The Semi-Unofficial Pistol-Forum Car geek, gearhead, hot rodder, and vehicle thread

[SecondsCount]

Quote is trimmed some for brevity.

How does this post get made without including the 2005 Mustang? That's the reboot that made reboots the thing everybody did. A (much needed) quantum leap in performance and style for what was still essentially a well-refined '76 Fairmont under the skin.

New Beetle was objectively a worse car than the Golf and Jetta that were its mechanical twins in every way I can think of.

New MINI was brilliant, in its original form. Until the warranty expired. All the updates just look like they took the previous generation and added more psi to the styling buck.

The GTO had some basic utilitarian deal breakers due to having been engineered as a four-door, but only given two doors. The best thing about it, I thought, was the 100-mph kangaroo-finding headlights. Those were the best available at the time, by far, and probably since.

The Charger and Dart were, as you mention and like the GTO, really only reboots in use of the name. The Charger was just a sportier but no better looking version of the 300 "Homermobile." Both cars have evolved into good looking, good performing cars since the Europeans started calling the shots.

Challenger was the response to the Mustang (as was the Camaro). It was as small as they could make it simply by trimming the existing stampings for the floorpan used on the 300 and Charger. No new stampings were in the budget.

First Ford GT was cool, but overweight. Everything about it was just too big and heavy. The beauty of the original was its 2200-2300 lb weight and compact size. New GT is just recycling the name onto Ford's version of a modern supercar. Not really a reboot.

The NSX should have been the small-Ferrari killer that the original NSX was at the time. They should have joined a pair of K24s at the crank to make a 450-500 hp V8 and made the car as light and simple as possible. But looking at the original NSX and S2000, that's not how Honda does "performance cars." They only do that when making Civics. Or used to, anyway.

I'm not emotionally invested enough in the old Supra to be mad about the new one, but the styling does zero for me and everything under the skin is BMW. Old Supra was the pinnacle of most of what was good about Toyota, when it stood farthest above the rest of the industry in the ways that it did. New Supra offers none of that and isn't even enjoyable to look at. I don't know who buys it. If you're going to own a BMW, at least get one that's styled like a BMW.

Summarizing: As I remember it, the New Beetle and MINI were just quirky Euro companies doing something quirky and Euro. The '05 Mustang was Ford doing something that made people care again. And then its competitors did. So in a way, it revitalized the entire performance automobile segment, making non-exotic cars something people who weren't just car nerds cared about. While individual examples may be misses, I would say the reboot practice has, as a whole, been a success.

I had a 2001 new Beetle with the TDi diesel. Loved that car. It had a nice ride and a must of had some kind of suspension package as it handled super well. It wasn't quick but had decent acceleration, and would get 40-50 MPG. The only reason I sold it was the back seat was pretty small and my two boys were outgrowing it.

Of all the muscle car remakes, the Challenger has the best looks in my opinion.

[Suvorov]

Just my opinion, but it is based on actually driving one back when they were in production.

I’m sorry, I can’t receive replies from people on my ignore list 😏

[TGS]

Of all the muscle car remakes, the Challenger has the best looks in my opinion.

Agreed, and their design team apparently making powertrain decisions after doing lines of coke off a hooker's ass just adds a certain panache to the car. I wouldn't buy a Challenger for the same reasons I bought my Porsche Cayman, but I would still buy a Challenger for Challenger reasons.

Mustang looks good and is objectively a better car.

Camaro looks like smashed moose pussy, but is objectively the best of the three.

[0ddl0t]

Whatever happened to the Evo?

[TGS]

Whatever happened to the Evo?

While it was arguably a better car than the WRX STi, it didn't really have the "cult" following of the Subie and died out when it lost its competitive edge as soccer mom cars started coming with just as much HP. It's hard to imagine today, but the STi and Evo were incredible when they were introduced because they were pushing super-car power numbers at a fraction of the price, and twice what a regular sedan could make.

Subaru has also grown more mainstream whereas Mitsubishi still cranks out hot garbage that nobody wants, so they don't really have the ability to "float" low volume, low reward models like Subaru. If it helps to put into perspective, Subaru, a smaller manufacturer in the grande scheme of things, sells about 7x as many cars in the US as Mitsubishi.

The major manufacturers like Chevy, Ford, Honda, sell more cars in a month than Mitsubishi sells in a year.

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Mustang looks good and is objectively a better car.

Camaro looks like smashed moose pussy, but is objectively the best of the three.

I do like the looks of the Mustang although it doesn't have much of a retro look to it anymore.

If I could afford anything I wanted, it would probably be a Benz, in P-F orange



It would seem that they have always stayed true to their style

[OlongJohnson]

Whatever happened to the Evo?

It got Xed. Too big, too heavy, more expensive, not really better. Lost its edge. It didn't have the crispness the VIII/IX had, which could have made it still relevant in a world of 400 hp stock Mustangs and Camaros that weighed about the same.

An Evo IX SE with basic mods is still brilliant.

[DMCutter]

I traded a 2004 Boxster S for a 2006 WRX hatch in 2009 and have never regretted it. Soon after buying it I added a VF39 and supporting mods and Labonte meth injection a year later. Alas, it's a 4EAT instead of a manual, but it still makes 258 AWHP on a Mustang dyno, 345 lb-ft at 3100 rpm. It's not an Evo or an STi, but as a daily driver/hoonigan car it's great, and in the snow with Pilot Sport A/S tires, it's brilliant. As much as I'd like a brandly new REX or better yet, a 22 STi, I don't want to pay what they cost for a marginal performance increase. And it only has 105k miles on it, so it's barely broken in.

[Le Français]

And it only has 105k miles on it, so it's barely broken in.

It was around that mileage that my ‘14 WRX hatchback needed an expensive valve adjustment, and the power steering rack gave out shortly thereafter. The clutch too, but that was more expected. I put new brakes on it, sold it, and bought a Lexus LS430 (long highway drives were the order of the day).

[TOTS]

Just added to my ignore list 😏

I know, right!! He just basically said “ She’s a little overweight for a Victoria’s Secret model”. I’ve driven one too, and the one thing that car doesn’t feel like is overweight. I’m thinking he’s confused and was really referring to anything based on the Chrysler 300 platform like the Chargers everyone seems to be in love with.