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In the past two weeks I've driven five different GM cars...and I must say that I really liked them all. Not, "really liked them, as GM cars go" or "really liked them, despite their GM-ness." No, I just plain liked them.
We just tested the cars, but unfortunately I can't remember all the numbers we got. But I do remember 1/4-mile times (always my real benchmark for performance...must come from my drag racing days of youth...). Anyway, they stack up like this (these numbers are uncorrected, so figure about 3/10ths off each to account for the altitude of our facility):
I just spent the day driving three of the most capable performance cars built in the good ol' U.S. of A. My seat time came at Willow Springs Raceway, one of the fastest race tracks on the West Coast. I love the fact that each of these cars has over 500 horsepower and a top speed above 190 mph. And while few of them will be used as daily drivers by most buyers, all of them could easily serve that level of functionality. What a blast!!
I know the automakers are doing everything they can to make their cars stand out these days. Creative design, high-tech feature content, movie/TV placement. But what's with the annoying naming conventions? Whether it's the overdone alpha-numeric situation (i.e. every luxury nameplate, plus Scion) or the use of creative capitalization like MINI and HUMMER (and Scion again) I find many of their techniques more distracting than endearing. But the worst has to be Mazda. First they drop the Miata name, then they make me say "Mazda" three times when discussing the high-performance version of their midsize sedan. It's official name: Mazda MAZDASPEED MAZDA6.
Now that's annoying.
I love the irony that a few years ago Jeep was suing Hummer for ripping off the seven-slat front grille design. Now comes the Jeep Commander, which is such a blatant Hummer styling rip-off it makes the blatant seven-slat grille rip-off look tame by comparison (square roof-line, short greenhouse glass, large wheelwells, etc.).
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