2016 Jeep Patriot - Oh Joy. Oh Bliss.

Just like last year, my family and I made a pilgrimage to Jupiter, Florida to spend Christmas with my wife's mother and her sister's family. Instead of renting "a car" like we did last year, I let my wife persuade me into getting a Toyota Rav4 instead. While I begrudgingly accept that cross overs are taking over the world, I have heard nice things about many of them and in particular, the Rav4. And it never hurts to try something new so, let's have at it.

When we got to the Alamo rental counter at the Fort Lauderdale airport we found they were out of Rav4's; all they had left were a bevy of Jeep Patriots and Compass'. You know, vehicles that were "just like" a Toyota Rav4. I wasn't going to argue with a rental car counter person but, c'mon. man, no Jeep is Toyota. Never has been and never will be. A Jeep Patriot for a week? Oh Joy. Oh Bliss.

I knew I had made a mistake of not insisting that we get something else the moment I sat in this thing for the first time. Now, far be it for me to be critical of modern vehicles, me, the owner of four vehicles with an average age of twenty four and a collective half million miles plus, but my first issue with this "cute-ute" was a beef I have with many "modern cars" - visibility. It's not the worst I've experienced on a vehicle made after 2005 but it certainly ain't great. Problem is the doors on the Patriot are too tall and the sitting position too low making me feel as though I'm sitting in a bathtub. Even our 1996 Camaro, a car that is very low to the ground, feels downright airy in comparison. There was no power seat in our stripper rental Patriot so where we sat, we sat. Save for fore and aft adjustments. What's worse, the B pillar and the head rests are positioned such that they appear as a pair of heads out of the corner of the driver's eye. They also further inhibit visibility out the passenger side of the vehicle. Add a real human head and you have three heads blocking the driver's view out the passenger side. How this got engineered into a "modern" vehicle is mind boggling. Hopefully they'll fix this with the new Patriot slated to be in showrooms for model year 2018.

Our rental Patriot didn't even have a compass but it did have power windows and door locks. Thank goodness. Lest we think we had gone back to the stone ages. The seats were comfortable on our short traipses up and down the Florida coast, the AC blew abundant chilly air and the Patriot, I found, was actually quite a nimble handler; it was almost fun to throw around. The brakes were excellent too. While I hit my head a time or two on the sill above the tail gate door, noteworthy since I'm no giant at maybe five foot ten, I found the cargo area to be very accessible and more than commodious. It's not the rolling cavern that is our 2006 Tahoe but for hauling soft luggage, beach chairs, blankets and umbrellas it was more ample.

I've even took to the styling. For the most part. I like the 7 slot grill paying homage to Jeeps of yore; Jeep styling is hard not to like even if you're not a fan of off roading or the Jeep "lifestyle". I'm sure Jeep cognoscenti appreciate the design as well. There's a certainly "butch" to the Patriot that I'm sure is part of the appeal to buyers; Jeep's done quite well with the Patriot since its debut back in 2007. Done well despite some glaring issues.

The most glaring being  the "CVT" automatic transmission on our rental. I've heard horror stories about these things and cutting to the chase, the CVT in our 15,000 mile young Patriot didn't disappoint in being disappointing.

A CVT transmission, or "constant velocity transmission" is different from a conventional automatic transmission in that instead of multiple gears it has has "one" gear. One gear that fluctuates constantly while driving, particularly when accelerating hard, attempting to find the "perfect ratio" to maximize gas mileage. The potential upside of good gas mileage compared to a traditional automatic all but negated by a most annoying lack of responsiveness. If you're wondering, we averaged a ho hum 22 miles per gallon. What would it have gotten if it had a conventional five or six speed automatic? Good question.

In a 3300 pound vehicle powered by a mid size four cylinder engine making a respectable 158 horsepower, even with a conventional automatic, acceleration would be far from sporty but it would be adequate. With a CVT and its constant ratio hunting, which, incidentally, is accompanied by incessant droning and buzzing, acceleration was akin to an '80's diesel powered GM full size car. In other words, this thing is very slow. Honestly, I can't remember the last time time I drove anything as slow and unresponsive as this Patriot. It's a shame too since that mid size four (2.0 liter) is a pretty smooth, rev happy little runner. Its CVT sidekick ruins the show, though. Seriously, if you're in the market for a car and you're looking at something with a CVT, do a very through test drive and do your research. These things are touted as the future and they may very well be, however, the future is not here. Yet? I'd stay far away from anything with a CVT.

Good news is if you're smitten with the styling of the Patriot, at least when the Patriot first came out in 2007, a conventional six speed automatic is or was available. I'd forgo the CVT for that transmission. A larger in line four is also available as is all wheel drive on an up level Patriot "Limited". The Patriot is so light that that larger engine (2.4 liter) and conventional automatic no doubt make for a pretty snappy ride. No word on whether or not the 2018 Patriot will have a CVT or not. If it does, hopefully it will have most if not all of the issues that plague our Patriot's CVT ironed out.

Time to throw the umbrellas, beach chairs and Gatorade in a cooler and head back to the beach. Happy New Year! 

1994 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 - Wants Vs. Needs

As much as my family and I have moved around the country, with perhaps the exception of our move to Cleveland, Ohio in 2010 to some degree, the moves have been necessitated by needs rather than wants. To wit, I don't think that any sane person with a family in tow would move four times in six years if they didn't need to. Most insane people wouldn't do that either. Even the move to Cleveland was predicated more on needs than wants, please bite your tongue with any Cleveland jokes, seeing that our choices were to have me continue to commute between Dallas and Nashville or go to where I hoped would be a more stable situation for us. That want based decision was an easy one and has worked out quite well. I have great respect for people who make big life decisions based on wants instead of needs that are difficult to make; and are completely comfortable with their decision. Think about it - knowing full well there are consequences to any all decisions, it's not as simple as it seems. And my hand wringing over what to do about a broken down old car seems almost trivial in comparison. 

With my 2002 Monte Carlo going through it's biannual series of maladies, I had taken to using our 1996 Camaro instead while I had it "off line". One day after my somewhat traffic clogged twenty seven mile slog to the office I smelled warm anti freeze oozing from underneath it. To my utter astonishment what I first thought was a busted lower radiator hose was "only" the lower radiator having fallen off the radiator. Later that day I replaced the hose, being proactive believing that the hose fell off because it was bad, and filled the reservoir with fresh coolant. However, and to make a long story short, it was too late. I had run the engine too long without coolant and the head gaskets broke or became defective or what is commonly referred to as "blown". And, just like that, our Old '96er was toast. Fixable toast but for all intents and purposes, toast. I was and remain absolutely heart broken.

The prognosis? Grim. Or quite expensive. Replace the head gaskets and run the risk of a cracked engine block necessitating the junking of the engine anyway, replace the engine with something that has about 145,000 miles on it, or just scrap or part out the whole car. Head gasket replacement and an engine transplant would both run between $2,500 and $3,000. Swap the engine myself? Trust me, I thought about it but as much as I'd love to tackle something like this, on these "Gen IV" Camaros where everything has to be done from under the car, it's just too damn big of a job for me. Especially working alone.

Me being me, I started hunting for replacement Camaros or something interesting for similar amount of money that it would cost me to fix what we have. I quickly found that $3,000 doesn't buy much these days when it comes to a used car but after myriad traipses between the Indiana and Pennsylvania state lines I came across this lovely 1994 Camaro Z28 out near Toledo. Yes. It looks even better in person.

I've fallen hard for this little beast but I can't get the dealership down lower than $5,000 out the door. Still, a lot of car for the money despite 115,000 miles on the odometer, a worn out driver's seat, a driver's window that won't go down and a driver's side mirror that doesn't move. Oh, and it needs tires. Seeing that I have a perfectly good donor car I wouldn't fret any of it. I think there's a bad muffler too. Remember there's always going to be something with an old car.

Rarely is the easier thing to do the most pragmatic; that being for me to get our busted Red Camaro down the block to the shop in town and have them transplant the engine. Our Red Camaro also needs front end work that I can do with the parts all in running $300-$400. So, we're talking about $3,000 to get the Old 96er back up and running. That's what I need to do and in short, "save" $2,000.

What I want to do is get the Z28 instead but rarely have I done anything in my life out of pure "want". My greatest concern is having buyers remorse; never mind the amount of work I'd have to put into it at first. It would be fun to swap over the parts from one to the other and then I'd part out what's left of the Red Camaroit. As hillbilly as that seems or actually really is. Parting out the Red Camaro would help to offset the additional cost of the Z28 too; that $2,000 additional expense is not something I dismiss lightly. Any one need a set of pristine Gen III Camaro tail lamps or hood? Now, if the cost of the Z28 was even $1,000 less this would be an easier decision but with an eye towards the bottom line at all times, I'm caught in the age old quandry of Wants vs. Needs.

Update. The deal fell through. The original $5,000 transaction was to include the dealership repairing a rust patch on the left rear quarter panel above the wheel. On 12/23, I told the salesman I was dealing with that things were moving in "the right direction" toward a deal but I couldn't "do the deal" then because I was heading out of town through New Years. I told him that I would contact him after the first of the year to probably get the deal done. Meanwhile, he contacted me while I was on vacation and said that if the deal was not completed by 12/31 that the price of the car would not include fixing the rust patch thus raising the out door price to $5,300. Wow. Did not see THAT coming but it's just as well. What with everything the car needed and the high mileage, ultimately, I did have a problem paying that much for the car. Despite my being able to do just about everything that needed to be done for nothing. 

2005 Pontiac Bonneville GXP - Time To Let Go Of Things That Don't Matter

Years ago the notion of a Cadillac powered Pontiac was about as fathomable as radio with pictures or a man walking on the moon. That's because a major part of GM's brand essence was what was under the hood; even if what was visible looked very much the same across their myriad divisions. With Cadillac an exception to some degree - particularly before World War II.

Was a Buick "better" than say, an Oldsmobile? No, of course not but if you market it as such and buyers believe that it was then the answer to that question is an unqualified, "yes". Even if said makes and models were indistinguishable from each other. If you think that GM cars in the 1970's and 1980's looked alike, get a load of GM's new for 1933, "turret top" 1933 Buick...  

and 1933 Oldsmobile. Save for the vaguest of styling nuances, I mean, you really have to look hard at both of these cars to tell them apart, they are the same car. Oh, but one's a Buick and one's an Oldsmobile? Ok. 

Let's not forget lowly Pontiac which was slotted below Oldsmobile but a head of Chevrolet.  Without, again, any discernable difference aside from what GM told you the cars represented in some sort of bizarre caste. All part of Alfred Sloan's pricing ladder or a car for every wallet. 

Where you'd see a difference was in the interiors and power trains. The interior of this 1933 Chevrolet Master Six, again, note how similar it looks to Buick, Olds and Pontiac, all but an empty tin can in comparison to the lavishly trimmed interior of the Buick. Under hood, this Chevrolet makes due "only" with an in line six whereas the Buick, Oldsmobile and even the Pontiac had in line eight cylinder engines available. Were the Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac "Eights", they shared nothing with each other, superior to the Chevrolet "Six"? Debateable. Very. 

GM's engine hierarchy came to a screeching and embarrassing halt in 1977 when they found itself in a public relations snafu for not disclosing that it was using Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles. To make matters worse they charged more for the Chevrolet engine in an Oldsmobile than they did for the same engine in a Chevrolet. Not good. Even if they had disclosed it they would have gotten a fair amount of flack from a marketplace reared for years on Mr. Sloan's pricing ladder. Probably wouldn't have been as damaging to GM's reputation had it been ther other way around but still, it somewhat diminished whatever exclusivity the models had. Did it really matter from behind the wheel? No, but the "corporatization" of GM engines, were engines where not division specific, had begun. Amazingly, it took decades for it to completely unravel.

Along the way that unraveling took a strange turn or two. In 2004, for instance, GM started offering their once exclusive to Cadillac "Northstar" engine in the Pontiac Bonneville GXP and, amazingly, nary an eyebrow was raised. That having more to do with GM offering an "upmarket" engine in a "downmarket" automobile as much as it had to do with a buying public and automotive press that just didn't care [anymore]. And, yes, GM disclosed it that time but...was that not unlike a parent whom all of a sudden decides not to take things with their children as seriously as they once did? You can't not scold your kids for drinking straight out of the milk carton when they're young but not do it when they're older. A Cadillac engine in a Pontiac. As if.

The whole Cadillac in a Pontiac actually made very good dollars and sense since the Bonneville and Cadillac DTS shared so much mechanically; the Northstar made the Bonneville GXP a really nice, smooth runner too, much better than the supercharged 3800 V-6. The 2005 Buick Lucerne also had the Cadillac Northstar engine available.

Ford and Chrysler have had "corporate" engines for years, VW/Audi, Toyota/Lexus, Honda/Acura too. The list goes on and on. GM's bankruptcy only sped up the process of corporatizing their engines. It was time for GM to let go of things that didn't matter any more any way.

2004 Chevrolet SSR - What is Cool?

Pulled this one out of the “What the Hell Is That?” archives.

If you don't remember the Chevrolet SSR, you're not alone. Chevrolet sold only 24,180 of these between 2003 and 2006, so it's not like you saw many of them back then, either.

“SSR” stood for “Super Sport Roadster.” It was a two-passenger, retro-themed pickup truck with a retractable hardtop, designed to evoke Chevrolet's hot-rod pickups of the late 1940s and early 1950s. You either get that, or this makes about as much sense as a Volkswagen Thing.

On the heels of General Motors breaking our hearts by canceling the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird after the 2002 model year, they give us an impossibly impractical pickup truck?

In a 2003 Autoweek article, Tom Wallace, the GM vehicle line executive responsible for the Chevrolet SSR, explained the three reasons GM decided to build it. “First, it's pretty cool, a halo vehicle for Chevrolet. Second, journalists all said we should build it. Third, Rick [GM chairman Rick Wagoner] said we should build it.”

Hoo-boy. You built it because journalists and the guy running the joint said you should? Didn't anyone ever tell you that the person in the corner office is often the least qualified person to even work in the place? And auto scribes are notorious for blowing smoke up manufacturers' wheel wells, particularly when those manufacturers are spending big bucks advertising in their publications.

Now, no one ever said the automobile industry was for the modest or faint of heart, but clearly Mr. Wallace, Mr. Wagoner, and the rest of the gang running General Motors at the time had lost their grip on what “cool” meant.

Which begs the question: What is cool? Frankly, I don't know, but I know it when I see it. And, sorry, the SSR doesn't even glide along the fine edge between cool and not cool. It crosses over into the goofy lane and hits oncoming traffic head-on.

Through my foggy goggles, the Chevrolet SSR was an attempt to be, first and foremost, “cool.” That's a slippery slope to climb, given that “cool” is a personal, oftentimes visceral reaction to something.

Adding insult to injury, the SSR wasn't very good at doing anything. No self-respecting tradesperson would be caught dead in one, and it wasn't much of a performance vehicle, either.

Based on a modified version of GM's midsize-truck platform, the SSR was underwhelming in its original form, with a structure that, to my mind, felt like cooked spaghetti and awful ergonomics.

On top of all that, it cost about as much as a Corvette.

By the time Chevrolet updated the SSR for the 2005 model year with a Corvette-derived V-8 and a host of chassis and suspension refinements, the die had been cast. The SSR was a loser.

In all fairness, I think the passage of time has softened the what-the-hell-is-that-ness of the SSR, but I still don't think it's handsome or cool in any way. This one, with 78,000 miles on it, is currently being auctioned by Hagerty. The last time I checked, bidding was stuck at $10,600.

A 2004 Corvette with 78,000 miles on it could bring somewhere in the high teens to low twenties.

Let's also not forget that GM had just canceled the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird. While the SSR was in no way a replacement for them, it did make us pony-car pundits wonder if we should take the keys away from Rick Wagoner and the decision-makers at GM.

Patience being a virtue, that would all come to pass with GM's bankruptcy in 2009.

2004 Pontiac GTO - Bob Lutz Swings and Misses

Bob Lutz had a most interesting career in the auto industry having worked at BMW, Ford and Chrysler before becoming Vice Chairman of Global Product Development at General Motors in 2001. A "car guy", first and business man second, many give Lutz credit for creating the BMW 3-series and their "M" or "Motorsport" division, the Ford Escort III, Sierra and Explorer and at Chrysler, the LH series of sedans and the Dodge Viper. Lutz left Chrysler, and essentially the auto industry, when Chrysler was sold to Daimler in 1998.

Once back in the business as GM's product honcho, Lutz swung wildly for the fences and like most homerun hitters, he struck out quite often. With almost as many hits as he had misses, it's hard to imagine how he was able to shoe horn a Holden Monaro through the GM pipeline in the early 2000's and rebadge it as a Pontiac "GTO" of all things. I admire the man for his passion, moxy and love of performance automobiles but from a business stand point, honestly, did he or the wonks at GM he convinced through the force of his charismatic personality honestly think that a homely and cramped Holden based coupe with GTO glued on its rear end was going to find buyers?

Back then, I was thrilled when I heard that GM and Pontiac were pushing out a Corvette powered 2+2 out on the heels of the departure of the late and not so great Gen 3 Pontiac Firebird. I was curious, though, as to why they replaced the Firebird with this instead of retooling the Firebird. Same goes for the even uglier, 2 passenger, truck based Chevrolet SSR that replaced the Camaro. If at any time in the long and tortured history of GM decision makers made decisions that made no sense, it was the early 2000's. No wonder GM went belly up less than five after this car debuted.

Shame of the matter was, the 2004 "GTO" was a fantastic automobile. Dare I say, the best thing GM sold at the time. It went like stink thanks to it's Corvette engine and was sure footed thanks to its Holden Monaro underpinnings. The front seats were the stuff of dreams.

The list of wonderful performance bits and pieces on the 2004 GTO was mesmerizing. 350 horsepower, 5.7 liter LS-1 V-8 straight from Corvette, 245/45 BF Goodrich G-Force T/A's, Akebono front pads and Bendix Mintex rear pads, struts up front and semi-trailing arms out back with an adjustable toe-in link. The 2004 GTO was the type of car that inspired you to do stupid things with it.

The 2004 GTO was not, however, without a serious number of "what is that"? The car after all was Australian; Australia is just like America only completely different. That goofy steering wheel, the console mounted power window switches, the Blaupunkt radio, odd HVAC controls and the huge gas tank mounted in the trunk. Quirky is one thing, quirks are what what made Subaru and Saab Subaru and Saab back in the day but all the "what is that's"? gave the GTO a weirdness factor that was hard if not impossible to shake.

And then of course there was the styling. Or lack there of. Try as I might, even after all these years, it's still hard to get my eyes around this thing and go, "yeah, I get it" because I don't. Not that I think there was anything to get, mind you. The original Holden Monaro was a charmingly generic appliance with the heart of a lion; festooned with GM's chintzy Pontiac design ethos fore and aft and the Monaro became a frankenstein esque Grand Prix fleet car.

Legend has it that Lutz and company were inspired to "GTO" the Holden Monaro after reading a positive review of one in an automobile publication shortly after the car's debut down under in the early 2000's. Bureaucratic GM red tape combined with federalizing a foreign car for sale in the United States delayed that process precipitously; there apparently was no time nor money to properly redesign it. So, a rear wheel drive Grand Prix like "blob" is what we got instead. Imagine what could have been.

The 2004 vintage GTO lasted through model year 2006 with just 40,000 sold in total. Pontiac and Bob Lutz lasted at GM through 2009. Lutz  claimed one of the reasons he retired was because of an increasingly regulatory climate in Washington that was forcing GM to produce what Federal regulators wanted rather than what customers wanted. That sounds like a perfectly good reason for someone who really needed to work to quit, don't you think? Yeah. Judging by just 40,000 GTO's sold between 2004 and 2006, sounds more like what he wanted.

Words of advice, try and not work for people who really don't need to work. Unless of course you're just like them and you don't need to work either. Then you and your bosses can take your jobs as seriously as a high school yearbook staff does. You'll be passionate about the work but you don't have a financial stake in whether or not its any good.

Genesis G80 and G90 - Wait Three Years and Buy Two At a Time

I loved these goofy Hyundai Excel commercials from the late 1980's where a man drives two brand new Excel's home at the same time that he just bought new at a dealership. The gist of the commercial was that Excel's where so inexpensive that you could buy two of them for less than average cost of one car. Regardless of whether or not Excel's where any good, I for one found them horrible, these ads were effective in branding Hyundai's as being inexpensive, dare I say cheap automobiles.

It's always come as a surprise to me then that over the years, Hyundai has grown from being a purveyor of terrible cheap little cars to purveyors of a full range of automobiles most of which are respectable and some of which are really expensive. However, based on my handful of bad experiences that I had with early Hyundai's, I've always been a skeptic of the brand. So much so that I wouldn't be caught dead with one in my driveway.

Imagine my surprise in 2008 when Hyundai came out with a premium sedan they called "Genesis" for sale here in the United States. I was even more flabbergasted the next year when they started selling the "Equus", a car that was even more ornate and expensive. Hyundai had long been selling what appeared to be "upmarket" automobiles but the Genesis and Equus were the first "luxury" Hyundai's that actually appeared to be luxury cars. If you're curious, "Equus" is a Latin word for horse. I know, you thought it was Latin for pretentious.

Fast forward eight model years and now Hyundai has spun the Genesis and Equus off into their own separate division. The new division is called "Genesis" and the "old" Genesis sedan will be called the "G80" while the old Equus will now be known as the "G90". From a marketing and branding perspective, if this sounds a little half baked to you you're not the only one who feels that way. This would be like GM spinning off "Impala" into its own division. To make matters even worse, the G80 and G90 will be sold through existing Hyundai dealerships. A dealership network that after all these years still markets value first and foremost.

What's the value in a G80 with an MSRP of nearly $50,000 and the G90 at almost $70,000? Good question.

Boils down to perspective. If you're of the means that you can drop $50,000 - $70,000 on a car you might be inclined to buy into Genesis' value proposition that you're actually getting a car that would cost you tens of thousands more if you bought an Audi, BMW, Jaguar or Mercedes. Thing is, though, you're not buying an Audi, BMW, Jaguar or Mercedes you're buying a fancy Hyundai. And people who are of the means to spend that kind of money on a car want a nameplate in their driveway that has the power to impress the neighbors. It's not about keeping up with the Joneses, it's about being far out in front of them. At the end of the day people are going to be doing a fair amount of explaining as to what it is that they bought for a still very sizable amount of money. A Hyundai is still a Hyundai no matter what you call it.

If there's any value in these cars its in two or three years when they're back on the market as used cars. The resale value of the Genesis G80 and G90 is going to be atrocious but with the balance of Hyundai's absurdly wonderful warranty still available, a G90, with its power reclining rear seats, might be a smart buy and one that could impress your more enlightened neighbors. Heck, they're such great values you might be able to buy two of them for less than the cost of one brand new one.