Tag: If I Had To…

If I Had To…

The window for delivery of the parts needed to complete the repairs of the Z06 begins today. The sooner, the better as the future beckons.

 

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For all I know, this could be the only installment of If I Had To…It is not easy for me to write about vehicles in which I have little interest. It is also possible that today’s post will not be well received or widely read.

OK, if I HAD to buy a four-door car which ones would I consider. I think that virtually all four-door vehicles look like boxes, devoid of interesting shapes. I spent some time thinking about these cars and only came up with three, one of which I have only seen at car events. In order of least expensive to most expensive:

 

Kia Stinger Scorpion Edition 2022 ra mắt: Đậm chất thể thao, giá từ 52.585 USD - iCar24h

 

This is a 2022 Kia Stinger GT2. On an episode of Everyday Driver Todd Deeken and Paul Schmucker drove and compared a Stinger GT2 to a BMW 430i Gran Coupe. No contest, right? Even the man who loves Porsche and BMW, Paul, preferred the Kia to the BMW. (Todd did as well.)

Both said the Kia had better performance AND a better ride than the BMW. The Kia Stinger is one of the great unknown cars, in my opinion. The subhead for this Motor Trend article about the Stinger reads, “America is missing out on this criminally overlooked sedan.” I believe that 2022 is the last model year the car will be produced and it will have died from badge snobbery. (The Genesis G70 is basically a Kia Stinger with three inches taken out of the chassis, meaning a less comfortable rear seat, and a little more luxurious interior.)

The GT2 is powered by a 3.3 liter (about 200 cubic inches), twin-turbo V6 that produces 368 HP and 376 LB-FT of torque. I’ve seen a 4.6 second 0-60 time associated with the car, but the time usually shown is 5.1 seconds. Either way, that’s quick for a car that seats five and has a rear hatch that allows much cargo to be hauled. The base MSRP for this car is about $51,000. That’s about the same as a Toyota Sequoia. Uh, which one would you rather drive?

The next car makes the list basically because I have been a fan of the make since I was very young.

 

 

This is a 2022 Maserati Ghibli in Trofeo spec. The article in which this picture appeared recommended the Modena version, however. What’s the difference? About 156 HP, the Modena has 424 HP (the base Ghibli has 345) while the Trofeo has 580. Do you need 580 HP in a four-door car? The Ghibli Modena engine makes 428 LB-FT of torque, which helps push the car from 0-60 in 4.9 seconds.

Like the Stinger, the Ghibli will soon be out of production. Maserati has realized that having two very similar four-door sedans in its lineup was not a good idea and will only be manufacturing one. Now part of the large Stellantis company, Maserati’s future is cloudy, in general.

I have test driven a Ghibli (a base model from 2020) and was impressed. The engine sound was awesome, the car handled and braked well and it was very comfortable. One feature I particularly liked was that the rear seats sit a little higher than the fronts, giving rear passengers a good view. The base MSRP for a Ghibli in Modena spec is about $81,000.

Here is the most expensive car of the bunch:

 

2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing | Sport Sedan | Model Overview

 

This is a 2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing. For about $90,000 you get a car that can accelerate from 0-60 in 3.4 seconds because it’s powered by a slightly tweaked version of the same engine found in the C7 Corvette Z06, the LT4. In the Blackwing, the engine produces 668 HP/659 LB-FT of torque. OK, in the context of the Ghibli Trofeo I asked if you needed 580 HP in a four-door car. No, you need 668.  🙂

All publications that I’ve read praise the CT5-V Blackwing for its combination of styling, acceleration and handling. Sadly, this and its sibling, the CT4-V Blackwing, will be the last gasoline-powered V cars Cadillac will ever produce. Supposedly, the make’s entire lineup will be either pure electric or hybrid by 2025.

 

Please share your opinions about this post. Also, feel free to recommend four-door cars (no SUVs or pickup trucks) of your choice.

 

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Chai, September

No, the post is not about Chai Tea. Yes, it is a play on “Hi, September” as it is my first post of the month.

The post title also refers to the fact that the product of the month and the day is 18 (nine times two). In Hebrew, every letter has a numerical value. The sum of that value for the letters in the word “Chai”–the Hebrew word for “life” (חיים, in עִבְרִית; the toast “L’Chaim” means “to life”)–is 18. Many Jews, even those of us who are not religious but are solely of Jewish ancestry and are OCD math nerds, believe that 18 is almost a holy number because of its association with the Hebrew word for life.

One manifestation of my OCD is to use the number 18 as a basis for making decisions. (Avoiding the number 13 is also part of my behavior.) When I had multiple clients in my baseball operations/player personnel consulting business I ordered uniform tops for each team with my name and the number 18. I would like to show you one of those jerseys, but this blog is still anonymous, technically.

That’s more information than you want or need about me. Oh, count the number of stars used as a divider in my blog posts.

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Yesterday, Disaffected Musings received more views on a day without a post than the average number of views for all days from February 1 to July 31 of this year. The average number of views for the last two weeks of August was 68 percent higher than the February-July average. I grant that the six-month average is a bit misleading because March and May did not have a normal number of posts. Still, 68 percent is a very significant increase.

The average for the end of August basically equaled that of the best six-month stretch in the history of the blog, October, 2020 through March, 2021. I will not break a butterfly upon a wheel or look a gift horse in the mouth; I will just say Thanks.

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From a recent tweet in my Twitter feed:

 

August 24: California bans sale of new gasoline-powered cars

August 30: California asks Californians to avoid charging electric vehicles due to electricity shortage

 

Truth is stranger than fiction, indeed. EVs are not the answer and are certainly not the only answer.

In that vein, here is a funny photo sent to me by David Banner (not his real name):

 

 

OK, Tesla doesn’t manufacture vans. The picture is still funny.

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Speaking of Tesla, this piece is one of many reporting that some Tesla owners in Norway–land of the EV–have “begun a hunger strike in the hopes of bringing attention to a long list of alleged quality issues with their luxury vehicles.” Truth and fiction…

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I am thinking about writing a few posts called If I Had To…These would be what vehicle I would pick if I were forced to select from a group that I would normally not consider, like Porsches or 4-door sedans.

I hesitate to call this a series as I might publish only two or three such posts. I also will NOT pick from among SUVs or pickup trucks. Sorry, pickup truck fans, but they have always had zero interest to me. They all look like a small box on top of a big box on top of wheels.

These posts would only show modern vehicles, say from this century, so the following would be out. This would have been the subject of a Hall of Very Good Cars post if I were continuing the series.

 

See the source image

 

This is a Rover P5B; this version of the P5 was built from 1967 to 1973. By the way, Rover called the car a coupé. I’m sure I have written this before, but I believe that the original distinction between coupes and sedans was the amount of interior volume, not the number of doors. BMW currently sells a 4-door car called a Gran Coupe.

I have been fond of the looks of the P5B ever since seeing one as the featured car on an episode of Wheeler Dealers. Mike Brewer described the car as having “rakish lines.”

The cars were powered by the 3.5-liter V-8 for which Rover acquired the rights to produce from Buick in 1965 and used until the 1990s. This motor had gross output ratings–how such metrics were reported until the change to net ratings in the early 1970s–of 181 HP/226 LB-FT of torque.

The heart wants what it wants.

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I probably care less than you do about the status of the repairs to the Z06. Some parts were delivered on August 29th, but not all of them. The last of the necessary parts are scheduled to be delivered in a window from September 8th to……….September 22nd.

An irony in all of this is by the time I actually dispose of the Z06, I will have been a Corvette owner for more than ten years, but a Corvette driver for less than ten. I am so done with that car.

 

#ChaiSeptember

#BoomInBlogViews

#EVsAreNotTheAnswer

#IfIHadTo…

#RoverP5B

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

If you like this blog please tell your friends and share the blog URL (https://disaffectedmusings.com). Thanks.