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The stroll through the Ford, GM and Daimler-Chrysler sections was fairly brisk, since none of them make a car that interests me in the slightest- even the Z06 Corvette. The new Thunderbird looks OK from a distance, but when you get close, it starts to show that it’s cheap Ford junk. The egg-crate grill looks cheap and actually has black painted Styrofoam stuck behind it for impact absorption. Some of the trucks are OK, like the new Tahoe/Yukon and the new Dodge Ram looks neat with wild new lights.
Speaking of lights, the new Infiniti Q45 was there, which I think is one of the first real showings in North America. It has large composite lights with 9 bulbs per side, has many standard high-tech features, is enormous in size and yes, it’s FUGLY. Too bad, because the fit and finish is second to none and it’s extremely luxurious inside.
The nod for best luxury car has to go to the Lexus GS430, LS430 and SC430. I was drawn to the Lexus section because there was an excellent sounding stereo playing which turned out to be emanating from the new SC430 coupe. It looks better in person than in pics with a gorgeous interior, convertible hard top and ugly wheels- again too bad, because Lexus almost got it right. The LS430 was the nice rolling couch that it’s supposed to be and the GS430 also had a much nicer interior than I had imagined, but I kept thinking of RevHigh’s comment about it looking like a Pokemon so I couldn’t take it seriously. Nice car, but it’s no BMW 5-series.
The Mercedes line was OK, although nothing turned my head and the E-series is starting to look old next to the new “S” and “C” class. My favorite is probably the new C320.
Jaguar had the full line up there, but they’re all ugly and overpriced. The Porsches were nice (I like the older ones better) but I can’t see why anyone would pay $40,000 more for a 911 than a Boxster “S”. The Acura’s were the nice Honda Accords that they are and the new MDX sport utility is going to sell like hotcakes (I ordered one for June delivery).
Probably the nicest looking cars I saw all weekend were a bright red M5 and an E46 330i convertible at the dealership. It was in a very deep blue that I’m sure looks just like beewang’s. Nice car beewang!
The car show even had an official Dinan representative who had a supercharged M Z3 on display which is supposed to put out about 330 HP. I asked him about the output of the supercharged 540 and he claimed it should be close to 375-380 HP. Hmmm….., I wonder what it really is.
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