Robert Hall

True...though the Jetta's plastics look better...the previous gen Jetta's interior was much nicer than the previous gen Malibu, IMHO...

Cool..I'll be there again this year...will try and take some pics and post them.

Well, considering Ford launched a new division/brand range and folded it less than 3 years makes it a pretty big failure. Imagine if GM had folded Saturn in '94..styling was part of the problem, but there were plenty of ugly cars in '58...my folks bought a '58 Mercury that year...I've seen pics of them, they were pretty dreadful looking, IMHO.

Ugly gray plastic interior and lack of a manual availability puts the last Malibu down pretty low on any list..

Comfortably Numb is probably my favorite PF song...and I've seen it twice in concert, on their last tour in the mid '90s and a couple years ago on Gilmour's solo tour. Gilmie is incredible live...

I remember The Firm...Paul Rodgers and Jimmy Page. I have both their albums (neat '61 Cadillac w/ fog lights on the cover of their 2nd album). After seeing Queen + Paul Rodgers in concert in '05, I started getting into Rodgers past bands...Free, Bad Company, The Firm, and The Law.. I didn't realize Asia existed beyond 1985 or so...I remember them from the early '80s.

Cool...I'll make a note of that. Stelvio pass from Switzerland into Italy is also on my to-do list...after seeing it on Top Gear, it looks epic...and Motor Trend ran some pics of the Challenger SRT8 on that road in their Europe road trip.

Who knows... the only people that really know the formal name of that concept are probably long dead or over 85. I had never heard of it before this thread...you and I are probably the only people under 40 that have heard of it..

See my first post above...

I remember that....Bob Roll is hilarious...I read his book a few years ago, there are some hilarious passages in the book, about his crashes, having to stop and make mad doo while on a ride, etc.

Ya, I did my young and dumb stuff in my teens and 20s, when my '87 GT was new or a few years old... luckily, I didn't do anything too stupid like several kids in my high school did (3 new GTs and one Grand National were totaled my junior and senior years, one Monte Carlo SS and one Trans Am GTA were heavily damaged). Mostly for me it was going fast and power sliding/drifting on Ohio back roads. I've never been hard on the '69, since it's kind of a family heirloom (my late father bought it new, he and I restored it when I was a teenager). I never did anything really stupid with my M3, except for a few late night 140-150 mph drives on deserted freeways that I pretended were autobahns..

I can only imagine how much worse the anti-big 3 talk would have been with the bailout, etc had gas prices remained at $4.xx/gallon.

Maybe the Cruze will be GM's world class FWD compact. Their Last Great Hope.

I've met a few obnoxious Mustang owners... lots of 'em in Florida, for some reason. Though I met a lot of decent people at the Mustang Roundup in Steamboat Springs...were over 400 cars there a couple years ago. Speaking of '70s, a buddy of mine in Denver is restoring a '70 Mach 1 (351C, 4bbl, 4spd) that he found in a field outside Regina...he's been working on it for the last 6 years, should be on the road next summer. Grabber green w/ black interior.. When I was in the BMW world, I did meet a lot of pompous pricks, worked with a few of 'em..

I have good tires on my Jeep... I'm sure I could get around there when it snows. When there's an ice storm, though, I'd hide under my bed and not go out.. (I still have nightmares from driving in an ice storm in Portland 3 years ago).

Looks like it was a work in progress resto project, missing a lot of parts. I remember as a teenager w/ my Dad pushing our '69 around, in and out of the barn after removing the engine, transmission, exhaust, the full interior, etc. That was a 4 year resto project. It got NOS/salvage yard front fenders, doors, rear quarters, floor pans, bumpers, trunk floor, and misc. chrome trim. Had to have it hauled to a body shop for all the welding needed in replacing the rusted out front shock towers.. Years of Ohio winters had left it rough shape when we started in the summer of '83. We lived 9 months a year in Florida from '82-88 and 3 months each summer back in Ohio, often working on that car.

For some reason, when I see portholes now, I immediately think of Homer Simpson and 'speed holes'.

I've never had the pleasure of driving in Portugal, but do remember the insanity of driving the Amalfi Coast in a rented Mercedes C-class diesel w/ manual....rented it from Avis at the Rome airport, drove the Autostrada down to Pompeii, then out to Sorrento, down the coast through Positano and down to Salerno. Narrow twisty road with sheer rock faces on the left, drop offs to the Med on the right. Tunnels, places where the road narrowed to one lane, deranged scooter drivers; a psycho lady in a black AMG E class w/ German plates that rode my arse for miles trying to pass; tour coaches filled with Japanese tourists with cameras (one coach had to back up for several hundred feet at the edge of small town to allow a truck to pass in the opposite direction)...fun times. Stop signs in the towns seemed to be optional. Driving in N. Italy in a rented diesel Vectra was more mellow, up around Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, Milano... Got to get back to Europe in '09...missing it.

When I was living in Denver, there were some WRX idiots in my 'hood....kiddies that would be blasting loudly up and down and the residential streets in the early am often... they eventually hit a nearby bridge abutment at over 100 mph...

I like how the 'yanked forward front wheel' emphasizes the RWD ness....the 3 series will never be confused for a FWD generic. And having the front axle line ahead of the engine gives better weight balance. The G8 and new Camaro do the 'forward wheel placement' quite well also, IMHO. The short hood/long deck look has been gone for many decades...can't think right off of the last car to use it, maybe the 2nd gen Corvairs? For me, I've always liked the long hood/short deck look, but also like the balanced look where the hood and deck were of similar length, like on the '77-up B-bodies. The short rear deck look has been taken to extremes in recent years..

Personally, I love the proportions of the 3 series... relatively long hood and short deck, with the wheels close to the front giving a long wheel-to-door length. The '05-09 Mustang has a similar proportion that I like also. Such proportions emphasizes their RWD-ness in a world of bland, conformist FWD genericism.

That one I hadn't heard of... Special Speedster

Yes... I'd love to have seen a new mid engined RWD NSX. the V10 SH-AWD front engined car wouldn't have been price competitive with the GT-R, would have been an NSX in name only, IMHO. I love the old NSX.

D'oh...I forgot Queen and Rush competely on my list....'Hammer to Fall' is probably my favorite Queen song, along with 'I Want it All'.. and Rush, there is lots there that I like...love 'Limelight', 'Time Stand Still', 'Red Barchetta', 'Distant Early Warning', etc.

Packard 'Brown Bomber'? ? There was a concept car called the Packard Request...another was the Packard Predictor concept which had a vertical central grille not unlike the Edsel, as did the Black Bess concepts of the same era. The word 'Request' in yer description triggered memories of an article I read eons ago about the Packard Request and Predictor. Packard concept info Packard Concepts