rate was about 2%. Then, at the bottom of the trough, they were among the ones in worst shape, with unemployment at about 12% or 13%. The spendy condo towers that had been overzealously built when times were good then didn't sell at the needed pace. Now, in Reno-Tahoe more so than in Las Vegas, those units are occupied and sought after and, for some reason, have gone way up in price, as has all real estate in Northern Nevada. Could it be Lake Tahoe? It's hard to imagine Reno as a free-standing unit and being all that alluring without its proximity to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra.

I saw a Kia Amanti on each of the last 3 days of December. I had almost forgotten those. They look like a car meant to be in a cartoon. They remind me of a curious mix between a mini Bentley and a pumped up Lancia Ypsilon, which Italians refer to as the "elefantino." I have also seen quite a few Saturn Aura sedans in the last week of December. I forgot if they are on their own platform or if they share a platform with other GM cars. I'm guessing they started out with a 4 cylinder. I do know that they also offered a 3.5 V6 and, that, while the Impala and the Monte Carlo got VVT in that engine with their '06 refresh, the Aura and a couple of other cars did not. That way of delivering VVT, by putting another mostly solid state rotating piece at the front of the camshaft, was a novel way to put VVT on a conventional OHV engine and, apparently, it worked. And, if it were to fail or the sensor went out, it settled on a certain cam position for "limp home" mode.

Love the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The old East Span cantilevered bridge parallel to it was still up or being pulled apart when I did get to see the new East Span and drive over it in either 2015 or 2016. Beautiful ... and the 5 lanes on each side smoothly feed the stacked 5 lanes in the suspension spans going into and away from the city on the west side of the Yerba Buena Tunnel. The old bridge was the one in which one of the roadway segments collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

I wasn't listening to it by choice. I went into a drugstore/market at lunch and it was playing. I chuckled. I remember this goofy song by Eddy Grand and the movie of the same name, back when Kathleen Turner was at the peak of her career after becoming a household word from the movie "Body Heat," which also features William Hurt, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, and Mickey Rourke. That's one of the best suspense dramas I've seen to date. If you haven't seen it and like that genre, I recommend it. Also, you cannot use the bathroom during the last 15 minutes because some key clues and twists in the plot are shown during that time.

What is the final situation with Lordstown? Yes, I, too, have seen it right next to I-80. Is that more modern cable-stayed bridge a photo you took? Interesting.