Sixty8panther

BTW: So why is it that GM will not return to the roll down rear window in the full sized trucks despite Toyota never having strayed from them. So many things that GM used to be good at it has given up on, throwing up their arms while Toyota does exactly that and excells. GM: "BOF full size SUVs don't sell if they're 2-door" (what about the damn FJ's success????) GM: "people do not want manual transmissions in their TRUCKS/Pickups" (go to a Toyota dealer & decide for yourself) GM: "nobody wants a flairside pickup anymore... or barn doors on SUVs... or 2wd...." (right?)

Well, as far as my cars being moneypits, let's see: B-59: bought in April, 2007. I've spent about $400 total on it other than purchase price. That includes repairs, fluid changes & some cosmetic stuff. Now I've driven the B-59 about 6K miles in the past 7 months and I'm not all that gentle with it. Granted those long overdue radial tires will set me back $200 or so even for a cheap set, after mounting/balancing. The Mercedes has yet to need any repairs, despite that I have spent a hundred bucks or so on it, Julie was annoyed at the lack of a right hand side mirror & no vanity mirrors, got those off a 300TD at the Junkyard & I also bought a hood ornament for it. As far as the Datsun... it's been two and a half years, durring which time the Maxima took a 1 year long nap in the carport.... having been started only once every three or so months. So that's 18 months or so of it on the road, all together having been driven about 28,000 miles & counting. I bought the car for $300, & I have not invested much into it, again even fluid changes included it might be about $500. So I'm still well under a thousand bucks. You try buying a Fleetwood Brougham, Firebird or a $h!ty old Datsun and drive it for over a year, racking up hard miles without spending $1K and you'll be in great shape. Keep in mind that means having to roll up your sleeves every few weeks and doing your own maintenance & repairs, including the messy stuff like chaning rear end gear oil & scapping nasty old valvecover gaskets with a razorblade, and I don't have a garage to make it less of a pain in the ass in December when it's 25* outside or give me shelter when it's pouring cats & dogs but a serpentine belt needs replacing. If I had a nice, warm, dry garage to keep my car in & work on my car at I'd be daily driving a 1930s car.

eye H8 alfaNumeRiX If I had my way the only one that would still use alphanumerics would be the STS, but it would still also carry the Seville emblem on the trunk as well at the STS. HHR is super lame, that should have been the "Apachee" or "Master Deluxe"

You guys all make sense, I've been doing better for the most part. Agreed FoG, I too have been thinking that maybe I can cleanse my mind by volunteering somehow... Wish I had the time tough, as it is I only see my daughter Sofia about twice a week and only for a few hours. On a semi-related note Sofia's daycare director asked me to bring by the B-59 for "vehicle exploration day" to complement the fire truck, police car & classic pickup that are supposed to be there. It should be fun, esp. since MY calssic car is a daily driver and I do not care if kids crawl in and out of it, get fingerprints on the glass or leave cheezit crumbs & footprints on the backseat, Sofia does that already everyday, besides, they're seatcovers. It's funny how Sofia always knows I'm there to pick her up when I'm driving the B-59 but if I pick her up in the Mercedes or Datsun she's oblivious to my arrival.

I hate burnt coffee.... not much of a coffee fan anyway. When I drink it I do enjoy a hazlenut iced, extra, extra.

You CAN on a 1500.... but it has to be a regular cab, the heavier 1500 ex-cab is not covered by warranty if you trow on a plow, and no plow-prep. is offered.

Sooooo True!!! But that's 90% of all Toyotas made in the past 20 years.

I remember getting excited as a 1st grader when I would stand at the bus stop, early in the morning back in 1984, if I saw an exciting car approaching. Yellow amber foglights almost always meant a Mercedes 123 or a very rare (in communist Slovakia) big-body MB. I also remember thinking that there was never going to be a sexier four door car than that silver 1984? BMW 5-series I saw as a kid. It even had shoulder belts for the back seat! And those quad-headlights that were set into that nose that angled forward like the bow of a boat.... very cool. And the few times that a Porsche 911 would drive by with a German tourist inside I would just about become paralized. The sexy lines, purposefull and sleek, would make my heart skip beats. Even a five-year-old can tell that a (now-classic) Porsche 911 in motion is like witnessing the smile of God. I remember discussing at age seven things like the benefit of manual trans. & arguing the pros. & cons. of certain styling trends in Europen cars. I also remmeber having my dad start up his 318-powered Dodge Diplomat at Logan Airport on Oct. 20th, 1987 when my mother & I finnally were reunited with him in the USA after the Communists let us leave. That Dodge's throaty V8's exhaust note, and my dad's insistance that the Caprice Classic was an even better vehicle, and all those car's huge proportions (to a kid from Europe) made me fall in love with American cars instantly. I remember the EXACT moment, when I saw a 4th gen. Camaro for the first time. It was in Cambridge, MA and my dad was about to cross over the Charles River when a blood-red Z28 pulled up next to us. It looked like the Banchee had jumped off the pages of Motor Trend and come to life. I just KNEW it was a Camaro though... it had the look of the 3rd gen. Camaro but a thousand times more modern. High School for me was one big blur... what I remmeber the most is reading MT in History class, drawing cars in Math class, drawig cars in English class... drawing cars in Study Hall WHILE reading MT/C&D/R&T/HR/PHR/SC... Then years later I won the 2nd place in the Amateur category of MT's first automotive design contest, in 2000. My car was a four-door Mitsu-Eclipse lookalike with hybrid propulsion... back then I still beleived in that garbage somewhat. Years later (the highlight of my life up till then) I dropped down $5000 cash. That's 250 $20 bills, on a '68 Camaro that was capable acceleration & performance that I had only dreamed of a few years earlier. And now years later still it's not the Camaro's power, thunderous exhaust note & neck snapping acceleration that has become an addiction, it's the realization that the further back you go, even past WWII then more style, longevity, practicality & durrability was built into cars. My '87 Mercury Cougar's 302 V8 gave me a taste of '60s cars, My '68 Camaro's awsome lines gave me a taste of '50s cars, and now gorgeous '59 Buick's sexy lines & rock solid mechanicals make me lust after a pre-war car... How I dream on a daily basis of my '59 Buick sharing garage space with an early 1930's Pontiac, Buick, Plymouth or whatever. Stock drivetrain, no stupid hot-rodder hackjob that cuts up the car and leaves it forever damaged in the prusuit of speed, just a clean, elegant American Pre-WWII car with a proud patina of original lead-based lacquer. Nothing that does not need repairing or replacing would be messsed with, short of maybe radial tires being installed & perhaps an MP3/CD player hidden away under the dash, not visible to the casual observer. Then for a daily driver I've been thinking I want a '61 Cadillac two-door hardtop with a tired 390.... I'll donate the caddy motor to XP in exchange for some time at his dad's shop where I'd dropp in a Duramax Turbo Diesel and do a veggie conversion. Then I'd get to have my cake (big, bof, RWD, Cadillac hardtop) and eat it too... (almost free fuel without sacrificing much needed torque) That's my defenition of being an enthusiast. Cars always on the brain. -

I'd drive a Miata in the winter... blizzaks & common sense are all you need. But that's me, you have to figure out weather your skills in the snow, RWD or otherwise, are going to outweigh the frustration of the Miata's super-low ground clearance & lack of practicality. Even though the Miata is a much better car to work on than the Millenia parts might get expensive, and you have a habit of throwing in the towl quickly. This might be a bad combo. if you buy ANOTHER car before you ever sell your other Mazda moneypit.

Cool, nice example of a GM that can also belong in to the Extinct Car Society. I personally would have just kept/driven that super-stylin' Datsun Camper! That thing had "pu$$y-magnet-n-portable-love-shack" written all over it.

OKAY.... so please do explain why you MUST drive through the woods in a car? Just like you had your reasons before as to why riding the ATV at night w/out headlights is funny.

Oh, I forgot about that Hyundai...

I love that ad... those groovy-sexy '60s Chicks with long flowing hair are almost as sexy as that Charger hardtop! Leave ET out of this...

Sorry to hear that DF... You're not giving enough info for us to helf you much. Does the noise stop when the car stops or is it constant while it's running. Here's a few things I'd check... - inner wheel well & tires (something rubbing) - make sure the serpentine belts are not rubbing up against something - CV joints - something rubbing up against the cooling fans (they'd only come on once it's warmed up) - rotors, pads and suspension components

I love the Enclave styling wise, best looking Buick with a transverse mounted V6 since the Park Ave. Ultra.

That's a loaded question. How are the rest of your finances? How much do you take home after taxes & how much of your income is expendable? Do you pay rent to your parents?

Dog-Damn I'm jelaous!!!! That is one sharp Caddy. Congrats on getting a 6-speed MANUAL. Nice to see there's some REAL enthusiasts left out there.

Condition & milage being equivelant it's worth about 15% of what a REAL T-Type/GN is worth. RWD G-body Buicks rock.

Pictures...?

Thanks guys.... I appreciate it. '07 was a great year in some ways, but so much violance has touched upon my life this year, indirectly mostly. A local man just murdered his wife on Thanksgiving and then took their son in their Corolla and crashed head-on into a Mack truck in hopes of killing himself & his 6 year old son. They both lived, and the son described in detail how his dad "hurt" his mom... who was stabbed to death. So many of us humans are just animals with driver's licenses and slightly evolved communication skills.

Camino: Better than a motrocycle. That's all I'm saying. Also I bet this will be safer overall than a typical older Honda Civic hatchback or even a new Toyota Yaris. They do surprisingly well in crashe tests.

It's a fantastic vehicle, for a CITY CAR. There's already several Smarts here in the Nashua, NH area. One owned by a real estate angent with a vinyl "WRAP" of their logo on the entire car. For the record I gotta say there is no way in hell I'd buy a Honda Fit over this.

My mind has been a little mixed up recently. I've had some very disturbing nightmares. The movie Silent Hill, as much EVERYONE I know hates it, fascinates me because much of the imagery in it is the stuff of my nightmares. That over sized, creepy Pyramid guy & his violent actions are pretty much something my mind would conjure up. Something is up with me, I know what it is I guess, just don't know how to deal with it. Julie and I are doing great, despite the miscarriage. Things are looking up and I've been a happy camper as of late, even on Thanksgiving I was thinking how I should count my blessings. But there's this "thing" looming over my head... I feel very helpless and angry and depressed about it and since I can not turn back time I'm helpless to stop/change it. Some background: A few months ago, late August of this year, when I was still working as a Chevrolet & Cadillac salesman I got a call on a hot, humid day. I opened up my Razor cell phone in the 100* heat, my leather shoes seemed to melt into the black asphalt. My heart dropped in my chest when my dad announced that my grandmother had passed on. I remember consoling myself with internal dialogue after I got off the phone with my dad. I rememeber thinking, as I leaned into the side of a white-diamond Escalade, that she had a good, full life. Born in 1920 she had seen it all. As a little girl she used to tell us, there were still people who considered the Bicycle to be an un-holy invention, calling it a DEVIL'S WHEEL. These senior citizens of the 1920s were born in the early- to mid 1800s. My grandmother saw WWII, her husband almost killed by Russian soldiers when they stole his Mercedes-Benz truck for the "war effort", and communist cause, crippling his business, & perhaps forever his spirit. The less rude, typically polite German soldiers of WWII passed through her yard & house as well, in most cases without disturbing the civilian population. She had seen the Communist Russians again pass through a civilian population in the revolution of 1968. Using tanks and helicopters to gain submission of the masses. The disgusting hypocraqcy of communism crushing their hopes of a semi-democratic goverment. So on that day, having found out my grandmother had passed on at 87, I took a small amount of consolation in that she had a long and interesting life. I just hoped that she had died peacefully, without pain or suffering. But how WRONG I was. In the interest of sparing me of grief and emotional pain my dad had decided to not give me the whole story. The sad, cold and distrubing truth is that my 87 year old grandmother was killed violently, at the hands of some piece of $h! juvenile delinquent. She was slain in her own home, her throat cut by a 14 year old kid who had broken into her home. My aunt and cousin came to visit and found her in a pool of blood. We always joked that she would live to be a hundred like so many elderly people who keep talking about the end. To make matters worse this little piece of $h! 14 year old kid, the youngest person ever to be tried in Slovakia for murder. 14 years old and he commits a violent murder after a history of crime and a troubled past. And in the end the little $h! will be out of jail before he turns 30. They gave him 15 years. 15 years!?!?!?!?!?!? So yeah, I've had a lot of nightmares. There's nothing I can do to help my grandmother, her pain & suffering were useless and unnecessary & now it's all past-tense. I'm trying to stop the violent thoughts in my head but honestly I'd like to go Dexter on this little piece of $h!. The other day I watched the movie 300 and all I could think of was that this scumbag is still alive, and not only will he not get the death penalty but in 15 years he'll be out in society, possibly to kill again. That's it I guess.... feels somewhat better to get it all out but like I said, I need to get some closure, my parents attended the funeral but I could not. I need to somehow get over this, to move on, think healty thoughts etc. The other day downloaded a violent video of some terrorists beheading an innocent hostage and watched it, the morbid images making me feel even more depressed and hollow, all whie picturing that little filthy murderer in the victim's place. Anyone here ever been through something simillar?

LOL I blame FWD, not crazy old people... that '72 Nova would tow the 35 foot trailer with torque to spare.

I love the Pontiac TailG8 idea! My suggestions: Pontiac Caballus (Latin for Horse) Ponitac Equus (also Latin for Horse) Pontiac Hauler Pontiac Blitz (German for Lightning, as in Ford ) Pontiac Kargo Pontiac Torreon (as in Mexico)