Gessel On…

The audio jack in the center console is a very good thing. It should be standard on all cars.

The Chevy Uplander is a cross between a mini van and an SUV, but is really just a minivan with an extended nose and a half decent engine. The performance is surprisingly good for a van with hard acceleration and no problem hitting highway passing speeds. The suspension is sort of amusing: the van seems to rock constantly in a kind of reassuring put the baby to sleep kind of way at the smallest bump.

The van has a ton of room and a good stereo. It is fairly comfortable to drive and not particularly fatiguing, but not exactly sporty or fun.

• Quiet - Not too bad but some noise from the huge cabin.
• Comfortable - fairly comfortable.
• Engine - a moderate engine, fairly responsive for the size of the vehicle.
• Suspension - ugh. Wobbles side to side.
• Basic amenities - everything that could be reasonably powered is.
• Stereo - acceptable but nothing great.
• Security - not very - everything inside is visible.

I got this car with plastic on the steering wheel, the back seat belts buckled, and 5 miles on the odometer.  I very much enjoy mustangs: they’re fast and throaty and fun to drive and equipped with loud and amusing stereos.

They are small in the trunk and the back seats are pretty useless - definitely not where you want to stuff an large, elderly coworker.  But the car is fun.  Fast and fun.

The engine has more show than go - the sound of the engine is one of big power and extreme performance.  While the car handles much better than most rental cars, it does not live up to the sound of the exhaust.  A nice Audi or Volvo, for example, will accelerate faster, harder, and longer and take turns better, but never call attention to themselves while doing it.

On the other hand, actually going really fast is not always relevant: having fun is more to the point and the mustang is fun.  It feels spry and agile and powerful and serves well to take years off the driver’s age.  It’s the prefect car to cruise suburban malls, especially if one dye’s one’s hair or wears a toupee.  If chicks aren’t the goal, then it certainly makes getting to work an exercise in regression therapy.

Aside from the throaty roar and sporty performance, road noise is poorly isolated but well compensated for by a loud, bass-heavy stereo typically equipped with a CD-MP3 changer that can hold 6 CDs (or maybe 60 albums) which means on older cars one can often find heavy metal compilations forgotten in the changer.  Not so much classical.

The Cadillac was a surprisingly pleasant and responsive car.  It is definitely a heavy thing, and while the V8 seemed quite powerful, it did not jump like a scalded cat… or even a mildly surprised cat when one stomped on the accelerator.   However an inattentive foot would easily close on 100 on the highway without any clear indication that excessive speed was being achieved.

The DTS seems like a “sporty” model with firm seats and a suspension that is designed to avoid the cartoonish body roll that exemplifies luxury American cars.  But, amusingly, only one axis was identified: while the car handles turns very well, it pitches like a steamer under acceleration; pitching so much that the headlight beams come off the tarmac if you floor it at night.

As rentals go, it is quiet and comfortable and sportier than a Taurus, it is definitely a premium rental with a premium sound system and over the top automation.

The Buick Allure is similar to the Toyota Avalon in form and function, but isn’t quite up to the task. The Buick is a nominally acceptable American car, but Buick dashboards are (and always have been) these strange, broad flat things that don’t really appeal to me. The car is a reasonable four door sedan, neither particularly bad at anything nor particularly good.

• Quiet - generally quiet, but got a bit noisy on the 401. The AC system is a bit too zealous - it’s hard to just get a vent function on a nice day and the windows open are noisy.
• Comfortable - fairly comfortable.
• Engine - a moderate engine, responsive but not astonishingly so.
• Suspension - it works well enough but isn’t super agile.
• Basic amenities - everything that could be reasonably powered is.
• Stereo - it was good enough but the high frequency speakers point straight to the center and so it sound unbalanced (the driver’s side tweeter pointing at the passenger and being inaudible to the driver).
• Security - the trunk is large and secure.

The Toyota Avalon is a very nice car - comfortable and large. The engine is powerful and the car is spry for it’s size, quite capable of zipping past a string of cars to make an exit.

We took it up commonwealth avenue in Boston, a street with a far, far less than perfect surface and it the suspension never got upset, nor did it get noisy in the car. While the car is roomy it is easy to navigate though narrow streets filled with stochiometric Boston drivers and pedestrians.

We found the stereo plenty loud and very quite good. The car came with satellite radio, which is kind of entertaining - a punk channel even - but doesn’t work all that well under trees or on narrow urban streets; just blacking out is a bit more annoying than the fade out of standard radio and we find ourselves tuning into the very fine local radio. The radio cover door is a bit over the top: why would you want to cover a radio? It isn’t for security - it’s just aesthetic and makes the radio hard to control when closed by the door edge is ugly when open.

• Quiet - very quiet, very silent.
• Comfortable - extremely comfortable and easy egrees. Well designed controls.
• Engine - fast, powerful and quiet.
• Suspension - very agile and stable. Never got upset.
• Basic amenities - everything that could be reasonably powered is.
• Stereo - excellent sound quality though the low frequency isn’t hip hop friendly.
• Security - a large, roomy, secure trunk.

This week i got a new Ford Taurus X, an interesting rental car. It’s an SUV type vehicle, oversized and overaccesorized, but a surprisingly pleasant vehicle that’s fairly easy to drive and comfortable.

Now the theory is that such a car would be good for off-road use or something since it has four wheel drive, but that’s really not happening. Better to think of it as a minivan with a nose and some extra weight in the drive train. Desipite the foolishness of SUVs in general, and especially given gas prices, the car had some neat features.

The Pontiac Grand-Am is actually kind of fun.  It handles fairly well and has a powerful engine that makes it a little too easy to spin the back wheels.  Not the quietest car I’ve driven, but the stereo was loud and sounded fine.