2005 Pontiac Bonneville GXP - Deck Chairs On The Titanic

Much the same way I found our Mustang, thanks to "cookies", this 2005 Pontiac Bonneville GXP popped up on msn.com one morning during our two month search to replace our younger son's Camaro. Seeing that it had only 39,000 on it and had an asking price of a relatively mere $6995, I couldn't get my phone out quick enough to make a call to the dealership to see if one of the mid '00's oddest and coolest performance sedans was still available. And much to my delight it was.

I should have realized that something was up, though, when the dealership told me that the car had just been traded in and that it hadn't gone through their service department yet for inspection. That and an asking price a good $2,500 lower than it should have been and knowing full well that our twenty year old son wouldn't appreciate a car like this above and beyond it being just a car didn't stop me from making the thirty minute traipse across town to check it out. After all, with the car for sale at one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the area, I felt as secure as I could in knowing it was probably on the up and up. Even a Bonneville GXP with only 39,000 miles on it with an asking price thousands below market. This had to be my lucky day. Well, not so fast, cowboy.

When it comes to old cars, regardless of the amount of miles on them, if it's "clean", I can look past most mechanical issues save for blown transmissions and engines. And by clean I simply mean no rust. And right from the get go I knew my time spent with this big Bonnie was going to be limited. I'm not sure why this happens to many a car up here but rust in this area of the car is quite common and is a tell tale sign of pending doom; if a car is rusty here there's going to be more. I'd rather buy a car with busted up brakes, struts and wonky wiring before I'd buy something with rust. It's damn near impossible to fix let alone expensive as hell.

Another tell tale sign that this wasn't going to go well was when the sales person who gave me the keys didn't come with me on the test drive. Perhaps he didn't want to die. For starters, the inside was filthy and smelled like the inside of a garden shed that a squirrel had croaked in. I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures. The good news was, haha, it didn't smell like an ashtray. The check engine and ABS lights were on and turtleing out of the parking lot I noticed the air didn't blow cold and the brake pedal had a lot of travel in it. Odd.

With no salesman on board and really no intent to buy something that smelled like a dead animal, I floored the gas on the entrance ramp to I-480 and the Bonneville took off nicely. Powered by the 275 horsepower version of Cadillac's star crossed NorthStar V-8, why they made two versions of that engine is any one's guess, it had the smooth whoosh of good acceleration that was refreshing and fun fourteen, fifteen years ago. These days, and remarkably so, speed being a commodity, it really wasn't that great. Quick? I guess...but then again most everything is these days.

Still, eighty, eighty-five miles per hour came up pretty fast and that's when that long brake pedal travel became a serious liability. While I always leave plenty of room between myself and the driver in front of me, slamming the brakes resulted in intense anxiety - for a split second I didn't think this thing was going to stop. It did, of course, but man. I hadn't driven anything with brakes that bad since my '96 Camaro let loose of its rear cylinders. The rest of my drive was taken at a much, much slower clip.

I told the salesman of my concerns about the rust, the smell, bad brakes, the AC that didn't work, the check engine and ABS lights and of course then offered him three grand for the car knowing full well he wouldn't bite. He told me again the car hadn't gone through their inspection process and that he'd give me a call once it did and if I was really serious we'd talk more. I really had no intention of buying this thing with the rust again being the big reason. The organic smelling interior being a close second. Still, it was a Bonneville GXP and warts and all, maybe I could clean it up and make it work for me. Doubtful but you never know.

Ah, the allure of a V-8. Somehow, and this admittedly is a stretch, the Bonneville GXP with the NorthStar made sense a decade and half ago. What with the demise of Oldsmobile after 2004 and their absurdly ugly 2001-2003 Aurora, GM technically moved the V-8 Aurora down market to Pontiac. Mercifully, they did not offer the Aurora's "baby NorthStar" 4.0 liter V-8 on these cars; what was that engine all about? Anyway, while wonks like me found the car interesting if not alluring, the general buying public could have cared less. It wasn't as if they were intrigued by cross overs back then either; there was just no market for a car like this back then and especially from plastic cladding obsessed Pontiac. No doubt a sticker price near forty grand didn't help either. Pontiac pulled the plug not only on the Bonneville GXP after 2005 but on the Bonneville altogether. With Pontiac hitting the ocean floor five years later, cars like this were akin to arranging deck chairs on a sinking Titanic.

As for that woe-be-gone 2004 Bonneville GXP I test drove, the dealership called me back the next day and told me that it had, no surprise to me, failed their inspections and they were sending it straight to auction. I asked them if I could still make a run for it and they said they'd consult with their upper management to see if we could arrange something. I didn't hold my breath waiting for a call back.

2006 Pontiac Grand Prix GXP - Just Another Four Door Sedan

While my wife appreciates what I refer to as "real Grand Prix's", those seminal rolling works of art from 1969-1972, for combining aesthetics with practicality, she really likes the last two runs of Grand Prix's on GM's late and occasionally pretty good "W-body" platform. Especially the 2004-2008 models. Seeing that I've had five Chevrolet "W-body" or GM10's over the last (good lord) thirty years, I currently drive one and, damn the critics, loved them all, it's why when I was searching for a car to replace our younger son's Camaro I made so many cars.com and craigslist searches for Pontiac Grand Prix's. The best find was a 2006 that was a lot more than just your run of the mill, rental counter upgrades. It was without a doubt the greatest car Pontiac ever made and one you probably never heard of - a Grand Prix GXP. Incidentally, this is not the car I found and for illustrative purposes I used two different Grand Prix GXP's.

A Pontiac in the mid to late '00's with "GXP" festooned to its flanks denoted a performance orientated, front wheel drive five door cross over, four or even two door sedan. There was the G6 GXP, Bonneville GXP, Soltice GXP, the Torrent GXP and the Grand Prix GXP. Mercifully, Pontiac didn't do a G5 GXP. No doubt GM saved millions on plastic dye molds for model designation letters when they pulled the plug on Pontiac.

As far as the Grand Prix goes, for 2005, the GXP replaced the GTP at the top of the Grand Prix lineup. Although Pontiac continued to offer the GTP's supercharged 3800 V-6 on the Grand Prix GT through 2007 (that's not confusing at all, is it?), the GXP eschewed the blown V-6 for a transversely mounted version of GM's LS series based, "5300" V-8. While the big V-8 put out only forty-three more horsepower and fifty-three more pound feet of torque than the heavy breathing V-6, with the V-8 lighter than the iron block and head V-6 and maximum power coming on at lower rpm's, you don't need to be a physicist or even a half asleep physics student to realize that the GXP was going to be faster than a GTP. And way, way more responsive.

Straight line acceleration in these cars being as heroic as it was back in the day and still is, it wasn't the only thing the Grand Prix GXP was known for. With torque steer being the bane of any front wheel drive car and in particular over powered front wheel drivers, GM engineers fitted these cars with larger front tires than the rears to offset torque steer. Doing so also, and for reasons that allude me, allow for a better balanced car that can over steer to some degree. Front wheel drive cars with the same size tires all around have little chance at over steering that, again for reasons I fail to understand on paper, is a good thing on performance cars. I have the same size tires all around on my 2002 Monte Carlo and have never experienced any problems with that set up. Then again, I've never driven my car to the extremes that I guess a car like this with more than one hundred more horsepower and pounds of torque could be driven at. Bottom line is that all that engineering pays dividends behind the wheel as these cars are a blast to drive at any speed. And for more reasons than because they're incredibly fast.

Stiffer struts, fatter anti roll bars, eighteen inch rims and a slightly lower ride height further help to flatten out handling. The end result is a car with go-kart like responses that also, thanks in large part to the huge wheels, fat tires and lowered stance, looks about as good as a front wheel drive, four door American car ever has. The ride is also fairly supple. Fairly. Supple. It's still pretty stiff and hitting a pothole can be quite jarring. And as far as torque steer goes, there's still a oh-so-slight tug on the wheel when you nail the gas but if someone didn't point it out to you you'd probably not notice it was there. Oh, and if you're really interested in one of these, make sure that the front tires are P255/45/18's and the rears are P225/50/R18's. Going with the same sized tires all around or less expensive standard sizes with negate what the engineers were able to accomplish and the car will torque steer like crazy and will not be able to over steer.

To shoehorn what's known as the LS3 V-8 into the GP, GM shortened the crankshaft by an inch and fabricated a special block just for front wheel drive applications. They also came up with a single belt accessory drive, the AC compressor on LS3's was driven by a separate belt - why is anyone's guess,  and they moved the starter out of the way by mounting it to the transmission. Speaking of which, the transmission was beefed up to handle the three hundred twenty three foot pounds of torque the sideways V-8, dubbed LS4, twisted out. All that and, voila! The monster V-8 in a front wheel drive car looks like the car was originally designed to hold it. Chevrolet also offered a LS4 V-8 powered Monte Carlo and Impala in 2006 and 2007 but they did not offer the Grand Prix's wild tire set up so those cars dance around like crazy when you mash the gas pedal.

So, what happened? Why didn't the Grand Prix GXP with all its great engineering and subsequent wonderful press sell like the 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang? Well, honestly, because no one gave a shit about it. Oh, some did but aside from the very few wankers who knew what they were buying, people in general could have cared less about these cars. What's more, the economy was tanking, Pontiac was adrift in a morass of ambiguity and the market was well on its way to shifting to do-it-all cross overs. Also, with little to differentiate the look of a GXP from a lowly base model and the substantial added cost of the GXP, the hell was the point of this car? Seriously, people like me "get" these cars but in general, who'd buy one of these?

I've driven several of these over the years and loved driving each and every one of them. There are few cars I've ever driven with the cat like, go there now reflexes these have and I put them in the upper echelons of cars I've driven. Seriously, I'd put these right up there with any BMW "M" that I've driven and that's saying a lot. Now, granted, they're up there in that lofty stratosphere of automobiles but they're at the back of the rack of cars in that rare air. Not unlike the least talented professional athlete in a major league sport, they're still stupendously talented athletes. And even new they were a relative bargain. Used they're out and outright steals. Again, everything being relative. No doubt many of these go to buyers unaware of what they've stumbled onto.

As far as the one that I found when I was searching for a car, I passed on it for several reasons. First, the very kind gentleman who owned it knew what he had and babied the thing, was asking a not out of this world $6,000 for it. However, with 95,000 miles on the clock, I couldn't see myself spending that much money on an old Pontiac sedan with that kind of mileage. Despite his asking price being fair; at least according to NADA guidelines. Yeah, 100,000 on a used car is generally not what it used to be but still, for my money, I couldn't make the mental math game work.

Secondly, the car being for our twenty year old son, I couldn't see him driving something so wildly over powered and being comfortable with him driving it safely. Yes, a car like this is safer to drive than something that can't perform at this car's level but trust me, this car will have even those most staid of humans doing things they normally wouldn't do behind the wheel. I would've taken it and given my 2002 Monte Carlo to my son but with my new job and monster commute, it didn't make any sense to purchase a car for me that wasn't first and foremost a miser on gas.

And, finally, besides, at the end of the day, no matter how cool this is and how fun it is to drive, it's just another four door sedan. 

2003 Chevrolet Malibu - You Can't Ask For More Than That

Back at the end of February, down at Ohio University where our younger son goes to school, the Camaro in the foreground was demolished when a woman suffered a seizure, lost control of what she was driving and crashed into a Toyota Sequoia that was parked in front of it. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. 

The force of the collision pushed the Sequoia into and up onto the front end of the Camaro. To make matters worse, the Camaro was pushed into the vehicle behind it causing damage to the rear end. Suffice to say, our Camaro, the first of the two 1996 Camaro's I had bought for my boys, was totaled. While it was a fitting end to a car that gave us nothing but trouble, the silver lining was that the woman's insurance company paid us over six thousand dollars for our loss and inconvenience. Hot damn. Seriously, my wife and I couldn't have asked for a better end to that car. By the way, we've heard the woman who had the seizure is fine. Godspeed. 

With a wad of windfall in hand, though, you'd think it would be easy to find a suitable and sensible used car to replace it. No such luck. Here in 2019, we quickly deduced that six grand is about half of what you need to find anything decent. However, that fact did not deter my wife and I, actually more me than her, from finding something suitable for less, ideally far less, than what the insurance company paid us.

I learned or relearned some valuable lessons about car shopping in the two months it took me to find this anonymous looking 2003 Chevrolet Malibu for an all in price of $3,500. First, shopping for an inexpensive used car is an arduous, time consuming process that requires an extreme amount of patience - of which I have precious little of. Secondly, this being north east Ohio, most cars up here that are more than ten years old have some sort of rust issue. Shoot, the brine they treat roads with here is so caustic to automobiles and trucks that I've seen vehicles three or four years that old with rust bubbles. What's worse is that often times the body of the car will be fine but the under carriage looks like something brought up from the Titanic. Beware. Thirdly, despite the drop in the number of people who smoke, you'd swear there were more people than ever who still smoke based on the number of "smokey" old and not so old cars I looked at, smelled and walked away from. Maybe it's just that people who smoke drive old cars? Fourthly, small cross overs are extremely popular and therefore very expensive.

Another thing that dragged out out our search was that we had no focus; we looked at not only a large number of different vehicles but different vehicle types. That's not something I usually do since when I shop for a car it's almost always for a particular vehicle or vehicle type. Our younger son, whom the vehicle was for, wasn't picky but he said if we could, find him something that was a "small SUV" like a Pontiac Vibe. Really. A Pontiac Vibe. That was an odd request from a kid who couldn't tell a Buick Century from a Dodge Viper. Turned out a friend of his at Ohio University had one and he liked it. Ever the dutiful parent, I did find a handful of "Vibes" and even the Toyota it's based in our price range but they were mostly all beaten to death. What's more, in the one or two that seemed drivable, instead of a transcendent driving experience like I've had with so many Asian cars, I found they drove like cheap, weird Tupperware bowls. So much for "Oh, What a Feeling".

All our son really wanted, and bless his heart he was not really choosy, was something with four doors so his friends could get into and out of it easily. Also, something he could haul his "stuff" with. In his words, "dad, please - something normal". Ah, the kid knows his old man so well. I found this Malibu for sale. oddly enough, literally around the corner from where I now work. It was listed for $3,295, had "only" 97,000 miles on it and thanks to it being a Pennsylvania car it was rust free. I mean, this thing is all but pristine where it really counts - underneath. They don't use the brine they use in Cleveland to treat their roads. After the scores of rust buckets I'd come across I couldn't get my check book out fast enough to lock this up when I found it. I signed as quick as I could on the dotted line. I even had a mechanic look at it and even he was amazed at how great the car was.

It's ironic I bought this car given that years ago my wife and I had leased one of these brand new. Despite the car not giving us a second of trouble during the time we had it, we despised the damn thing. After three years with a Nissan Maxima prior to that, stepping down to a Chevrolet Malibu was humiliating and I think I took my frustration out on the little car. However, given my modest salary and my wife taking care of the boys full time, it was perfectly fine. I never took to it but in the end it was fine.

Our "new" 2003 Chevrolet Malibu rides and handles just as primitively as I remember our '99 did but this little car has a remarkably spacious interior. Especially compared to a 1996 Camaro. And look! Leather! Well, whatever this rubberized stuff GM called leather back then is. Of course, this car is  not perfect. The driver's seat cushion is crushed, apparently a previous owner was on the large side, and the turn signals worked intermittently. I fixed that. Aside from that it's pretty ok. Best of all our automotively ambivalent non car crazy younger son loves it and is extremely appreciative.

You can't ask for more than that.

1995 Lexus SC400 - Lightening Strikes

Lexus is as synonymous today with "luxury" as Mercedes, BMW and Audi are. In retrospect, it's incredible that Toyota was as successful as they were in launching a luxury brand in 1989 that was an aspirational purchase right from the get to. While there were fewer luxury brands thirty years ago than there are today not to mention fewer vehicle types that could be construed as "luxury",  we only need to look at Hyundai's struggles with Genesis to appreciate how Toyota's success in establishing Lexus as a status symbol. And of all the fabulous Lexus models Toyota has launched over the years, the 1992-1996 Lexus SC was the one akin to striking me like a bolt of lightening. Especially the SC400.

A couple of weeks ago my wife saw what she described as an "old Lexus" for sale in the driveway of this big house on the "lake side" of Lake Road. While I gave her mad snaps for knowing at least it was an older Lexus, she couldn't tell me anything more about it other than it was black. Thinking it had to be an ES300 or at best an LS400, that it was any car for sale in the driveway of a home on the "money" side of Lake Road let alone a Lexus warranted a drive by after dinner to check out. Imagine my delight when I found it to be an SC and not just any SC, mind you, but an SC400. And an SC400 that appeared to be, in the deepening dusk, in extraordinarily good condition.

We honestly didn't plan on buying this car, good lord we have seven cars at the present time, but when we saw it in the daylight several days later and drove it for the better part of an hour, we couldn't not make offer. With a reasonable asking price and a mere 75,000 miles on the odometer, we settled on what we decided was a fair price with the owner. The only thing the owner disclosed was "wrong" with the car, ironically, was that the Nakamichi sound system was not working. How hard could that be to fix, right? And the "TRAC" light came on too. That had to mean something was up with the traction control system; easy stuff, right? Ha. More on that no doubt in upcoming blogs about this car.

During my time behind the wheel we hardly noticed the radio not working as we chatted away admiring the sound of the engine and the near intoxicating aroma of the twenty-four year old leather lined interior. My wife didn't say a word to me during her time behind the wheel. Ever the chatterbox, if she's quite she's either upset about something or intrigued. In this case it was the latter.

If you read vintage reviews of these cars you'd swear they were the second coming of the automobile. And in a lot of ways they were. While they certainly didn't do anything literally different than any other automobile on the market at the time or since, after all it's just a mode of transportation, what they were was as close to automotive perfection as was possible back then. Perfect in terms of combining engineering, assembly, durability and world class driving dynamics. The fact they were also beautiful to behold was the icing on the cake or chrome on the bumper - not that there has ever been any chrome on any Lexus bumper.

The darnedest thing about this car is that it doesn't photograph as magnificently as it comes across in person. Maybe it's because its black subduing its subtle beauty or the fact it has, curiously, no rear spoiler. I don't get it. When I sent pictures of it to our sons, our older son, above, who's fairly ga-ga over higher end anything and especially cars, was ambivalent towards it. Once he saw it, though, there's been no separating him from it.

New York Yankees Top Hat Logo - Yankee Doodle Dandy

To celebrate my New York Yankees loving older son's twenty-first birthday back in March of 2018, I took him to a couple of Yankees spring training games at Steinbrenner Stadium in Tampa, Florida. While we took a stroll around the ballpark, which is a wonderful ode to the New York Yankees rich and glorious past, I took this picture of him under the Yankees "Top Hat" on the back of the stadium. Afterwards he said to me, "Dad, you should make that". Well, son, if you insist. 

Some men work in oil, clay or profanity; I prefer splintering, unforgiving plywood and the thicker the better. While I'm hardly a master at anything let alone something that could be remotely construed as art, over the years I've created a number of wooden wall "art" of our favorite sports teams for our man cave. And although I'm running out of wall space, like the NHL adding another rung to the Stanley Cup, there's always a way to find more room.  

Ever the crack historian, over the month or so I spent sawing, sanding, wood filling, painting and dodging broken jig and scroll saw blades making this, I began to wonder about the history of the Yankees Top Hat. A logo almost as synonymous with one of the world's most famous sports franchises as the interlocking "NY". Interestingly, I came to find out for a team with a history more than one hundred years deep, things being relative, it's not that old.

It all started in 1946 when then Yankees owner Lee MacPhail wanted his team to be at the forefront of a huge wave of patriotic sentiment and a booming economy following World War II. Along with a number of renovations he made to a then twenty plus years old Yankee Stadium, he commissioned renowned sports artist Lon Keller to create a new "primary" logo for the Yankees. One that was, whether intentional or not, devoid of any association with New York. Was this a ploy to make the Yankees the first "America's Team" or a serendipitous marketing misstep? Incidentally, as famous as this logo is, the Yankees have used it sparingly over the years on their regular season home and away uniforms.

While Mr. Keller never claimed his artwork was original, he never disclosed his inspiration for it. As I did my research, I was surprised that it obviously stemmed from a generous amount of poetic license taken with the movie poster artwork for the 1942 film, "Yankee Doodle Dandy".  Note the angle of the star spangled hat on James Cagney's head. Eyes on your own paper, Mr. Keller. 

Further inspiration no doubt coming from a B-17 dubbed "Yankee Doodle Dandy".  Note, again, the angle of the hat on the plane. The baton or "walking stick" was a nice added touch that Mr. Keller re-purposed as a bat for his Yankees logo. Life imitated art when James Cagney christened the plane.

This Yankee Doodle Dandy flew a number of successful missions during the War, particularly during the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. Sadly, it crashed upon take off on Guadalcanal and was destroyed  killing two airmen in August of 1943. 

Not unlike a remake of a song that became a smash hit that only vaguely sounds like the original if at all, it's interesting that something that was clearly derivative become far more famous than what it was based on. 

What's next to jig saw out of plywood to hang in our man cave? Not sure but what's probably for sure is that no matter what it is, it won't be as difficult to do or whose inspiration was as historically significant. But never say never. 

1965 Chevrolet Corvair - Beautiful at Any Speed

In my very humble opinion, the first Chevrolet Corvairs, those manufactured between 1960 and 1964, might as well have been props from a 1950's sci-fi movie. Although...in fairness, I do like the roof line on the coupes but the rest of the car looked like something straight out of "The Thing From Another World". 

The four door sedans were even worse. That backwards ball cap of a roof may have worked on an Impala but on a smaller canvas, much like the over styled and under sized "Valiant by Chrysler", it's just awful. Look, this car is so ugly even the models in this ad can't stand to look at it. Especially in pea soup green and oh, those fat white walls. That these cars had air cooled engines mounted way out back made them even more bizarre. Remarkably, it's said that this design was inspiring to European car designers. Go figure. 

All was forgiven, though, with GM's reimagining of Corvair for 1965. Just like that and incredibly so considering what came before it, what had been a jab in the eye was suddenly the belle of the ball and probably the best looking thing Chevrolet had to offer in 1965; high praise considering how handsome most of GM's lineup was that year.  These Corvair coupes are so elegantly simple and gorgeous, I can almost look past the engine in the trunk thing. Almost.

While Corvair's rear engine, rear wheel drive layout allowed for a nearly flat floor thus giving the diminutive car an abundance of interior room, it also meant that Corvair had an inherent propensity for understeer. Understeer is a phenomenon when an automobile's rear end swings out and over takes the front in turns. It's practically impossible in a car with its engine in the front and is rear wheel drive; same goes for front engine, front wheel drive cars. Possible? Sure. But really difficult to do especially on dry roads. It's the opposite of oversteer where a car continues to go straight after the steering wheel is turned right or left. Some refer to oversteer as "plowing". 

Although GM's redesign of Corvair for 1965 included a rethink of the suspension, the debut of the updated car coincided with the release of Ralph Nader's seminal tome on automotive safety; or the lack thereof on cars so at the time in the United States and The Big Four's arrogant reluctance to even offer safety belts in vehicles. In the first chapter Nader indirectly points to Corvair's understeering when he referred to the car as a "one car accident". 

What exacerbated the 1960-1964 Corvair's propensity to understeer was GM's stunning decision to not equip the car with an anti roll bar to offset extreme changes in camber in certain turns. What's more, all '60-'64 Corvairs employed a semi-independent, swing-axle design which lacked a universal joint at the wheel/hub end of the axle. Excessive camber change, again during very extreme cornering, could cause the rear wheels to tuck under and trigger a spin. GM changed the design of the suspension to a fully independent design for 1965 but Corvair's tailpipe was cooked. 

Despite the changes GM made to Corvair for 1965 that made it a much safer if not excellent car, public sentiment as a result of "Unsafe at Any Speed" dropped Corvair sales by half from 1965 to 1966. 

What's more, although Corvair remained in production through 1969, GM brass ordered no further development on Corvair after 1965. That was due in part, no doubt, to Nader's book but also since GM was developing two cars simultaneously to compete with Ford's game changing Mustang which, ironically, is said to have been inspired by the Corvair. 

Although "Unsafe at Any Speed" made the Chevrolet Corvair infamous, it lead to sweeping changes in automotive safety and the establishment of the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1966. Meanwhile, most if not all of the 1965 Corvair's design cues, particularly its luscious "Coke bottle" styling, found its way onto a number of GM designs in the late '60's and early '70's. That being said and with tongue firmly placed into fender, it's safe to say that the 1965 Corvair was "Beautiful at Any Speed".  

It's been concluded that all rear engine cars, which are not to be confused with "mid engine" cars where the engine is literally in the middle of the car, are, again, inherently prone to understeer. In the right hands understeer can be handled quite easily and in auto racing it's advantageous. However, in the wrong hands even the best of rear engine cars can be dangerous.