Those of you that know me know that I’m a pretty huge car buff – they’re so much more than a means to get from point A to point B for me. It doesn’t just stop at cars, though; I’ve had a thing for motorized conveyances for as long as I can remember. I grew up watching Knight Rider, I had posters of Italian exotics on my wall. I come by it honest – My dad has been driving the wheels off of anything with wheels for 50+ years, and before him, my “Grammie” George has been a fan of fast cars too. I have fond memories of riding in my Grandma’s cars (because somehow, they were always hers), with my Grandfather at the wheel. He’d give it the spurs, to my sister’s and my delight, but only after my Grandma would tell him to “stop driving like a fuddy duddy/old man.” From the ’77 Pontiac Firebird in Robin’s Egg Blue, to the Turbocharged Chrysler LeBaron, to the Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe and the Oldsmobile Aurora with the Northstar V8, none were boring cars. My dad, for his part, has had a Dodge Charger 2.2, Chrysler Conquest, a Pontiac Fiero Formula, a Porsche 944 S2 (not to mention Miss Vickie’s Black 944 which is what gave us both the 944 bug in the first place…), and two Corvette C5 convertibles, as well as an assortment of motorcycles (which I have been riding on the back of since I was about 5), and a boat or three.
So I give you that trip down memory lane to tell you that choosing a car for myself is one of those major life decisions for me. I’m not sure that I’m exaggerating when I say that I think I considered my last car for longer than I considered our house before I signed on the line. My wife groans every time we’re due for a car because my standards are so high and it takes so much work. There are spreadsheets, hours of research, and lots of test drives. Case in point, when my 944S was totaled, it basically took me 2 years to figure out what I wanted. I bought an Acura RSX Type-S, kept it for a little over a year, got bored with it, sold it to my sister, and ended up buying my current car, a Pontiac GTO. My wife’s car is paid off January 2013, and while I love the GTO, it is not aging particularly well – bad gas mileage (I average 15-18mpg on my commute, Premium fuel only), interior self-destructing, expensive repairs looming, so I have already started working on my shortlist of cars to replace it. I read two old-fashioned paper car magazines a month, plus one or two car blogs, so I have a good idea of what’s available and interesting, but given my size (and more specifically, the fact that I’m all leg), the ergonomics of a car are nearly as important as how fun it is to drive. The Auto Show is a great way for me to spend some time wandering around, getting up close and personal with a bunch of the cars that I’m considering, maybe discover something I hadn’t been seriously considering, and most importantly, to start eliminating cars that have ergonomic niggles that make them uncomfortable for me. You could call it my initial fact-finding mission.
In order to keep this post from being too epic in length, I’m breaking it into several posts. This is the intro, the next one will cover my shortlist, and the last one will cover the also-rans.
This time around, I’m considering some cars that are a little less powerful, but also a good bit smaller and lighter, so that I get better gas mileage when I’m commuting, but am not trading off too much in performance, and hopefully gaining an improvement in handling over my current car. The GTO dances pretty well for a fat guy, but raw acceleration is still its strong suit. I’d like to have something that is faster than my wife’s Flex Ecoboost (355 hp + AWD), which is a high bar since depending on which road test you read, it does 0-60 in between 5.9 and 6.9 seconds. I pretty much need something with 4 doors, because it makes getting the kids in and out so much easier, but it’s not a hard and fast requirement. Lastly, I want a manual transmission. I simply am not ready to move to an automatic. I don’t necessarily have to have a full manual, as I would consider any of the newer semi-automatic transmissions like a DSG where it’s a robotized manual, complete with a full manual mode and throttle blips on the downshift, etc. but I need to drive it before saying that for certain. I’ve driven enough torque-converter automatics with flappy paddles that delay shifting the transmission for 2-3 seconds after you tug on the paddle to know to say, “thanks, but no thanks” when it comes to slushboxes.
I don’t think that the hybrid and eco-friendly drivetrains have really cracked the enthusiast market yet (Tesla notwithstanding), because they’re still busily selling every one they can make to those who will happily buy an appliance to get back and forth to work, so long as it gets great gas mileage and is reasonably comfortable. I was really hoping that a few of the newer ones would be different, but so far, not so much. For example, I really like the styling of the Lexus CT200h, but 0-60 in 10.4 seconds is just a complete no-op. That’s slower than a Prius, yet it’s supposed to be the “sporty” hybrid! The Honda CR-Z is another one that looked interesting, I like the styling, but it is still slow (~8 sec to 60) and only has 2 seats. In diesel-land, the Audi A3 still turns in a time of 8.9 seconds to 60. The one possible exception that I’m watching is the Infiniti M hybrid, which has a 5 second 0-60 time while still getting 24/32. It has a CVT and is a big, expensive car, so I think it’s only a second-string candidate at best right now. I will say that I have ridden in a Nissan Leaf, and I’m definitely impressed with the car in terms of room and drive, but it’s not a dynamic ride by any means. I think that it's likely that it'll be the second generation of electric cars before there are serious contenders for reasonably priced enthusiast cars. So for me, this means I have one more round of good ol’ gasoline-powered internal combustion in my future.
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