Agent M79
12-20-2004, 04:56 PM
The 1 Year, 18,000 Mile Test Drive (part 1)
I admit it. I am a poseur. I barely belong here. For my time in the MM, I have been a fortunate dreamer.
Like many here, I am a fan of anything with 8 up front turning the 2 out back. When I was a boy I’d see the teens and tweens cruising in their big ol’ Impalas, Caprices, Galaxies, GTO’s, Bonnevilles, Electras and massive Cadillacs. There were the guys that drove the 'little' cars too, like the Cutlasses, Novas, and Cuda’s. My mother had a ’68 Impala followed by a 71’ Skylark GS so I had youthful exposure to both the big and the 'small'.
My 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cars were early 70’s Caprices and Impalas just like the ones I’d watch go by from my Big Wheel with the flat spot on the front tire. They were rough but they were mine and I could cruise. From the drivers seat I couldn’t see the rusty rocker panels, the rusts holes along the fenders, dented doors, or the mismatched tires. So long as I could hear that V-8 burble as I eased away from the lights, that was good enough for me.
Fast forward life a little and there is a wife and a child in the picture so the car models had to be somewhat newer models (and presumably more reliable) rather than rattier older models but I was pretty successful at sticking to formula. There were big Bonnevilles and after they shrunk those in ‘82, there was the Parisienne. I even 'downsized' for a while into a Mark VII and then a mid-90’s T-Bird but the 8 turning 2 mentality was still there.
Then it happened. After years of diligently avoiding K-Cars, Pintos, Gremlins, all of the 4 banger front drive foreign nameplates and the abominations that Detroit made to combat them, Chevy released the ’94 Impala SS. The era of the big bad muscle car was back.
Of course, I couldn’t do anything about it. The SS was priced outside of my means. But it was at that point in time I felt would herald in a new era of muscle car corporate competition among the big 3. This meant to me that there would be plenty if cheap big V-8 cars on the used market in a few short years. I told those that could afford them to buy them, lease them, or steal in order to plant seeds of opportunity in the future to put myself behind the wheel of a car I would 'know'.
And through the last model year for the SS (1996 when they finally put the shifter on the floor) they did buy them. And they drove them. Bet they kept them. As luck would have it, nobody rose to the SS challenge. I think they knew before we all did that Chevy didn’t have any intention to continue to build them in the face of the higher profit margins presented by the SUV and pick up market.
So, though my options were limited now by the fact that no one built SS fighters, I knew the SS would start showing up on used car lots and in the papers by private owners. And they did. Most of them sold for very nearly what they sold for new. It stayed that way and I never got one.
Cue up steady and continuous growth at the company I work for along with generous owners who like to keep key critical personnel happy and on-board. They’d like to do something big for me. I said car. They didn’t blink.
The SS had been out of production for 4 years and used cars where not really an option since the company would be leasing something for me. The MM may have been a rumor in the fall of ’99 but it wasn’t one I had heard of and, of course, not attainable anyway. I ended up in a loaded ’00 Mustang GT. Quite a place to find ones self.
It was a blast. Plenty of power for such a small platform. I enjoyed every minute of it.
The Mustang had those limitations that most of the demographic for the segment can easily dismiss. Most that buy them have no real use for a back seat. It was a place to toss your coat. My 8 year old son had a hard time with it though. The back seats were low and he couldn’t see out the windows. His legs were not long enough to have his knees bend over the edge of the seat and so they jutted straight out and crammed against the back of the front seat even though it was fully forward.
It was a kidney grinder too. It was tough to take the mild-mannered out in because the dynamics that made it what it was were diametrically opposed to what I needed it to be at times. Mom had long since forgotten the days of her ’71 GS and could only remember the pleasant things about that car (the color mostly, heh). She forgot that it would rattle the teeth out of your head if you hit a pot hole and it always smelled of inefficiently burned petroleum distillates. It may have been a tad too loud as well.
The fact was, I was at a point in life now where my daily driver was everybody else’s weekend fun car.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was mid or late 2001. I was a year or so into the lease for the GT. I heard that Ford via Mercury was working on the Marauder. My initial info was sketchy and I was pessimistic. Would it be a warmed over 'performance package' version? Ford’s idea of putting a little go power in the CV and GM was underwhelming in light of what it meant when I was a kid. I was sure at that point that the MM would be little more than unimpressive power gains and some pleasant cosmetics.
But more information came to light over time. My pessimism was lessening and my hope growing. It seemed as if Mercury would actually attempt to match marketing to performance. I became enthusiastic.
The ’03 MMs were out and I was still under lease with the Mustang. Talk about getting twitchy. Seeing a sparse few at the dealerships, finding info online especially as people bought them and posted about them, and general daydreaming were as close as I got to one.
I admit it. I am a poseur. I barely belong here. For my time in the MM, I have been a fortunate dreamer.
Like many here, I am a fan of anything with 8 up front turning the 2 out back. When I was a boy I’d see the teens and tweens cruising in their big ol’ Impalas, Caprices, Galaxies, GTO’s, Bonnevilles, Electras and massive Cadillacs. There were the guys that drove the 'little' cars too, like the Cutlasses, Novas, and Cuda’s. My mother had a ’68 Impala followed by a 71’ Skylark GS so I had youthful exposure to both the big and the 'small'.
My 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cars were early 70’s Caprices and Impalas just like the ones I’d watch go by from my Big Wheel with the flat spot on the front tire. They were rough but they were mine and I could cruise. From the drivers seat I couldn’t see the rusty rocker panels, the rusts holes along the fenders, dented doors, or the mismatched tires. So long as I could hear that V-8 burble as I eased away from the lights, that was good enough for me.
Fast forward life a little and there is a wife and a child in the picture so the car models had to be somewhat newer models (and presumably more reliable) rather than rattier older models but I was pretty successful at sticking to formula. There were big Bonnevilles and after they shrunk those in ‘82, there was the Parisienne. I even 'downsized' for a while into a Mark VII and then a mid-90’s T-Bird but the 8 turning 2 mentality was still there.
Then it happened. After years of diligently avoiding K-Cars, Pintos, Gremlins, all of the 4 banger front drive foreign nameplates and the abominations that Detroit made to combat them, Chevy released the ’94 Impala SS. The era of the big bad muscle car was back.
Of course, I couldn’t do anything about it. The SS was priced outside of my means. But it was at that point in time I felt would herald in a new era of muscle car corporate competition among the big 3. This meant to me that there would be plenty if cheap big V-8 cars on the used market in a few short years. I told those that could afford them to buy them, lease them, or steal in order to plant seeds of opportunity in the future to put myself behind the wheel of a car I would 'know'.
And through the last model year for the SS (1996 when they finally put the shifter on the floor) they did buy them. And they drove them. Bet they kept them. As luck would have it, nobody rose to the SS challenge. I think they knew before we all did that Chevy didn’t have any intention to continue to build them in the face of the higher profit margins presented by the SUV and pick up market.
So, though my options were limited now by the fact that no one built SS fighters, I knew the SS would start showing up on used car lots and in the papers by private owners. And they did. Most of them sold for very nearly what they sold for new. It stayed that way and I never got one.
Cue up steady and continuous growth at the company I work for along with generous owners who like to keep key critical personnel happy and on-board. They’d like to do something big for me. I said car. They didn’t blink.
The SS had been out of production for 4 years and used cars where not really an option since the company would be leasing something for me. The MM may have been a rumor in the fall of ’99 but it wasn’t one I had heard of and, of course, not attainable anyway. I ended up in a loaded ’00 Mustang GT. Quite a place to find ones self.
It was a blast. Plenty of power for such a small platform. I enjoyed every minute of it.
The Mustang had those limitations that most of the demographic for the segment can easily dismiss. Most that buy them have no real use for a back seat. It was a place to toss your coat. My 8 year old son had a hard time with it though. The back seats were low and he couldn’t see out the windows. His legs were not long enough to have his knees bend over the edge of the seat and so they jutted straight out and crammed against the back of the front seat even though it was fully forward.
It was a kidney grinder too. It was tough to take the mild-mannered out in because the dynamics that made it what it was were diametrically opposed to what I needed it to be at times. Mom had long since forgotten the days of her ’71 GS and could only remember the pleasant things about that car (the color mostly, heh). She forgot that it would rattle the teeth out of your head if you hit a pot hole and it always smelled of inefficiently burned petroleum distillates. It may have been a tad too loud as well.
The fact was, I was at a point in life now where my daily driver was everybody else’s weekend fun car.
If I had to guess, I’d say it was mid or late 2001. I was a year or so into the lease for the GT. I heard that Ford via Mercury was working on the Marauder. My initial info was sketchy and I was pessimistic. Would it be a warmed over 'performance package' version? Ford’s idea of putting a little go power in the CV and GM was underwhelming in light of what it meant when I was a kid. I was sure at that point that the MM would be little more than unimpressive power gains and some pleasant cosmetics.
But more information came to light over time. My pessimism was lessening and my hope growing. It seemed as if Mercury would actually attempt to match marketing to performance. I became enthusiastic.
The ’03 MMs were out and I was still under lease with the Mustang. Talk about getting twitchy. Seeing a sparse few at the dealerships, finding info online especially as people bought them and posted about them, and general daydreaming were as close as I got to one.