Category Archives: Automotive

BMW Releases New Model, Confuses People

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No, Really, This isn't a Five

So, BMW decided to jump on the hot “four door coupe” bandwagon that its European competition has been pushing for years now.  It decided to do it with this, the Six series Gran Coupe, making a sedan out of a coupe.  Brilliant.  Except for one small detail, the Six series is already a coupe based on a sedan, the Five series.  So, what they’ve done is given the Five series a slightly less formal roofline and called it a new model.

Oh wait, they did that, already, too.

 

Don't Look Directly At It, You'll Turn to Stone.

So now we have four cars based on the same platform, two of which that look pretty much the same, one of which is an abomination against good design and on that has two doors.

Really? Is there a hair left after all of that splitting?

Not really, but there you go, the new BMW Six Series Gran Coupe, a Five with less rear head room.  Exactly what the world needed.

Bench Racing is Serious Business…

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This is the Camaro ZL-1.  It makes 580hp (claimed), it goes 185 or so miles an hour (claimed), it is tuned from the factory to be a track day weapon.  It is not for sale yet.

This is the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500.  It makes 650 horsepower (claimed), if you want to take it on a track you will have to buy an optional track pack, it has a top speed of 200 miles an hour (claimed).  It is not yet for sale.

Because the internet exists there is less and less civil conversation about which car will destroy which car had by people who will never own either.

The fact of the matter is that the reason the GT500 went all seriously ridiculous is because the Camaro is beating the Mustang in sales despite being, arguably, a worse car (oh how the tables have turned.  In the 90s the fourth generation Camaro Z-28/Firebird Trans-Am outperformed the Mustang in every measurable way and were outsold 2-1 combined by the Mustang.  This lead to the creation of the then insane for the time Camaro SS and Firebird Firehawk.). Additionally, of the eight of these that will be sold, one of them may actually hit its top speed, maybe two of them will be tracked and all of them will be driven on the street by men who will rarely exceed the speed limit but will have very small gentleman’s vegetables.

Me, I’d take a CTS-V in either wagon or coupe form over either of these (it should be pointed out that the current MysticNegroMobile is a V-6 CTS Coupe, also that the ZL1 is basically a CTS-V coupe with a crap interior) but no one asked me.  No one ever asks me.