This 2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS popped up in a Facebook ad on me the other day and bit I on it. Despite it's age, a cloth interior and no power adjuster on the passenger side front seat, with a fairly minimal 62,000 miles on the clock and an asking price of $9,994 I did the mental gymnastics necessary to to convince myself that it would be worth my time to make an appointment to take it for a spin. These days, finding anything I like for ten-grand is a gift from the used-car gods.
This car is part of the last run of Monte Carlo's that began in 2000 and wrapped up in 2007. When GM pulled the plug on them they didn't just end a production run on a venerable GM nameplate - they sealed shut a once stolid market segment that began, arguably, with the 1958 four-passenger Ford Thunderbird, that GM jump-started with the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1970 Monte Carlo and one that, good, bad or indifferent, defined 1970's domestic auto-mobilia. The worst was when GM stopped making the Monte Carlo it made nary a headline; the only folks crying afoul where ones, like me, who love personal luxury cars.
For 2006, Chevrolet updated the 2000 model redesigning the dashboard fascia, ruining the idiosyncratic look of the original design in my humble opinion, and replaced the polarizing\oddly shaped sheet metal forward of the B-pillar's with the far more conventional if somewhat staid front end from the Impala. They had to massage the doors since the character lines on the previous model blended in with the fenders. Everything aft of the B-pillar remained the same. All that front end work doing away with a lot of the distinctiveness of the 2000-2005 Monte Carlo making "The Last Monte's" two-door Impala's akin to 1995-1999 Monte Carlo's that where four-door Lumina's. There's nothing wrong with that seeing that I've always thought the front end styling of my car, a 2002 Dale Earnhardt Monte Carlo, more than a tad cluttered in the designer's attempts to ape the lines of the swoopy, 1973-1977 Monte Carlo. Those cars you either adore or abhor. As pleasant and almost innocuous as the reskin was, us coupe lovers do like a little more zing in our meatloaf rather than our cars being just two-door sedans.
The biggest difference GM made for these cars for 2006 was under the hood - especially on these SS models. This thing here stuffed with a transverse-mounted version of the GM LS3, 5.3-liter V-8 engine that I have in my Tahoe. Dubbed "LS4", to make it fit, GM cast a unique shorter block and crank for it and moved the starter mounting from the engine block to the transmission. Things are tight enough in my car's engine bay I can't imagine how difficult it is to work on this thing. GM put these into these cars through 2007, the Impala SS, Pontiac Grand Prix GXP and Buick LaCrosse "Super" from 2005-2009.
If this car does anything right it's that it's fast. Really fast. Or feels really fast. And sounds great going fast too. Thanks to a mountain of torque at the slightest tap of the gas the big V-8 doesn't just move this car it catapults it in a way my son's 2017 Camaro with it's trick 3.6-liter V-6 and eight-speed automatic doesn't. For the record this car has one-hundred and three more horsepower and a whopping one-hundred eight more foot-pounds of torque than the well-worn 3.8-liter V-6 does in my "Dale" so the difference in power, at least at first, that I felt to my backside may have been exaggerated since my car feels woe-fully under-gunned in comparison. For certain, learning not to launch the car like a fighter jet from stop-lights would be part of the fun of owning this.
Through it all though, my take-a-ways with this car the other night were eerily similar to what I experienced years ago when I test drove one when these first came out - it's just ok. If that. Yes, it's fast but there has to be more to a "sporty" car than just being fast and\or good looking. It has to be rewarding to drive and the 2006-2007 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS is disappointing in ways that my car, as rusted and decrepit as it may be, makes me happy. My car continues to cajole and comfort me with just enough edge to make it fun-to-drive. It's crudely satisfying in ways that this car attempts to be refined in; this overpowered SS anesthetizes rather than excites. Despite new struts and other front suspension hardware the dealership put into this car that they said would preclude any negotiation of the asking price, it's numb and loose - not a good combination for a car with "SS" badges all over it. This car may be fast as hell but who cares since it's not fun to drive. Yes, my car is a really old shoe but it's my old shoe and I love it for how it rides and handles more so than for the fact it's a sporty coupe. That, friends, is saying a lot.
It's interesting how different this car is behind-the-wheel compared to Pontiac Grand Prix GXP's I've driven and loved that it shares so much DNA with. Whereas the GXP is an all-out blast to drive and feels like it encourages you to do things you normally wouldn't do, the Monte is soft and disconnected from the road. It wallows and swallows up bumps and rutted Ohio roads like a '70's Buick - who wants that? The Grand Prix is aggressive and responds like a go-cart - fun! It comes up short in the "gotta-have-it" department because it's a sedan; after all, I have my principles. From what I understand the Grand Prix GXP is fitted with Bilstein shocks the lower it and it has off-set, larger front tires than the rears but there's got to be more to it than that. And if there isn't, I'd be hard pressed to spend ten-grand on this car and immediately drop another two-thousand if not more updating the suspension and tires. The wife would kill me.
Gas mileage would be a bit of a concern too. Even with a Grand Prix GXP. I have a two-hundred mile a day commute (when I'm actually in the office) so I really need something even more efficient than my Dale that gets a consistent twenty-five miles per gallon. Our Tahoe gets as little as twelve to thirteen miles per gallon around town and maybe cracks nineteen on long trips. The info center on this car said "21.1 AVG MPG" but you know those things are always calculated generously. Gas mileage propped up perhaps because the engine in these cars have "Displacement on Demand" that shuts off four-cylinders under light use to help save gas. I hate the feature because all cars I've driven with it stumble when the cylinders shut-off and on; my son's Camaro stumbles like crazy going between three and six cylinders and it's awful. This car didn't stumble so that tells me someone shut the damn "DOD" off. That makes driving it smoother although I'm sure gas mileage suffers. How much? I'll never know.
In the end, I passed on this not because of the malaise-like seat of the pants handling but because of northeast Ohio's gift to cars and trucks - rust. Although squeaky clean compared to my Dale, I needed this car to be absolutely, 110% clean to really take it seriously and these tell-all rust bubbles reveal everything I need to know. That it appears someone had the gall to touch them up is telling to me too. Stay. Away. Just as well.
I knew I made the right decision as I drove home in my rusting away old Dale Earnhardt. I feel many a road imperfection in the wheel and the the pot and chuck holes jar my kidneys just enough to keep me engaged with what's going on and make everything fun. The big-ole 3.8-liter V-6 may not sound as delicious as a V-8 but it pulls with all it's heart and I use every pony and foot-pound it has every chance I get. The big V-8 is excessive. Fun but it's too much; who needs that much power especially with as little tactile control of a car with so soft a suspension as it has. Besides, as they say, it's more fun to drive a slow-car fast.
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