A Tale of Two Chevys - Double The Trouble

It's been said that good business planning is 9 parts execution for every one part of planning. Throw one part Craigslist into the mix and all that good planning goes out the window. It's also been said that no good deed goes unpunished.

The plan for our "old Camaro", the one on the left in the first photo up there with the blown head gaskets. was to try and sell some parts off it to off set the expense of replacing it. Either that or just scrap the damn thing. Craigslist to the rescue. While searching for dashboard bits and pieces for our "new Camaro" I stumbled upon this needle in a haystack. These are hard to find; GM only made them for 1995-2002 Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds. Lucky me.

What made the deal really interesting for me was that I had test driven the car that it came out of (above) when I was searching for a replacement for our "old Camaro". The guy who bought this car needed the front clip off it for his wrecked Camaro and was parting out the rest of it. Being able to personally vouch for a used engine your buying with no warranty is important. What's more the engine and the guy I'd buy it from had a friend who could install it for me.

$300 for the engine and $600 for the install. Such a deal. The chain repair shop I spoke with wanted $2,700 to do the swap. Sigh. I wish I had found this engine before I bought the other Camaro but...such is life.

Combine equal parts luck, diligence and dare I say stupidity and this is why I have two identical Chevrolet Camaros. Now, both our boys have cars and although it's expensive insuring four cars, five if you count the antique insurance on our 1977 Corvette, it's only for the summer. Our new plan is to hold onto the "old Camaro" until the end of the summer and sell it for as much as we can. Our younger son doesn't need a car where he goes to college and, kids today being kids today, he's ambivalent towards it anyway. As long as he has access to some sort of transportation he's fine.

Remember that saying about no good deed goes unpunished? The new engine isn't in our car a week when the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light comes on.

Turned out to be a bad coil pack. Simple fix. A week or so after that the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light came back on. This time the friendly gang down at Autozone couldn't pin point exactly what the problem was. They said it was either a vacuum leak, another cylinder misfire (engine runs fine), a bad O2 sensor or bad wiring for the O2 sensor. Great. Just great.

I dropped the car off at the chain repair shop and had them do a diagnostic on it and for $60 they told me it might be a bad O2 sensor, bad wiring or a failing powertrain control module (PCM); in other words the car's computer. They also gave me a repair estimate of just under $2,000 but that also included struts, shocks, tires and an passenger side outer tie rod. Not sure what I'm going to do about the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light; I can't sell this car for what I want for it with that thing on. Grrr. Needless to say I've got a lot of work to do if I'm going to sell the "old Camaro" for anywhere want we want to. 

Today I noticed dark stains on my driveway where out "new Camaro" (the one on the right) was sitting. It would appear that either the power steering pump or the lines for the pump are leaking. I should expect nothing less from one twenty one going on twenty two year old car. When you have two of them I should expect nothing less than double the trouble. 

Buick Encore - Cute As A Button

Marti Barletta, the author of Marketing to Women, says that the best way to appeal to women is to make an emotional connection with them. Easier said than done, of course but here in 2017 it would appear manufacturers and marketers alike better appeal to women since they're the primary decision-makers for consumer goods in 85% of households. One vehicle type that has connected with women on an emotional level far deeper than any station wagon or mini van ever did are compact cross overs or "CUV's". In particular, Buick's tiny "cute ute" they call Encore. Our subject is a 2016.

I don't control my household's spending so it's understandable that I'm not the least bit interested in the Buick Encore. And my dislike of these over grown golf carts is more than just sheet metal deep. I mean, it's bad enough that GM has festooned my beloved "Buick" moniker on something that's little more than a tarted up Chevrolet Trax. The kicker is GM has the beans to charge "Buick money" for it. And, get this, the Encore is Buick's best selling vehicle. Quick. Somebody get me the keys to that 1970 Buick Electra convertible I fell in love with a while back. 

Let's not kid ourselves that Barletta's anecdotes about emotionally connecting with women is anything new. Since the dawn of time women have controlled the purse strings in households far and wide. It's just now men are more comfortable than ever saying, "I have to talk to my wife". What's she's going to say is "no" to the Camaro or Mustang and yes to one of these these little cross overs. These things have really found their market in the last 5 - 10 years and they've exploded in popularity. Regardless of inflated sticker prices, questionable styling and wonton driving dynamics. Why? Because they connect with women.

Speaking of the person controlling my household's purse strings, she thinks the Encore is as cute as a button despite that it's a Buick. Which is really interesting since she hates "Buick" almost as much as "Cadillac" and she loves Cadillac's XT5/SRX too. So much for branding. Part of that appeal comes from the fact she's five foot one and has a difficulty maneuvering our massive 2006 Tahoe. Since the Encore offers the elevated driving position she likes without all the bulk, she could zip around in it and park it with the aplomb of six foot, six inch tall cowboy driving a four door Silverado.

Therein lies perhaps the Buick Encore's greatest asset, an elevated driving position that many people, not just women, want these days without all the girth of even a mid size cross over. And in my opinion the Encore offers little else. The front passenger compartment is so narrow, incidentally, that there isn't room for a passenger side arm rest. Any vestige of utility is semantic. There's actually less trunk space in the Encore than there is in a Chevrolet Cruze. Incidentally, the Encore is not based on the same platform the Cruze or Buick Verano are based on. It's built off the Chevrolet Sonic's chassis. Pretty inauspicious start to a vehicle that for 2017, it's been updated but looks very similar to our '16 subject, pushes $40,000 when new. Yes. 40G.

The Encore isn't much of a value either since for that kind of money you might as well just get a little Audi or BMW cross over. Which makes the success of the Buick Encore even more vexing. Those tonier makes and modes hold their value even better than the Encore does and come with considerably more cache. At least it has an elevated driving position. Oh, and it is as cute as a button. 

Lincoln MKS - Get Off My Lawn

We've all heard that old saying about how much value a new car loses the instant it goes over a new car dealership's curb. Some, of course, more than others. According to autoblog.com, the 2017 champion of depreciation is the Fiat 500L - this ugly little lump losing just over $8,000 or nearly 35% of its initial value within the first year of ownership. Once more taste being like armpits; I for one have no idea why anyone would buy this thing but that's just little ole me.

Also on the list of new cars that will exaserbate buyers remorse losing more than 30% of their initial value in the first year of ownership are the Buick Regal, Chrysler 300, Cadillac CTS, Fiat 500 - that's two for Fiat on the list and three total if you count the 300, Jaguar XF, Lincoln MKZ, Nissan Maxima, Mercedes C250 - do I not know junk when I see it or not?, Kia Cadenza, Volvo S60 and last but not least rounding out this fat pack of expensive losers coming in at #2, the other Lincoln sedan that no one ever knew about, our subject today, the Lincoln MKS.

Rather than focus on what was wrong with the MKS, though, let's first focus on the positive about this thing which has been discontinued. Replaced by perhaps the most ridiculous Lincoln ever but we'll get to that in a moment. For the record, one of the reasons the MKS is on this list is because it's been discontinued; being what they call "orphaned" in the car biz has always been disastrous for resale in the first couple of years after a model has been axed. I don't buy new but I can somewhat understand why fashion conscious new car buyers might not want to be seen in outdated duds. 

Lincolns have long been little more than dressed up Fords or Mercurys much in the same way you could argue that Cadillacs have long been gussied up Oldsmobiles, Buicks or dare I even say Chevrolets. That's not so much the truth anymore with Cadilac save for the Impala/LaCrosse clone they call "XTS". Anyway, the MKS, which is a fancy Taurus, has all of the inherent attributes the Taurus has. It's stout of structure and has very impressive driving dynamics. The car is big, solid and safe; it's a rolling two ton bank vault. Then again, what car in this class isn't these days? And, subjectively, the MKS is better looking than the Taurus it's based on. 

On paper, the MKS handles, brakes and accelerates as well if not better than anything it was targeted against at first from Audi, Mercedes Benz and BMW. What's more, Lincoln crammed as much "tech" into the MKS as they could and kept the price point on a fully loaded model to a relatively "modest" $60,000. Let's not kid ourselves that $60G is not a lot of money for a car but when you compare it to those tonier German makes, to get what Lincoln offered in the MKS out of a Mercedes E class, you'd have to have spent considerably more.

And therein lies the biggest problem with the Lincoln MKS. Those that have the beans to drop that much on a car aren't or weren't buying it. They bought those German makes and what's more - they had no problem spending more to get them equipped like this "cheapo" Lincoln. Or they bought a Cadillac.

Another problem that Lincoln had with the MKS was that they offered the, again subjective, better looking MKZ for sale on the same dealership floor. Smaller, slightly less expensive and drop dead gorgeous, the MKZ offered something the MKS never did - styling that transcended what the vehicle was. In this case the fact that it was "just" a Lincoln. 

Lincoln suffers from much of the same maladies that Cadillac suffers from only worse - Lincolns are for "old people" just like Cadillac but they're not even Cadillac. In this day and age of Cadillac consistently producing automobiles that better anything from Germany, still boggles the mind, and they too aren't selling in droves, what chance does a literal #2 have in a one horse luxury town? That's why Lincoln has thrown in the towel on attempting to be something it's not and has resorted to slapping a "hallowed nameplate" on its replacement for the MKS that they market as a rolling boudoir first and foremost. Is it selling any better than the MKS? Nope. But it least they're not comparing it to makes and models from Germany hoping that someone would not buy a BMW and buy a Lincoln instead. Only time will tell that if the Continental will make the impact on the low end of the high end market they hope it will. I, for one, am going to stand my ground on what I've said about that car from the get go. Lincoln should just stick to pushing out luxury cross overs since they're the only thing they make that sells. 

What I'm gonna do when the time comes is find a low mileage, Gramma driven Lincoln MKS for about the cost of a similarly aged vintage Taurus. And I wouldn't care that having one in my drive way pegs me as "old". If that's the case then so be it. What it really says is that this "old guy" knows value when he sees it. Our lovely and loaded 2013 example here has just 23,000 miles on it and has an asking price of under $24,000. Wow. New this thing sticker priced for $58,000. This would be a private sale so the asking price is lower than a dealership's but still, this is a lot of car for the money. Would you rather have a (hideous) new Malibu or a slightly used three year old Lincoln?  Try and find anything on a used car lot today that can offer the type of value a used Lincoln MKS can. I'd be curious to see what you come up with. And get off my lawn.

1985 Toyota Celica - Some Things Never Change

Way back in 1985, my buddy Rich bought a brand new Toyota Celica to replace his well worn 1975 Chevrolet Laguna S-3. He offered me his Laguna for almost next to nothing and ironies of ironies, I've never regretted not buying it. What I do regret is never buying a third generation, 1982-1985 Toyota Celica. 

I wish our subject here was a hatchback like Rich's so it could be a perfect time machine right now but this nice rag top will have to suffice. At least it's red and has the same wheels as his did. Rich was over the moon excited about his new car although he was none too pleased with it's more than $11,000 sticker price. Tack on a grand or two more for the convertible option. Everything is relative and Rich's Celica was more than twice the money he paid for his Laguna when it was new. As much as the price of things have gone up recently, there was nothing like the runaway inflation of the late 1970's into the mid 1980's that all but doubled the price of a car. 

While I really liked Rich's Laguna to the point that I somewhat considered buying it, what I was more impressed with was how excellent the Celica was. Somewhat fussy of design inside and out like many Japanese designs were back then and can still be to this day, the beauty of the Celica was in how it performed. While lacking perhaps in the "off the line" oomph department, understandable given the car had only a four cylinder engine making less than 150 pound feet of torque, everything else about the car was absolutely spectacular. Smooth handling, tenacious braking and jewel like assembly. Why would anyone buy a Camaro when they could have a Celica? What's more, for a just a few grand more you could take care of the lack of power by ordering up to a six cylinder Celica Supra. 

Why didn't more people in the pony car market buy Celica's back then? Well, for starters, these cars were considerably more expensive than a comparably equipped Camaro, Firebird or Mustang. The styling wasn't for everyone either; I'm still torn over whether or not I really like these cars or if I've just grown used to them. The relative lack of beans under hood a sore subject too. Especially considering that GM started offering port fuel injection on their 60 degree V-6 that powered so many base model Camaros and Firebirds back in the day. The Supra option could took care of the power problem but that also meant you had to live with an even longer hood that accentuated the car's off putting styling. Yes, the Supra was a trim option on the Celica before they split the two into separate models. 

I have to tell you, though, even after driving one of these and being enthralled by it, if you gave me the choice between one of these, coupe please, or an IROC of the same vintage, I'm going with the flimsy and obnoxious IROC. I know, I know. Even if I knew then that that was the wrong decision to make. Truth be known, if I had the same choice today, I'd make the same decision. You can take the boy out of the South Shore but you can't take the South Shore out of the boy. 

Buick Cascada - Frequent Flyer At the Doctor's Office

For as long as I can remember Buick has periodically attempted to downplay their old fart image with a series of ads touting that such and such Buick is, "not a Buick". And while Buick has done very well of late with a bevy of small to mid size cross overs that have hit a sweet spot with younger female buyers, our Buick Cascada here looks to be the perfect ride for those who are frequent flyers at the doctor's office. Can Buick be all things to all people young and old? Yes, it's possible but difficult and it's always best to market "younger" when you're attempting to reach as wide a demographic as possible. The age old adage being that you can get an old man to drive a young man's car but a young man won't drive an old man's car.

The Cascada, cascada is spanish for waterfall, sails in the very shallow waters of the "affordable convertible" market. A niche market clogged with a bevy of offerings of which most if not all are vastly superior to this underpowered, overweight, shimmying, under engineered rolling bathtub. For similar money to what you'd cough up each month for this thing you could be in an Audi A3 Cabriolet, Mini Cooper, Mazda Miata or Fiat 124 Spider, a Fiat 500 C or base models of the Chevrolet Camaro or Ford Mustang. Smart fortwo offers a convertible in the "affordable range", but that car has the dubious distinction of being even less hip than this Cascada. 

Far be it for me to wonder why anyone would choose a Cascada over any of those other makes and models (save for the Fiat 500) given my taste in automobiles but I have to wonder if Grand Dad and Grand Ma actually test drove their Cascada before trading in their Park Avenue on something "sporty". Powered by this top of the line 200 horsepower, 1.6 liter turbocharged in line 4, this little engine doesn't stand much of chance getting this two ton porker up to interstate speed so Gramps doesn't get rear ended by a some texting kid driver in a pickup. Yeah, the Cascada weighs almost 4,000 pounds. What did they make it out of, cast iron? Question, since the car is loosely based on the soon to be departed Buick Verano, why isn't the 250 horsepower, turbocharged 2.0 liter engine available on the Verano on the Cascada's options list?

Because, drum roll, the Cascada is as much a "Buick" as the Regal is; they're both rebadged Opels. GM's awesome turbo 2.0 is not available on the Opel Cascada and there's no way in damnation GM was going to spend the money to retrofit an engine into a car they're importing. And while their Opel counter parts might work along side each other "over there", Opel is one of those GM super brands across the pond, much like Buick is in China, that can do whatever they want, over here it just doesn't work.

Doesn't work inasmuch as this car is exactly the type of car Buick attempts to dispel when they roll cute as a button, feisty 'ol Granny who adorably croaks out, "that's not a Buick"!

Well, fear not Granny for Buick still builds cars that are "Buicks" like our Cascada here. And while I have your attention, do your family a favor - if you're going to spend your kid's inheritance before you leave God's green earth on something frivolous like a convertible, spend it on something that at least they'll remember you fondly for.

So, the next time Buick rolls out their stunningly obnoxious ad campaigns about what a Buick is or isn't keep the Cascada in mind as to what Buick really thinks a Buick is. 

2017 Honda Accord - Dire Straits

 

 

Just one look at a 2017 Honda Accord sedan and you can see why the "three box", four door sedan is dying a slow but steady death. I mean, with as many exciting looking cross overs on the market as there are today, this is what they come out with?  Does it not look as through it was styled by the same yahoos who penned the 2006 Chrysler Sebring sedan?

 

 

In fairness, the Honda Accord sedan has never been about jaw dropping, eye popping sheet metal but still, given how all around fantastic the car actually is, you'd think Honda stylists could have come up with something a bit more interesting than this. Gotta hand it to Mazda for attempting to at least keep things interesting in the garage with a bevy of progressive looking sedan designs that sorta-kinda combine a cross over design ethos with a sedan.  I didn't say I like them but I applaud their efforts.

 

 

Inside things are little better but even here things are as staid and generic as it gets these days. Swap the H logo on the steering wheel for a bowtie and no one wouldn't think this wasn't the new (and oh god so homely) Malibu or the next Impala.

 

 

I more than understand how difficult it is to keep reinventing the same thing every four to five years. In broadcasting, we have to reinvent ourselves every day; the challenge is in keeping it interesting within certain guidelines. And in broadcasting today we face the similar challenge of ever new, different and exciting choices for people to be entertained and informed by. Was the 2016 Accord, our subject is a 2017, really Honda's best attempt to keep things interesting looking within even their own self imposed conservative guidelines. 

 

 

The future of the three box, four door sedan is dire and it honestly has more to do with the rise in sales of cross overs than anything that manufacturers are doing wrong with sedans. CUV's are so different from sedans that there's nothing sedan designers and engineers could have done to offset their rise in popularity. Although, boring appliances like this Accord sedan certainly don't help matters. Can manufacturers come out with a sedan that combines everything that buyers want in a cross over? Honda tried that with the late great Crosstour that went over as well as selling ice cream to Eskimos. Again, the sedan as we have known it to be, is in dire straits.

Toyota Prius - Kick Me

My take away after a brief and expensive cab ride in January in one of these was that the Toyota Prius has a surprisingly cavernous albeit austere interior. Road noise was also abundant although the car itself was church mouse quite save for the whir-whir-whir of what I believe was a worn out right rear wheel bearing. Aside from the generously sized cabin, the only upside I can deduce about the thing was that the cab company owning it was saving a considerable amount of money on gas since Prius', on average, are rated at about 50 miles per gallon. That's pretty darn good. So good, in fact that outside of a plug-in hybrid, you can't do better than that these days with either a gas or diesel powered automobile.

But, oh, what you give up for the sake of great gas mileage. Getting great gas mileage with a car this ugly is lost on me since for my money, I can get excellent gas mileage with a far less expensive and better looking "PZEV" [practically zero emissions vehicle]. What's more, there's no goofy compromises in handling, braking and all around performance in a "PZEV" that you have to put up with with these things. Does a PZEV get as good gas mileage as a Prius? No, but at nearly 40 miles per gallon it's close enough to what the Prius gets to negate what a Prius has to offer.

Now, don't get me wrong, I respect the technology and engineering but the over all design of Prius' I find to be insufferably dorky. I mean, c'mon, man, look at this thing. It's the perfect ride for science fiction fans and the president of the computer club after he managed to get himself out of the gym locker someone stuffed him into. The best vanity plate for one of these would be, "KICK ME".

So, what exactly is a Prius. Well, there is some confusion as to what it is and also what hybrids are in general. At it's most elemental and at the risk of over simplification, there are two types of hybrids, "mild hybrids" and "parallel" or "full hybrids". Mild hybrids are gasoline or diesel powered cars that have an electric motor to assist the engine. In many cases, mild hybrids don't get much better mileage than their "non-hybrid" brethren but their electric motors can increase a vehicle's performance exponentially.  Full or parallel hybrids like our Prius are battery powered cars that have a gasoline engine to assist the electric motor. Big difference between a gas engine assisting an electric motor and vice versa. Mileage differences are significant as well.

Toyota offers their "Hybrid Snyergy Drive" across nearly their entire range of models and many Lexus models too. While they don't get the gas mileage that our Prius here gets, owners of those "Hybrids" don't have the compromises that Prius owners have to endure either. That's to say nothing of its wonky, strange and distinctive styling for the sake of being strange and distinctive. Ironically, the Lexus version of the Prius, something they call the "ct200h", is such a handsome automobile that it transcends the fact that it's a "hybrid". If Toyota made the Prius look more like its Lexus cousin I wouldn't be getting on my hate on for it like I am.

There's no doubt that the future of motorized transportation is going to be electrified and their development over the last twenty years has been nothing short of remarkable. The growing pains that many hybrids and now plug ins have is all part of the development process. Good thing there are people out there patient enough and with deep enough pockets to put up with the nonsense. I'm not one of them. Let me know when the future is here and without compromise.

"Prius" is latin for "to go before".

 

 

1992 Jaguar XJS - Scent of a Woman

When most people think of the car in Al Pacino's 1992 tour de force, "Scent of a Woman", they think of the Ferrari Mondial t that Charlie and the Colonel test drive on their weekend jaunt through Manhattan. However, that ugly Ferrari, serisouly, a Mondial t and not an F40, 348 or even a 456? was not the most important car in the film. That dubious distinction belongs to another very expensive European and veddy British make, a 1992 Jaguar XJ-S. 

To appreciate how wonderfully cast that bastion, or should I say bastard, of British engineering was in "Scent of a Woman", we have to take several steps backward in time and look through the lens of the automotive time period the movie was set in. Lexus had a little more than a toehold in this country at the time and certainly no Cadillac or Lincoln could have fit the bill as the car an imperious, maligned authority figure would drive. BMW and Mercedes were for the bourgeois nouveau riche as well. Even if they were vastly superior automobiles. In the early '90's Jaguar still represented "old school money" in ways that few other "motor cars" of that time period could. And with that, everything good, bad and indifferent that that implies. 

Introduced in 1976, the Jaguar XJ-S had the unenviable task of replacing the legendary but very old XKE. While certainly not the roaring sports car the XKE was, the XJ-S quickly became the embodiment of wealth, privilege and entitlement despite the fact that it was a plodding, floaty, underpowered mess of an automobile. The XJ-S was also so out of this world unobtainable that it seemed only "Old Money" could afford one. What's more, Jaguar's were almost as well known for being unreliable as they were for being status symbols.

"Scent of a Woman" is the story of Charlie Simms, a teenage boy attending "The Baird School", an elite and exclusive college prep school. Unlike many of his classmates, Charlie is not "made" and attends the school on scholarship. To earn money for a trip back home to visit his family for Thanksgiving, he takes a job babysitting a retired, blind, Army Colonel. Before that happens, though, Charlie is witness to several students setting up a prank that will damage the Jaguar belonging to Mr. Trask, the school's despised headmaster.  

Again, there were few cars then, and the same is true today, that captures the essence of wealth and power like a Jaguar and in particular, an XJ-S. Mr. Trask's Jaguar was held in such high regard that it even made the bratty frat boys at "The Baird School" swoon with jealousy. It made for a perfect foil for the malicious prank that's at the center of "Scent of a Woman". 

Argue all you want that "Scent" was an Al Pacino movie and in many ways, of course, it was. However, the film is more about character, ethics and principle than anything else. The film is also highly flawed much like old Jaguars and is, candidly, totally unbelievable. We believe that it is a great film because Pacino is so wonderful in it as is the entire cast; Pacino won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. How else can we possibly buy into the elaborate stunt pulled upon Mr. Trask and his Jaguar let alone Charlie's absurd reticence and then absolvement in front of the entire student body at the film's end? Pure Hollywood. This is to say nothing about the irascible Colonel Frank Slade. As big and unlikeable an asshole as the world has ever known. Yet, somehow, we not only like "The Colonel", we, the audience, absolutely adore him in the same way we adore old Jaguars.

By the way, the woman The Colonel dances with in the famous tango scene is named Donna. "Donna", in Italian, means "woman".