Your guilty car pleasure/confession

And they say the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a true race of endurance, amirite? On the plus, no worries about burning a clutch! Just your patience…

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I love malaise era cars by and large. And CVTs are my 2nd favorite transmission behind stickshifts. To the malaise era thing, a friend of mine had a 1990 Chevy Cavalier (Throttle body injection, 3 speed auto) until a few weeks ago. I always enjoyed just seeing it around. Got to drive it a couple times. It was about as slow as my old Ford Taurus, but I still found it fun.

Confession… I really like the Chevrolet bolt. I would by one if I had money.

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Chevy Bolt? It’s okay. I want a Mitsubishi i-Miev. That’s some top quality electric shitbox there.

Can confirm, had one. Great car, but she had a habit of drinking oil.

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I love BMW’s B57S: 394 hp, quad-turbo, six cylinder diesel engine. The one that powers the M550d.
There’s something about the combination of excelent performance and high fuel economy that makes my inner engineer go mad about it.

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A bit silly but a recent guilty pleasure is despite my hatred for “slap on the word crossover and now it’s an suv” marketing I desperately crave a Ford Fiesta Active III in that signature yellow

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Mine got a lot better after I replaced the valve cover gasket. Stopped going through as many plugs and wires afterward, too. That was one of the more notorious leaks they had. They had another couple pretty common problems. One was the “reverse slam” on the Auto trans, which was usually fixable by a drain and refill of trans fluid, then jacking up the front end and letting the car idle in reverse for a half hour. The other was carbon buildup in the throttle body… which was stupidly easy to fix. I actually “saved” a couple friends’ cars by fixing that. They were convinced their engine was toast because of the hesitation and power loss, and thought they’d have to buy a new car. $20 in gaskets and cleaners and an hour later, I had 'em running good as new.

I also bounced my Saturn off of a Honda at 50 MPH and sustained exactly zero damage. I was going down the freeway toward work at 50 MPH in the right hand thru lane on the freeway. The exit lane on the right was clogged up… and this dude in a Honda suddenly pulled into my lane from the exit lane. I couldn’t avoid him. His LF hit my RR. But the Polymer panel buckled then popped back into place. All that actually happened is I got a shit ton of sidewall from his tire scrub off on my quarter panel, which it took me a while to scrape off.

I was fairly certain that my oil issues were valve steam seals but i never wanted to put that effort into, i never had issues with plugs or wires. The trans slipped going into third a bit. The final issue was an issue with the computer module that turns on the cooling fan, would just never turn on the fan despite the fan and all wires/fuses being good, so just wired the fan directly to always on or always off. My dad put my saturn into a concrete wall at 45 mph after sliding on ice, direct front impact, put a small crack in the center of the bumper, some scratches, bumper just popped out back into shape.

I would not mind owning another one, manual and wagon, super easy to work on and ok fuel econ and enough power to safely enter highways.

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The Ford Flex. Yeah it’s an MPV but the design is just so cool and boxy and just so un-ford like (especially the face)

I would have no use for one but I guess I’d excuse it with being able to use it as a campervan.

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It’s not a “guilty” pleasure if you get it with the 3.5 EcoBoost :wink:

Guilty of a little coveting here. May sound weird to the rest of the world, but I’d actually like to import a real, genuine Holden Ute from Australia.

And not just because it would be interesting to see if I can shift left-handed, either.

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I liked the Geo Metro/Suzuki Swift

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I have a similar desire to try a car-based ute. Now that the entire Australian car industry is literally down to just one car (the multi-million-dollar Brabham BT62), I really miss those Ford and Holden utes, especially the high-performance variants of them… A dual-cab ute isn’t really a ute, but a truck, and being a much larger vehicle, is a poor substitute for an actual ute in terms of driving enjoyment on tarmac. In fact, the only way to own a ute right now is to take matters into your own hands and use a Mustang or Camaro as the base for your ute build.

I also have a soft spot for the Ferrari 348 GTC - the standard 348 had a bad reputation, with wayward handling and oddly-proportioned styling cues, but the lighter, more powerful GTC was a significant improvement, being harder-edged and more precise, with wonderful unassisted steering. I also think it looks more purposeful as well, with its array of vents and wider split-rim alloys.

Unfortunately only 50 were made, and the GTC was quickly forgotten along with the rest of the range when the 355 debuted - turning the ugly duckling of the range into a beautiful swan. For decades, its resale values were much lower than they should be, and only now has the GTC finally received the recognition it deserved.

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Back in 2001, I almost bought a 1962 Sunbeam Alpine Harrington Le Mans special for $9k.

I still regret that I didn’t buy it to this day…

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i prefer Muscle Cars with less muscle (inline sixes) and matic transmission

hmmmmmmmmm wtf

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Oshkosh: what is the least amount of design one can get away with?


image

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I like the Toyota Tercel 4WD/Sprinter Carib…

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How a ferrari is a guily pleasure or a confession?

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