Sixty8panther

Quote from the website: Not at all.... this thing looks way mora accurate than modern gauges. Besides I'd go to almost any length to check my gas if it meant I'd get own and daily drive a pre-war car! -------- and this one is just silly.

GOD is in the details... though this IS just a 3rd world econobox...

Really? Show me a 1989 Impala? or a 1997?

Hmmm... Sounds a lot like purgatory. The fact that after 12 years we are still yet to even see the promisse, nevermind the reality of a TRUE B-body replacement (at least a RWD/V6/V8 large sedan) if not a BOF than at least a rock solid unibody in the guise of an old school (1980s) Mercedes Benz S-class... well I have just been getting more and more & MORE disgusted with GM's utter stupidity. Whoever is making the case to NOT sell Zetas in every GM division & ESPECIALLY at Chevrolet, the moth*&fuc%ing VOLUME/VA:LUE brand, is so dumb-foundingly shirt-sighted & blind to the consumer demand for them that I wonder quite often if they rode the short bus & got a 12th place medal in Kinder-garden for pounding a square-peg through a round hole by way of hammer so as not to damage their fragile, developing ego. I love Camaros, Camaros ARE my Jesus... (well only 1st generation ones) but as cool adn awsome as the Gen.5 car is, even if it WAS a true hardtop it will never amount to anywhere as important a product as a ZETA Caprice Classic & Impala would have been/would be. An ecclectic lineup of ZETA Chevrolet cars (along with Buick & Cadillac sisters) would be the best effort of the past 25 years by GM to stop the bleeding that is GM's neck wound (losing market share, weak dollar...) and a huge bitch-slap to T666yota & Hon-DUH market share. Zetas for every division (even Oldsmo-Saturn) but esp. Chevy would be the MOAB that GM needs to defeat the dirty-fightingh Insurgent-Japanese.

Now that I've read THAT I've lost my dinner. The W-body Impala may be a great car* but it IS a disgrace to the Imapala nameplate and the fact that a REAL Impala has not been made in 12 years makes this even more of a joke... (not to mention the 80s & early 90s when an Impala did not exist as a nameplate and 1997-2000 when GM's flagship was the flacid, buttplug shaped Lumina) * As compared to an average Japanese competitor... (Avalon comes to mind)

Yes, shirt circuit in the Mopar corner of my brain... I apologize. Of course I meant the CHARGER...? BUT seriously, WHY NOT a used Charger instead?

Yeah, screw you guys... One of my few talents in this life is the ability to buy a KICKASS semi-classic car for well under a $1000 bucks. I may have payed WAY more than a mere K for the B-59 and my '68 Camaro but I've owned many a Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevy truck & more recently Buick that was purchased from a desperate/stupid/"lost interest" owner who just wanted to get rid of the car. You know FlyBrian's LeSabre...? I put it up for sale for $1300 O.B.O. but when Fly approached me about it I sold it to him for $800. I still have not seen the $120 delivery fee to Penn. (supposed to cover gas tolls) but I still managed to make a small profit on the car AFTER the few minor preventative repairs I did, the gas to Penn. for the B-76 AND gas for SP's chase car: the Shelby Turbo Daytona... if I had sold it to the kid from upsate NY who called JUST after Fly did I probably would have sold it for the $1300 which would have meant doubling my money. He was all hot and horny over that 455 powered bicentenial Buick hardtop and was not even attempting to negotiate price but rather trying to set up an appointment to come by and pay for it. You'd crap your collective pants if I told you what I payed for my Banana Boat the first time I bought it.... not even close to a thousand! Remember short term daily driven '62 Buick Special? $800. And that car I traded for a truck a guy wanted $2000 obo ($1600 firm) So yes, if you invest the time to weed out a few dozen crappy craigslist ads, then make several phone calls, narrow it down to a few cars, go LOOK at said cars with CASH in hand... the GREEN stuff and offer instant cash on the spot you can score some phucking awesome deals! That being said SS623, you should just keep your Nova and fix it on a budget with a good combo of junkyard parts & NAPA/Pep-Boys/Autozone/Advanced items... better that and pay a little extra in gas than: BUYING REGISTERING STORING INSURING & GASSING UP another vehicle... or not, only you know the exact math, but think twice before you go jumping into a moneypit, your Nova is one of the LEAST expensive cars in the world to maintain... it's a 70s Chevy Nova... EVERYTHING from the front plate bracket to the tail lights is available & priced even more reasonably than Fox body Mustang parts.

I can not say enough how sad this is... you have my condolances. With all due respect how can you even THINK of getting some POS unibody FWD Saturn to replace the majestic U.S.S. Capriceman? That would be as much of a tragedy if not more than the loss of your future classic Chevrolet. I can to a degree understand using this unfortunate opportunity to get something different but a FWD unibody car? You'll be BEGGING to get back into a BOF-RWD car in two weeks, I bet my life on it... It's a SAD day when a tragedy like this makes one reconsider his passion and enthusiasm for classic American cars & instead move on to a generic FWD transportation-pod. BTW: About 14 years ago my dad stopped at a gas station,walked inside to grab a pack of gum and emerged 45 sec. later to see his almost new 1994 Pontiac Sunbird peeling out, some crazy ghetto rat chick (white for the record) jumped in and off she went. My dad took a taxi home (about 30 miles away) jumped in our other car (the 1993 Oldsmobile Achieva) & drove back to Medford. You see his wallet was insde the car, he took change to pay for the gum, and so desperate times.... And guess what? About 3 hours later he cornered the Pontiac on the far end of a one way street and drove up the WORNG way, blocked the car in as if he was about the ram it and got out as the two young male teens driving it $h! their pats and ran off. The Sunbird had that crazy aircraft throttle style E-brake, it was kind of tricky to disengage the way Pontiac had designed it and apparently they jammed it in the up position after the panic stop that my dad forced them into when he drove up to them as if to ram them... in the trunnk was most of the contents of his wallet, minus the credit cards, cash & gas card. Talk about luck. My dad is not a man of great stature, he's about 5'3", so even as a teenager I was taller than him but he is pretty jacked... his theory is that he actually stunted his growth with a combination of sleep deprivation (he had a tough childhood) and working out, lifting weights in his early teens. He's also got that ragging-bull look to him when he's mad & a very overpowering persona when he talks & the way he presents himself. The point is even if you were 6'7" you'd probably run if my dad came at you and you were in his stolen car. My dad, ballsy as he is just parked and locked up the Olds right there in the ghetto & drove home in the Pontiac, returning later with my mom to grab the Olds which was unharmed.

Avant: I hear ya about the G8 car payment. Just saw my first G8 today at local BPG dealership... SEXYYYYY!!! Eve though the Camaro has turned me off with its B-pillar the justification for it is at least SEMI-legit, but the fact that the production G8 coupe will sprout B-pillars and glued in glass is an outrage when we have less safe, less structurally sound G6 retractable hardtops in production. That's like saying VW can't justify building a W8 Passat while at the same time building a Parket-floor, brass chandelier & mahogany-walled assembly line to make the W12 Phaeton.... does NOT compute! Remember that Automobile magazine special section about American car designers and the plight of the American car companies... the synopsis is the same old tired "start building EXCITING cars again" AMERICAN cars, cars with pizzaz & trend setting features/styling... bringing back the pillarless hardtop would be a great step in that direction! Weather you like jewel headlights of flat black it's not that big a deal to swap them out & get EXACTLY what you want... but sad to say converting a W-body to RWD or cutting out a B-pillar and fabricating a hardtop from a 2dr sedan with fixed windows is much more difficult and cost prohibitive to 99.5% of the population! If I had $12,000 of play money that I could use to have a proffesional chop-shop make the Banana Boat a pillarless hardtop I'd probably just use the $12,000 + whatever the Banana sold for to buy a gently used early 1990s Mercedes 560SEC... - pillarless hardtop body style (fixed, sleek roof, dissapearing rear windows): CHECK - big, comfortable, luxurious interior: CHECK - powerfull, bulletproof (5.6 liter) V8 motor with german overenginering: CHECK - ballin' stying that says you're living large: CHECK

Yes Camino, please do.... I've seen some of those photos and there's some very cool stuff there.

Here's another point to ponder: would you rather be inside this "car" that actually surrounds you with some metal, spartan as it may be, or would you (again, worst case scenario) rather get hit while on a bicycle? I think we all know which is safer, so then the question becomes: how can we do a basic rudimentary safety inspection and they're good to go, same as anyone else on a bike or other human powered contraption. Here's an idea: Lightweight electric car that you can peddle in to help charge the batteries via oversized generator/alternator....

A rudimentary safety inspection (at least brake lights & good tie rods) & mandatory slow lane around town. Then they'd have my blessing. On the one hand it's a waste of a perfectly good BOF/RWD Buick but I think it's kind of a cool concept. Seems like they lightened up the car quite a bit... a lightweight unibody 4dr sedan might have been a better starting point. Perhaps even a Park Ave?

I'm not sure I can say anything positive because I think the 2006/7/8 Malibu's nose is one of the ugliest Chevy fascias of the past twenty years. The 2003/4/5 looks fine, in my opinion it is quite an interesting variation on Chevy's crossbar theme. I like lots of chrome, the "bling" headlights have never bothered me, they're SUPPOSED to reflect light, it's a safety item. Flat black does not mix with headlights... I know the projectors are still in there but it just looks cheap, honestly it reminds me of those ghastly flat black bumper covers that were so prevalent in the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. I actually really LOVE the fine details in some of the projector lamps these days.... the new Eclipse has a crazy monocle, that's a bit weird but it's better than a ugly plain lenses like everything had in the 1990s. The 2008 Cadillac CTS, Infiniti G35, last gen. Celica, Chrysler 300C, 2003-6 Silverados & 2004-up BMW 5-series are all great examples of "bling" headlights that I personally think look fantastic. Funny how some things I LIKE about modern cars the rest of you despise while it's vice-versa when it comes to things like pillarless hardtops, V8s and or RWD/BOF...

Not quite black and white but a great pic. 1938 Packard Ambulance by Henney

This Mayan Temple Skyscraper resembling the tower of Babilon is cool. The rest odf the stuff in this thread sucks, esp. the ones that look like a whale's penis or some kind of french made vibrator.

I gotta agree with that B.V. You got plenty of time to post here... get a Hayes/Chillton manual and get to work on the Mazda. Patience is not something you should be short on it you wanna make your $ go as far as possible. Start turning wrenches instead of typing on the keyboard 5 hrs./day.

Not trying to step on anyones toes... JUST GIVING A FRIENDLY REALITY CHECK. I myself needed one the other day. The Banana's H2O pump detonated like a grenade, sending coolant all over the road & shredding the bearing like a piece of shrapnel hitting through a B-17 fuselage. I called up XP (he works at a local Auto Parts Store) and bitched and moaned about high gas prices... etc. and now my H2O pump is fubared blah-blah BLAH. He was unsympathetic and told me to stop crying about my pussy hurting. And you know what? He was right. My excise tax on the Banana is $7 a year versus the typical $250-$700 for a typical "late model" used car. (based on car's perceived value) My insurance is dirt cheap compared to same and oh yeah... that's RIGHT my car payment is ZERO dollars a month. The '77 Cadillac is PAYED for just like my B-59. I get just as much, if not more enjoyment out of the car as ANYTHING new or used I could semi afford. The lack of a $250/month payment for some crappy modern car MORE than makes up for the $120 extra in gas I spend a month. That will be down to much less once I stop delivering Chinese Food in my 425ci Caddy in heavy downtown traffic. That's just stupidity. Oh yeah and that H2O pump.... got a new one for less than $30, cost me about $50 after the coolant, high-temp. RTV gasket & one new fan belt. I did the repair right on the side of the road, took me a couple hours but I just managed to get the job done by sundown. Who's saving money now??? Gas is expensive, yes. Especially when you're driving a 425 cubic inch, (seven litre) V8, but you know what's worse? You know what's even MORE expensive (in the SHORT or LONG run) ? $800 to replace a piece of $h! rubber timing belt in a Honda $500 EVERY month for a car payent on a FWD V6 Tylenol pill $600 for a water pump replacement in a FWD $h!box where the H2O pump is hidden from any possible access. Think about it if I end up driving the Banana 15,000 miles this year @ 13mpg (realistic) I will burn off 1153 gallons of gas. Let's assume $3.09 a gallon (current price here) that totals: $3565 Now lets assume I was married to some deuchebag and my balls were in her purse... I might (let's pretend) get some tiny four cylinder car with a GVWR of less than half of the Cadillac, let's say it averages 26mpg (optimistic MPG for even the smallest of cars) so this would mean I'd only bur off 1/2 the gallons/$: Total savings: $1782 for a whole year. Again, it would be offset by a car payment and/or the fact that I would be giving up my super cool '77 Coupe deVille for some uninspired and lame modern "transportation pod". $

The last time I saw a (first gen.) Firebird that was "affordable" Hell-ary Clint666n was still stealing furniture from the Lincoln Bedroom.

H4PPY B1RTHDAY O.B.

Balthy: I think a 215-turbo would be a very cool way to make a ONE of a kind B-59 custom. Yes, I know you wouldn't be making the car faster/quicker but how exotic would that be!?

Close... but not the exact car of course. That '42 IS a pre-war car and its a 2dr. The FOUR door post-WWII Poncho I'm looking at is a Streamliner.

I'd love to drive a tame-looking little Pontiac T1000 with a 8.2 liter V8! Like lighting a cigar with an atom bomb.... awesome overkill. The Pontiac I am considering is a very rough but fairly solid car, not pre-war but DAMN close, 4-door, three on the tree, INLINE-8 flathead.

Cool. Never heard of this. Extra heavy duty AC in Canada... splendid. LOL

Congrats... I guess. Why not a used Challenger 3.5 instead of it's brother with downs syndrome?

1. Stop driving like an asshole in your gorgeous classic Chevy. 2. Stop being a pussy... you got a kickass daily driver, DRIVE it.