Drew Dowdell

note to self: avoid Michelin or Pirelli.

My perfect recipe. 4 shots Tanqueray 10 gin, 1/2 shot dry vermouth, 1/2 shot olive juice, in that order poured over ice. Gently stir with a glass stirrer or the handle end of a icetea spoon. Strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Garnish with olives. Serves 2.

Because a martini... a proper martini ....is made with gin and not vodka. A martini is gin, vermouth, and if ordering dirty, olive juice. Anything after that is a modification and should then be specified in the order. If I ordered a vodka martini, only then would his return question be applicable. Furthermore (since James Bond wandered in here). The reason you stir a martini and not shake it is so that you don't bruise the ice. By asking for his martini "Shaken, not stirred" what James is doing is ordering a weak martini and being snooty about it.

They handle fairly well for heavy FWDers (they have the transverse fiberglass leaf springs) and in 3.4DOHC guise, they can keep up with the V8 Mustang of their day. They do have their issues though. The alternators are undersized and in a terrible location on the bottom of the engine. So in addition to being overworked, the alternators have heat dissipation issues which just kills them all the faster. It was bad enough that GM saw fit to engineer a cooling duct that ran from just in front of the radiator back to the alternator. Step 1 of alternator replacement is "Remove front right wheel assembly." Not good. Once it was time for my second replacement, I spent the extra money and took it to a GM Goodwrentch dealer to get the lifetime warranty. The timing belt is probably the most notorious thing on these cars. Since GM just took an existing CIB V6 and slapped a DOHC valvetrain on it you can imagine the resulting mess. First, in the earlier years of this engine, the tension pulleys for the belt were made of plastic and just plain didn't hold up. By '94 they were metal but the assembly they were attached to was plastic. GM didn't see fit to put timing markers on any of the gears. If you lose the belt without timing marks, you're sunk. You have to open up the engine and manually set the timing. The icing on the cake was that even if you were vigilant and wanted to change your timing belt at the proper service interval, it was virtually impossible to do in your home garage... or even a local mechanic. It requires a special tool to hold the timing sprockets in place and even then the engine is so tightly wedged in there you need to put it on a lift to access the bottom side. Interesting trivia fact: This engine technically has 5 camshafts. GM had to leave the original camshaft in the block because the oil pump was powered by it.... at the opposite side of the engine. It has no cam lobes however. The brakes are severly undersized and though they stop the car ok, they burn up in about 15k miles. I was so used to changing brakes every 15k on the Cutlass that I started getting worried when I was at 30k on the CTS. I took it to Meineki for a free check and they said the pads were a 10 out of 11. There is a minor issue with the transmission that you only find if you are driving VERY hard. If you take a hard left hand turn at speed all of the transmission fluid will slosh to the right, starve the transmission, and it will drop out of gear. Once the fluid sloshes back the transmission picks back up again and slams back into gear. This only happened to me twice. There are actually instructions out there for more hardcore W-Body drivers on how to add baffles to the bottom of your transmission pan to prevent this from happening. Changing the spark plugs is a chore. You have to remove the electric fans, remove the upper motor mount, put the car in gear and have your buddies push the car carefully until the motor rotates forward. This is the only way to access the rear plugs. Now for the good: As I mentioned, the car handles great for a relatively heavy FWDer. There is a lot of aftermarket support for tightening up the body roll... the car's only big handling offense. Mainly better bushings and thicker roll bars. You can also get stronger upper engine mounts if you're really hardcore. This is the only convertible post 1985 that you can comfortably put yourself, 3 friends, and a week's worth of luggage in with the top down. And I mean comfortable. The rear bucket seats are supportive in every way. There is plenty of legroom all around and the ride is soft without being floaty. My CTS's seats were comfortable but the Cutlass easily eclipsed that. With the top up it was just a Cutlass Coupe. There was zero intrusion into the trunk from the convertible mechanism with the top up. Even with all of the issues the 3.4 Twincam has, I'd still never buy a Cutlass without one in it. It revs high and fast and doesn't seem to have that weak spot that some DOHC engines (cough honda cough) at the low end. There is no V-Tech to kicketh in yo. It's just up up up till you hit the rev limiter. It will chirp second if you're not minding your right foot. The only way you ever got the advertised 29mpg highway was on a downhill straight road at 55mph. I never did better than 28mpg even when I was trying hard. The convertible was great. I'm not sure if the roll bar helped with this, but with the windows up I could cruise around with very little wind interference. The result was a rather crazy looking guy cruising around Pittsburgh with the top down wearing a leather jacket and gloves in 49 degree weather. I'd just put the heat up to max and I was fine. The adverts from Oldsmobile stated "From zero to wide open in 12 seconds" Putting the top down became as routine as putting down the windows. As long as you know what you're getting into, and have a AAA membership, these cars can be a real treat (honestly) to own. I'd love to re-add on to my currently non-existant collection some day.

I don't consider myself to be an alcohol snob, but when I walk up to the bar and ask for a martini and the bar tender replies, "What kind of vodka do you want?", I just want to drown him in the bar nuts. I don't do very many drinks, but I make a stunningly good martini. It always gets compliments and even my partner's very Italian father who knows a thing or two about good alcohol said on father's day, "That was the best martini I've ever had!". A martini isn't.... or shouldn't be... very challenging to make, but to find someone who makes a good or excellent one appears to be difficult.

Best fast-ish food I found was at Boston Market. Get the Turkey with no gravy (it's usually juicy enough anyway) Green beans Corn Skip the corn bread. Have ice water to drink. Works out to about 9 grams of fat and 380 calories. Your basic Whopper with cheese small meal is 61g of fat 1250 calories.

Wow! Talk about additional dealer markup.

I have him talked into an '05 CTS

Those first two are steals! The first one is pretty much exactly the car I owned way back when I joined this board as Oldsmoboi. Both of them are 3.4 liters. If anyone is ever shopping one of these cars, bring a philips head screwdriver with you. The front timing belt cover is held on with two screws. Pop the cover off and inspect the belt. This is especially important for any GM 3.4 Twincam over 60k miles.

It's that close to a Special? I would have thought the front fender skirts would have caused more interference than that.

Love those. They have a turning radius of what.... 900 feet?

Catch 22? Probably would have sold more had they looked significantly different.

How is the road noise on those Triple Treads? The CRV needs new tires and being a Honda the road noise is horrible as is.... so I want a quiet tire.

Well it's not out of the question. They're closing NUMMI. They are losing their shirt on the Tundra plant.

On the front page there is a search box. It looks like it's part of the site but it's actually powered by Google. Anything you put in there will use Google to search just Cheers and Gears. BTW, I'm not allowed to tell you to click on the revenue-for-C&G generating ads next to the search results because it's against Google's policies.

All the beauty of a dustbuster van and a Renault COMBINED!

He was the forth car in the pile up. That is a TERRIBLE on ramp in downtown Pittsburgh. It happened on 376w right in front of the parking lot in the center of this map. View Larger Map

He's a GM guy even though he's worked for Infiniti before. Two Aleros, a Grand Am, and this Trailblazer.

He walked away with nothing but some soreness.

I know a drag queen named Anita Bidet.

I stopped reading after that.

The solution is very simple. Never change it again. If she complains, simply point out that the last time you changed it you ended up sleeping on the couch and you don't want to take that chance again.

rats from a sinking ship fleeing to higher ground.

Import that stunning new Opel Insignia from Germany?

Buy my mother an Escalade EXT. Buy one of each year Toronado