farewell pontiac; some of my thoughts on the present state of cars

I just learned recently that as of 2010, Pontiac will be gone, and that's not the only GM brand disappearing. Saturn, Saab and Hummer are getting ditched as well.

I can't honestly say I'm going to miss Pontiac as there is no car from them I'd ever want besides the 1989 Formula (only because it looked cool and the name was cool) and the Solstice.

Growing up I always saw Pontiac as a GM afterthought. All they ever had were rebadged Chevys that were styled different with crappy body cladding everywhere. The only time I ever saw them break the mold was with the Fiero and the recent Solstice. Funny how the only splashes they've made since 1984 were with small cars.

My opinions on cars these days are a whole lot different compared to years ago.

First of all, all new cars right now suck. There is absolutely nothing out there made by anyone, be it car or truck, that makes me say, "I want that." That's sad, because there's usually at least one car I want, even if I can't afford it.

Second, new cars are too expensive. It costs at least 20k (figuring in taxes and delivery) for an average 4-door sedan and there's no way to buy one for less. So not only with new do you get a car you don't want, but you pay too much for it to boot.

Third, where did the utility go? Want to know a vehicle that's difficult to buy new these days? A minivan. Neither Chevy nor Ford has one. You have to buy a Dodge, Kia or Honda - all of which are stratospheric-priced. Want to know another vehicle that's difficult to find? A 3-door hatchback. Honda, arguably the company that made the best 3-door hatch that ever existed (Civic 3-door hatch), doesn't offer one. And lastly, try to find a real true-blue station wagon - from any company that is a CAR and not a "crossover".

My suggestion for anyone shopping for a new car is simple: Don't.

There is no new car worth buying right now, by any company. Save your money and buy used. Just research the car you want, and if the reviews don't spell it out to be a lemon, go for it.

My current pick of the moment (and if I could afford it I'd buy one in a heartbeat), Ford Freestyle. This car is a total sleeper. It's got utility, usually loaded, low miles and cheap. I've seen these things with less than 15,000 miles on the clock selling for $9000. So what if I can't tow? Who cares? Want to know what else? People who own it love it. There is NOTHING WRONG with this car and it absolutely baffles me why they don't/didn't fly off dealer lots.

officially on dtv

I got one of those digital converter boxes for over-the-air television (which is what I have) a few weeks ago and finally got around to setting it up yesterday.

Here's what I have to report about it.

Does it work? Yes, obviously it does. I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 channels on the rabbit ears. The reception is mostly okay. But I still get digital "chop" on a few channels periodically. I'm currently debating whether or not to get an amplified set which would cure that ill. Since I can't erect an outdoor antenna (I live in an apartment) nor do I feel like using some long-ass wire to put the ears next to the window (which has no guarantee of working), that's basically my only option.

Older non-amp'd rabbit ears simply don't work optimally with these DTV boxes simply due to the fact there's no way to tell if you're tuning it right - assuming you even have the option to tune on the set-top. Mine does in fact have a tuner knob and I could see the difference when tuning analog but there's no way to know when on digital. With digi you either have chop or you don't as there's no "snow". So if you tune and one channel comes in better with less chop, it may completely screw up another or just drop it altogether. The whole process is an annoying crapshoot.

When in setup mode on the DTV box (mine is a Magnavox by the way), the best signal strength reported is 42 out of 100. It goes no higher on any channel. It would have been nice to crack over 50 on at least one channel, but no dice there. The rest of the channels are high 20s to high mid-30s on the strength meter. With the amp'd ears this would most likely change to mid-50s on the high and high-30s on the low. And yeah I'd be more comfortable with that. I guess it all depends how much the digital chop bugs me. If it bugs me enough, I'll get an amp'd set of ears. If not, I'll just deal with it.

I sincerely do appreciate the fact there's a "zoom" mode for the HD channels so I don't have to see the bars without "scrunching" the image. I also like that the box acts like a cable box in most respects (as far as general operation, the menus and so on).

Yes, it's annoying I have to deal with another remote control (bleah), but that's par for the course I suppose.

So yeah, I'm officially on digital TV now.

I can deal with the idiosyncratic nature of the way it works because it's free and I don't feel like paying for cable television.

hidden menus in garmin nuvi

The Garmin nuvi does contain hidden menus, if you know where to find them! :-) The model shown in the video is a 270 model.

Video: Hidden Menus in Garmin nuvi

"Dr. Nightmare" voice file for Garmin nuvi 2xx series

For kicks I downloaded the Dr. Nightmare voice file from Garmin along with the Boo! Bundle just to check it out for my Garmin nuvi. Kinda nifty. I like it. :-)

See (and hear) a demo: "Dr. Nightmare" Voice File For Garmin nuvi 200, 250, 260, 270, etc.

driving a dorky car and getting away with it

The unofficial-yet-somewhat-official rule of whether a car is deemed to be "vintage" or not is if it's at least 25 years old.

My Buick, for example, is 33 years old. So it definitely qualifies. It's a 17-and-a-half foot long beast. They definitely don't make 'em like that anymore. Incidentally the pace car was made right before several cars started getting ginormous graphics on them, like say.. oh I dunno.. the Pontiac "screaming chicken" on the hood of a '78 Trans Am. Cheesy? Yes. Cars were weird in the mid-to-late 70s, what can I say.

It's 2008 now as I write this, and 25 years ago it was 1983. So technically, any car from '83 is considered a vintage at this point.

The strange thing about older cars is that anything made at least 25 years ago is cool now. This is a universal truth.

My Buick is a great example of this. Nobody wanted it in '75. Dealers and owners removed the stripes on purpose because they thought that it looked bad. Oh how wrong they were. :-)

But even if you don't own something as striking as the '75 Buick, any car that's of-age does in fact have cool factor to it today - especially if it's tacky. The more tacky the better.

Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about:

The Ford Fairmont (a.k.a. Mercury Zephyr). Disgustingly plain. Pathetically slow. As boxy as boxy could get. This car is as exciting as a bowl of oatmeal.

The only people I knew who drove this thing were old ladies. They would putt-putt around in it, get some groceries, go to church and not do much else.

The Fairmont is part of the reason some car guys hate the early 80s so much because there was absolutely nothing about this car that was good other than the fact it was plain-jane transportation and not much else.

The Chevrolet Citation. This car is only slightly more exciting than the Fairmont but not by much. Everyone I knew who ever own a Shitation would beat the ever-lovin' snot out of it. They'd pull donuts, smash into curbs, etc. If one was fortunate (heh) enough to get one with the 2.8 V6 in it, it at least had some grunt under the hood. Actually I can't call it "grunt". More like a whimper.

Most people (myself included) considered the Citation a "big Chevette", meaning it was just as crappy as the Chevette except larger.

Yeah you knew an early-80s cheesy-car list couldn't be done without mentioning the Dodge Aries (a.k.a. Plymouth Reliant). Now I will admit, this is the car that "saved Chrysler". It was introduced at the right place at the right time - but this still doesn't take away from the fact it's cheesy. And yes it is cheesy. Even K-Car owners admit that. But it's a "lovable cheese" type of thing and that's why they love their cars.

Like the Fairmont, this is a grandma car. It's agonizingly slow. Everything that could go wrong with it did. It was a horrible, horrible car. But believe it or not, yes, there is a car club for this jalopy and it's called The Chrysler K-Car Club.

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The K-Car Club just goes to prove that any car over 25 years old will have a following. Possibly a large one.

It also goes to prove that any car you acquire that's of-age is indeed considered vintage.

So if you want a "cool" ride, all you have to do is go back at least 25 years and you've got it.

To any people that follow me because of my '75 Buick pace car replica: If you can't get one of your own, don't worry about it because the plain fact of the matter is that any Buick from that time period is now a collector's item. From Centurys to Regals to Skylarks to Apollos to Rivieras and the like - all of them have a following.

Where to find a good old ride? Florida.

Pictured above: A mid/late-80s Chevy Nova. I snapped that pic in 2007. The car is in mint condition and looks like it rolled right off the showroom floor. Couldn't believe it when I saw it. I mean, heck, even the tail light lenses were crystal clear.

Is this a notable car? Hardly. But the fact that something that old looked that good impressed me. I loved the fact it was 100% original.

Florida is a place where you can find vintage rides in spectacular condition because they haven't been subject to the ravages of winter. Other states that would follow suit are a few areas in Texas, most of California and Arizona.

Future vintage rides

Here's some of the cars I believe have a good cheese-factor to them that will be future classics due to their cheesiness:

Oldsmobile Alero. I owned one of these (a 2000 model year) and it was one of the worst cars I ever owned. It is well known to be nothing but a huge money pit. This car had "FAIL" written all over it from the moment it was introduced. The sad thing is that the car looks awesome, but underneath that sexy steel was nothing but problems - and a lot of them. However I will say that when this car is running right (which is rare), she's a joy to drive. It's one of the very few front-drive cars that "feels right".

Chevrolet Beretta. The design of this car still holds up to this day and in fact is already considered a classic in some circles. However, this car does have cheese factor to it, with the most obvious being those stupid vertical-mounted door handles. I have no idea who thought mounting door handles sideways was a good idea, but Chevy thought it was cool and different. It was neither. Rather it was very annoying. The interior of this car was as good as you could get for the 1990s, which it to say it wasn't good. Cheap plastics everywhere, barely-average fabrics on the seats, etc. In 1990 the Beretta was the Indy 500 pace car. Road-reflector yellow with pink (yes, pink) "INDY" on the side. Stylin' to be sure.

Chevrolet Lumina Z34. This was the sporty version of the otherwise plain-jane Lumina family car. Like the Beretta it suffered from vertical-mounted door handles and tacky interior treatment, but this car actually is quite quick as it houses a 3.4 V6 pushing out 210 horses with 215 lb-ft of torque. This is a front-drive car where you have to grab the steering wheel with both hands if you stomp the gas to the floor - count on it. I call this one "sleeper cheese".

Late 90s Ford Taurus. This was the "roundest" Taurus ever made. Everything was roundy roundy roundy on this car. Headlights, rear glass, stereo.. everything. It was so round that it was just ridiculous. People hated this and wanted it to go back to square (which Ford eventually did do).

Typical to all Taurus models, the best way to describe the driving characteristic of it is "sober" (unless a SHO model). This car got you where you wanted to go and usually did so with little complaint in very ho-hum fashion as it was designed to do. This car was also a staple of rental fleets everywhere.

I think the best description I ever heard about this car was hearing a friend say that it has a "dumpy ass" (in reference to the rear of the car). I couldn't disagree.

Dodge Neon. With its ever-present fogging headlight lenses, the Neon was like a rash that absolutely would not go away in the 90s. But strangely enough the moment production ceased in '05 it vanished from the streets. Rarely have I seen an end-of-production car disappear from the highways as quick as the Neon did.

There's actually a scoring system per sé concerning this car. If you own one made between 1994 and 1998, that is a Chrysler produced car. However if you own from made from the tail end of '98 to '05, that's a DaimlerChrysler produced car. So for those stuck on little details like that, the more desirable is the one made pre-Daimler. Why? Because it's more cheesy.

What's dorky now will not be dorky in the future

Any car that you think sucks right now won't suck given two-and-a-half decades from now.

Consider that if you saw a pristine condition 1982 Chevrolet Cavalier today, you'd do a double-take on the car. First you'd be amazed just seeing one and then want to get closer just to look at it.

But you never would have thought that in '82, right?