One of my employees tried to find a manual Chevy SS, but there wasn't one available for 800 mile from where we are here in FL. And there were only a handful of automatic ones. Dealers around here aren't even letting people preorder them because they know they'll get above MSRP once they hit their lot.
Okay, people, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but the Chevy SS situation seriously pisses me off. What the fuck is Chevy trying to do? They tease us with this badass car, but they don't make any of them available to the buying public in any sort of reasonable numbers ( I have NEVER seen one on the road). I mean, it's not like I could afford one right now or anything, but I was thinking about the used market.
GM is discontinuing it, should be by the end of the year, if you can find a manual it'll be a nice collectors piece. It's a Holden Commadore in AU, snap one up if you can find one.
Wouldn't you know it. This is on backorder from O'Reilly's: http://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor.html
Lent my mom my car and she somehow snapped the "unlock" switch off the fob PCB. Would have been $150+ to buy a replacement and have it programmed to my car, but I was able to solder the switch back on in what I consider a surprisingly good soldering job. Tested it out and it still works. Booya.
Holden was basically forcing them to sell it; GM really didn't want to. They'd rather shove front wheel drive Malibus down our throats. Profit margin for dealers on the SS is also pretty thin; note that invoice isn't a whole lot less than sticker. With the 20% off sale earlier this month, it went from a $50K car to a $40K car, and from selling like coldcakes to flying off the lot. As for buying one used, they should hold their value pretty well. Look at the previous generation American Holden VF Commodore, the Pontiac G8 GXP. Their value has held up pretty well. If my financial situation had been better in 2008, I would have been all over that car for mid-$30Ks. Hell, if the 300+ HP six cylinder G8 had been available with a manual I would have bought that instead of a 2003 BMW 540 6-speed. Weird. Two days into the 20% off sale when I bought mine, there were three manuals on the lot, but two sold before I got there in the afternoon and snapped up the third. Not sure what other Chevy dealers in Vegas/Henderson had. Is that the supercharged VF Commodore? 'Twould be nice, but I'll gladly settle for this. It's got 21 more horsepower and 45 more pound-feet of torque than an E39 M5, my previous dream car that, while a relative bargain at $73K was well out of my budget then (2000-03) and now.
This is just awesome: Racing Commentators Call A $424 Million Military Satellite Launch And It's Incredible
Oh, good lord... I work on Police Interceptor Explorers at work (a bunch of different cop cars, actually. I got to drive a Dodge Charger pursuit model with a Hemi on Saturday. I took it up to over 100 because the complaint was a vibration/ shaking at high speeds. Hey, I was doing my job.). They're not bad, but they aren't great, either.
An officer in another state told me that their mechanic hates the new Caprices. Same officer also tried to talk his chief out of buying Hemi Chargers a few years ago, knowing that some of the knuckleheads he works with would easily overdrive their abilities...
I thought you had to be full of shit or something when you said 45 lbs of boost... because that's fucking insane... but then I looked it up and holy fuck... 45 lbs of boost for 1 mile runs! More info here: http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/4181/M2K-Motorsports-280-mph-Ford-GT.aspx
Interesting little snippet on the new Dodge Demon: In Drag Mode it diverts the cool fluid from the air conditioning system to help knock down the temperature of the air the engine is about to breathe. Dodge claims the system can bring down intake temperatures as much as 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
It would be really interesting to see some details around that, like how long it would work and with what kind of real-world efficiencies. Buzz words like "as much as 45 degrees" bring out the cynic in me. It could be that the initial .5 second of cooling achieves that but then it only achieves a 5 degree difference for all we know. But one thing is for sure... heat is the death of a car and its horsepower, especially over time, so anything they can do to help with that would be beneficial. Hell, I had an intercooler on my old Porsche turbo that really helped drop the intake air temperature, and some systems used water sprays and condensation to help with the same. Even a few degrees can help.
Yeah, I had a "Cool Can" on my Chevelle which was a can that had the fuel lines coiled through it (Kind of like a still) that you packed with ice to cool the fuel down and give you a denser fuel charge. Supposedly it was good for 1-2 tenths in the quarter.
If you ever get the chance, read The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donahue. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1310615.Unfair_Advantage He was an engineer who turned race car driver for Penske when they were just starting up. They were competing in race series (like NASCAR) during a time when the rules were still being written, so the engineer in him kept finding the loopholes that would give him an "unfair" advantage. It's brilliant. One such "unfair advantage" was when they supercooled the fuel so they could fit a few extra gallons into the car (after it had warmed back up to ambient and expanded accordingly), giving them extra laps over their competitors. The problem arose when they refueled with super cooled fuel and then rejoined the race when it was under a yellow flag so they weren't burning the gas off fast enough, and it was expanding faster than it was being consumed and threatened to blow up the tank. The other was a 40' high fuel tower that let them refuel in a couple of seconds due to the head pressure. Of course, as soon as they did it the first time, a rule was written to ban it. The tales of cat and mouse between competitors and race teams are very entertaining.