JimCorrigan
Well-Known Member
People think because of the Porsche and my career I'm a badge snob. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I just love cars, and have for a very long time. I'm lucky enough to now indulge in some of those dreams, right when the auto industry is at a turning point. Internal combustion is looked at tantamount to Murder One. Despite the faulty science (on many fronts), the transition to all electric vehicles as a means of preserving the Earth is a fait-accompli.
Society demands we continue to "progress" towards 24/7 connectedness, despite the clear correlation to an increase in distractedness. Society likes to invent solutions to problems it creates: witness the birth of autonomous vehicles.
I bought the Porsche earlier because I knew it was my last chance to snag a tailor-made, mid-engined exotic flat six, and about a year later my paranoia was proven right: witness the 718 Porschebaru.
Having ticked all the above boxes just in the nick of time, I turned my attention to an even more primal love. A good ol' American V8 muscle car that screams eff you to all the latte-drinking, goatee-sporting hipster doofuses out there.
Corvettes are my first love, but they're costly and we already have a two seater sports car. Like it or not, my next car needed to be a proper daily, so (vestigial) back seats and relatively easy ingress/egress were a must.
I found the Camaro lacking on too many fronts. The GT350 overpriced and underwhelming. Plus, I'd have to rev the nuts off it like the Boxster, so I'd just likely get it impounded too.
The "regular" GT is a near perfect fit, but the back seats are tiny, and the car itself is just lacking.... something.
In my long essay last year, I never mentioned Dodge's offerings, because my wife had all but taken an axe to those dreams on account of how much she hated it. But, it's no secret that I have loved the Challenger for a long time. The old interior guaranteed I would never take it seriously, but the 2015 refresh looked about perfect inside and out. I was impatient and I had a feeling the refreshed interior wouldn't look/feel as good in person as it did in photos, so I leased a BMW 2-series.
The only thing I did right in that last sentence was lease, because I could give it back... and earlier than expected, thanks to an eager beaver on lease traders' web site. The Bimmer was a sublime daily, with smooth handling, but no steering feedback; perfect seats, before they flaked apart (at six months); and a wonderfully smooth and sonorous boosted straight six... whose noise was fully generated by a sound file played through a speaker beneath the driver's seat. Meanwhile, I drove a Challenger Scat Pack with a stick, and came away smitten. I even wrote on these forums that I had "bought the wrong car."
My wife, famously frugal and great at keeping her car-lusty husband from doing something stupid every other month, was willing to let me purchase a costlier GT350 (in fairness, or cheaper GT) if it meant avoiding the Dodge. I'd managed to purge it from my mind for almost a year, even though I would often see them driving around.
It took witnessing a pre-refresh black SRT8 model on the streets of downtown Tokyo of all places for the fire to be lit anew. My home away from home. The centre of all things brilliantly packaged, efficient, and cool. And here it was, a fat western-sized thumb in the well manicured eastern eye, driven by a wealthy Japanese businessman. So out of place, and yet so perfectly in its element all the same.
Fuck it. After that, it was game over. I won my wife over on the following items: practicality (this is a proper 4 seat coupe, and the trunk could swallow at least 3 dead hookers), price (relatively speaking, I admit I rigged that in my favour), a colour that wouldn't clash with the house (hardly a compromise, I would choose this colour over any other Dodge offered throughout this car's now decade long run), and the fact that if she wanted a minivan for her daily, I would get whatever my bringing-home-the-bacon ass would damn well want.
Okay, that last one was uttered only in my head, but "urrrgh"/<gutteral yell> all the same!
The truth is inconvenient. Who the hell cares? I was getting not just my daily driver/people mover/grocery getter, I was ticking the boxes for V8 muscle car and grand tourer.
Dis gon' be good.
Pictures (and proof) on next post.
I just love cars, and have for a very long time. I'm lucky enough to now indulge in some of those dreams, right when the auto industry is at a turning point. Internal combustion is looked at tantamount to Murder One. Despite the faulty science (on many fronts), the transition to all electric vehicles as a means of preserving the Earth is a fait-accompli.
Society demands we continue to "progress" towards 24/7 connectedness, despite the clear correlation to an increase in distractedness. Society likes to invent solutions to problems it creates: witness the birth of autonomous vehicles.
I bought the Porsche earlier because I knew it was my last chance to snag a tailor-made, mid-engined exotic flat six, and about a year later my paranoia was proven right: witness the 718 Porschebaru.
Having ticked all the above boxes just in the nick of time, I turned my attention to an even more primal love. A good ol' American V8 muscle car that screams eff you to all the latte-drinking, goatee-sporting hipster doofuses out there.
Corvettes are my first love, but they're costly and we already have a two seater sports car. Like it or not, my next car needed to be a proper daily, so (vestigial) back seats and relatively easy ingress/egress were a must.
I found the Camaro lacking on too many fronts. The GT350 overpriced and underwhelming. Plus, I'd have to rev the nuts off it like the Boxster, so I'd just likely get it impounded too.
The "regular" GT is a near perfect fit, but the back seats are tiny, and the car itself is just lacking.... something.In my long essay last year, I never mentioned Dodge's offerings, because my wife had all but taken an axe to those dreams on account of how much she hated it. But, it's no secret that I have loved the Challenger for a long time. The old interior guaranteed I would never take it seriously, but the 2015 refresh looked about perfect inside and out. I was impatient and I had a feeling the refreshed interior wouldn't look/feel as good in person as it did in photos, so I leased a BMW 2-series.
The only thing I did right in that last sentence was lease, because I could give it back... and earlier than expected, thanks to an eager beaver on lease traders' web site. The Bimmer was a sublime daily, with smooth handling, but no steering feedback; perfect seats, before they flaked apart (at six months); and a wonderfully smooth and sonorous boosted straight six... whose noise was fully generated by a sound file played through a speaker beneath the driver's seat. Meanwhile, I drove a Challenger Scat Pack with a stick, and came away smitten. I even wrote on these forums that I had "bought the wrong car."
My wife, famously frugal and great at keeping her car-lusty husband from doing something stupid every other month, was willing to let me purchase a costlier GT350 (in fairness, or cheaper GT) if it meant avoiding the Dodge. I'd managed to purge it from my mind for almost a year, even though I would often see them driving around.
It took witnessing a pre-refresh black SRT8 model on the streets of downtown Tokyo of all places for the fire to be lit anew. My home away from home. The centre of all things brilliantly packaged, efficient, and cool. And here it was, a fat western-sized thumb in the well manicured eastern eye, driven by a wealthy Japanese businessman. So out of place, and yet so perfectly in its element all the same.
Fuck it. After that, it was game over. I won my wife over on the following items: practicality (this is a proper 4 seat coupe, and the trunk could swallow at least 3 dead hookers), price (relatively speaking, I admit I rigged that in my favour), a colour that wouldn't clash with the house (hardly a compromise, I would choose this colour over any other Dodge offered throughout this car's now decade long run), and the fact that if she wanted a minivan for her daily, I would get whatever my bringing-home-the-bacon ass would damn well want.
Okay, that last one was uttered only in my head, but "urrrgh"/<gutteral yell> all the same!
The truth is inconvenient. Who the hell cares? I was getting not just my daily driver/people mover/grocery getter, I was ticking the boxes for V8 muscle car and grand tourer.
Dis gon' be good.
Pictures (and proof) on next post.
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I love the color. I was never quite a fan of the Challenger at first but it has really grown on me. I think you hit the nail on the head on options. That interior is beautiful too.