Intrepidation

Yesterday I saw someone learning a 3-point turn in a Driver's Ed gray Dodge Challenger! I'm so jealous.

Would have designed cars to exceed the quality of the Japanese cars inside and out Would have never considered selling Hummers Would not have allowed half assed products to go into production Would have made sure each brand was forced Would have made sure as much money and attention was paid to mainstream cars (small, midsize, and large) as the trucks Would have worked towards a balanced portfolio of cars and trucks Would have fired people with personal agendas Worked on the legacy costs Would have made the divisions stop trying to compete with each other Would have killed off badge engineering Would have killed models that overlap Would have worked on RWD Cadillacs to compete with the best of the Germans then Would have already cut Pontiac down to a focused, niche roll Would combine Oldsmobile and Buick lineups to make one complete lineup out of two brands, so they could share showroom space and theoretically Oldsmobile would have a better shot at surviviing Would have paid attention to giving Saab actual product Would have paid attention to Saturn, keeping it's S series updated/redesigned, and focus on small cars

"There's a sign in his head that reads 'This space for rent'."

Also this: Scientist Teleport Matter More Than Three Feet

This

Better but still not something I would want unless it was in decent shape and was like a hundred bucks. These are more my style:

I like neither.

Not my cup of tea.

OMFG :rotflmao:

Unless the proposed law forces people to buy new cars, we don't need to get our panties in a bunch over it. Odds are that people who own cars worth saving and take care of them won't turn them in for a new Aveo.

Firefox 3.5 beta FTW

Yeah I see these things sliding around all over the snow. Of course if they had snow tires on them they'd probably be fine.

I'll post my opinion in a bit.

Simple question, which do you prefer of the two (which looks more professional)?

I would get the engine mods and maybe the interior/exterior mods (minus the windshield decal), but leave the suspension stock SS.

x10000000000 I could listen to that all day long. I thought in the midst of all teh doom and gloom, nothing like a glowing article and teh sound of a blown V8 to cheer everyone up.

Automotive lust in America means blown Camaros. You know, like the red '69s on every cover of Car Craft. A big BDS 10-71 supercharger sticking through the hood and massive M/T drag slicks under tubs in back. Let the rest of the world dream of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and dinky little British two-seaters. In this country speed doesn't look like that. It looks like this. This is the Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE) "HPE550" supercharged 2010 Camaro SS. That's right, it's a blown Camaro. The first blown 2010 Chevy Camaro. And that makes it the very newest version of a true American icon. Ranks right up there with the Beach Boys, buckets of deep fried chicken and our incomprehensible Internal Revenue Code. Be proud of it. We Americans invented the greatest car ever: The loud, tire-smoking, V8-powered, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive muscle machine. And we should celebrate the accomplishment just as John Hennessey is, by building more. Badass to the Bone While we're at it, let's throw a shout-out to the original Camaro tuners of the world. Fire up the Google and check out the accomplishments of Don Yenko, Joel Rosen (Motion), Dana, Nickey and Berger, because you can't throw gears in this orange monster and not feel their legend. HPE's owner, John Hennessey, feels it. He even paid homage to Supercar Camaros of the past with the HPE550's Yenko-like graphics which really tie the car even more to the 1969 Camaro, as if it needed any more help in that direction. Still, this 2010 Hennessey Camaro SS has a sinister, planted-to-the-pavement look no Yenko ever did. Dropped more than an inch in front and a little less than an inch in back, the HPE550 rolls on oversize two-piece HPE wheels fitted with 275/40R20 front and massive 315/25R20 rear Pirelli P Zero Rosso tires. Think about that for a second; Hennessey put the stock Camaro's massive rear tires on the front and then bolted even wider meats out back. The result is the kind of visual impact that usually only comes when someone actually whacks your eyeball with a hammer. Matching those looks is a glorious voice derived from a mix of subtle supercharger whine and the bold growl of a Corsa stainless-steel cat-back exhaust system. Combine the visual and the aural and the HPE550 Camaro attracts much more attention than any modern Mustang demands. Cruise it past a cemetery and the dead rise to get a better look. But zombie appeal is only one limited aspect of a car. The best part of the HPE550 is how wicked quick it is. Under the Hood The 6 pounds of boost heaving into the 6.2-liter LS3 are enough to swell output from the stock 426 horsepower at the crank to a monstrous 562 hp, according to Mr. Hennessey. On the Dynojet chassis dyno at MD Automotive, however, the HPE550 ripped the rollers to the tune of 559 hp at the wheels. Discounting the fact that it was running an eye-watering mix of 91-octane California gas, 93-octane Texas gas, 110-octane race fuel, nitromethane, uranium-238 and a distillate of the Ebola virus, that's still a simply staggering 702 hp at the crank if one assumes a 20 percent parasitic drivetrain loss (a more plausible 639 hp if you assume a 12 percent parasitic drain). Tuned to run solely on lousy Cal-spec 91-octane swill, what's the blown LS3 going to generate at its rear tires? We don't know. Hennessey says 530 hp, which sounds plausible and is still a huge number if it's true. Incredibly the Magnuson supercharger, high-flow fuel injectors and that Corsa exhaust are the only aftermarket hardware on the powertrain. Hennessey, of course, also recalibrated the engine management system, but the pushrod LS3 V8 is untouched internally, and that's impressive. At the Drag Strip Give Obama a ride around the block in this beast and he might rethink that whole CAFE thing. From inside the 2010 HPE550 Camaro SS you can hear the blower sucking in atmosphere through the Hennessey cold air intake, and every one of those ponies rocks the car if you rev the engine at a red light. Cool old-school muscle-car stuff. The stock Camaro shifter takes a real shove to get into 1st, but the clutch effort isn't too onerous. Let the clutch out, stab the throttle, and the HPE550 pins your head to the seat and keeps it there. Just looking down at the Autometer boost gauge, which is bolted to the steering column, strains your neck muscles until it's time to shift. And then you've only got a split second to relax before the g-load returns and forces your entire body in the Camaro's very red bucket seat. This Camaro's pull is just as violent in 2nd and 3rd gear. By the time you've found 4th and your breath, you've left nearly anything shy of a Viper or ZR1 in the dust. At our test track, the blast from zero to 60 mph took a deliriously brief 4.3 seconds (4.0 seconds with 1 foot of roll out like on a drag strip) and the quarter-mile blurs by in just 12.1 seconds at 120.1 mph. It's an absolutely scalding performance and it's a full four-tenths quicker to 60 than a stock Camaro SS and nearly a full second quicker in the quarter-mile. Most impressively, that 120.1-mph trap speed is 9.2 mph faster than stock. Zounds upon zounds, this thing is rapid. It's also a bit rabid. Uncivil Liberties Never once in all those issues of Car Craft did anyone claim that blown Camaros were civilized, easygoing or tame. And the HPE550 carries on that tradition. This is a hot rod and no one expects (or at least no one should expect) a hot rod to be as well-behaved as a production car. The Hennessey car has ungodly amounts of power, but it also loses some of the linearity in its throttle application. Hitting its accelerator is like throwing a switch. Even with careful modulation (very careful) this car is tough to drive. There are other aftermarket turbo and supercharger systems that are much worse in this respect than the Hennessey/Magnuson system used in the HPE550. But during hard acceleration it's nearly impossible to keep the motor from revving raggedly into its limiter. That's simply something that never happens with supercharged production motors like the Corvette ZR1's LS9 or the 5.4-liter in Shelby's GT500. Bad Suspension But the HPE550's roughest edges are in its suspension. The thick rubber adds a lot of effort to the steering with no commensurate return in precision or feedback. And those massive 315-millimeter-wide rear meats overfill the wheelwells so that scraping is heard during even modest cornering. Living with the big tires is one thing, but the stiff coil-over springs and shock are something else. It's not so much that the ride is unbearable as it is that the springs aren't matched up well with the shocks. So it's over-sprung and under-damped; the car doesn't settle after a bump or recover easily after a hard corner and it gets sloppy during quick transitions. Plus, its 0.87g skid-pad orbit and 68.7-mph slalom speeds are no better than stock (the stock Camaro SS pulled 0.88g on the pad and slalomed at 68.6 mph), so what's the point? This car should do better considering its cost and huge contact patches. Since the HPE550 runs standard Camaro SS brakes (including the Brembo four-piston front calipers), we expected them to work, and they do. It stopped from 60 mph in 109 feet just like the stock Camaro. But a bit of suspension tuning would also improve this performance if the car was more settled and better able to exploit its additional rubber. Buckage John Hennessey will sell a car just like the one featured here — including the blower, the suspension, the wheels, the tires and all the graphics — for $62,500. Or go without the polished blower case and the Chevy RS factory equipment and the price drops to $59,950. Or bring your own 2010 Camaro SS to Hennessey in Houston and $24,950 later you'll have a full-blown HPE550. Just want the parts? That's $18,950 — you do the installation. That's not far from what Ford gets for a new supercharged 2010 Shelby GT500. And Hennessey warranties its work and/or parts for three years or 36,000 miles. Sure, it's disappointing that the HPE550's supercharger is so small there's no need to cut a big hole in the Camaro's hood, but we got over it. When? Every time we planted our right foot into that big ol' blown V8 and it nearly snapped our freakin' heads off. This sucker rocks. And it rocks American style. Let the rest of the world dream of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and dinky little British two-seaters. In this country, speed doesn't look like that. It looks like this. http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drive...topanel..1.*#26

A copper `73 Plymouth Satellite Sebring a White Genesis Sedan a black Porsche 991

Pontiac's only option was to go niche. The only Holdens that would make good Pontiacs are Commodore related vehicles. That limits appeal, and the factory is limited in what it can produce as well. Buick at least has products that would fit well in its lineup. Opel's products are upscale, but not on the same level as Cadillac. That's what Buick is. Opel products wouldn't mesh well with Pontiac's image. Pontiac would need more models specifically engineered for it, whereas Buick already has some.

Yes, but what most of these people who don't want the "bottom rung" brand but want the better" image of Pontiac seem to forget that, G8 and Solstice excluded, Chevy has better cars. The Malibu is a far superior product to the G6. The G6 is the "bottom rung" of all the Epsilons. Then there's the fact that the excitement band never got the G5 equivalent of the Cobalt SS. There's also the Camaro, a RWD, V8 powered coupe the Pontiac hasn't had since the GTO, and the Corvette. Sure, we can argue that Pontiac's lineup wasn't important outside of the G8 and Solstice, but then the argument that Pontiac sells so much is moot, because the "baggage" was the volume, and that of courses was mostly to fleets. The only real argument to discuss is how effective the proposed niche role would have been. I personally think that could have worked out well, having the Solstice, and G8 (followed by multiple body styles of the G8 being sold.

If there's less dealerships this would be a given anyway See above Doesn't seem right to have a Toyota lineup on the same showroom floor as a Chevy lineup anyway Dealerships should upgrade and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction anyway I seriously doubt GM would build new dealerships since it's cutting so many in a down market, but evens o, so what if it's more than 6 miles away?

Nice improvement. Our garage scares me. There's probably enough parts in there to build a car from scratch.

Got a photobucket account? That's easier I find.

Our house was built circa 1905. There's two hallways that waste space and could have been designed better. The worst aspect of hour house is the "kitchen" is quite large, but only has the stove, microwave, fridge, and table in it. It has no storage at all. All of the cabinets, sink, and dishwasher are crammed into this small area that is useless to work in. Our neighbor's house was identical to ours before the, but when it was rebuilt, that little space was turned into a bathroom, and the big empty space was turned into a real kitchen. Another example of this space wasting is that the back bedroom has a smaller room behind it, that really isn't big enough to use for much besides a couple chairs and a small TV. What the neighbors did was knock the wall that separated the rooms down and made it into a much larger feeling room.