FatCad Part 3 starts below!
Dennis Coy of Showroom Sales and Leasing came through and delivered the car. He had been keeping me posted as it was being built, through the transportation (I got an email from him at one point saying that my car was on the train rolling through Iowa) and then the day came eight weeks after I ordered it by phone. My wife dropped me off at Showroom to take delivery.
The first impression was hers and it concerned the paint. “Why does it look all bubbly like that?” she asked. Oh, I replied, “You mean the heavy orange peel?”
Even with our middle aged eyes it was quite apparent that this was no Lexus. “No problem,” I replied, “I’ll just get a body shop to cut it and then it will look nice and glossy”. Then I heard her say, “Interesting, even the paint on the outdoor furniture you spray painted last summer looks better than this” . Well, what can I say, I’m magic with the puff bottles maybe I should work the paint line at GM. Plus, when we cut the paint, we’ll take some weight off the car, right?
But no matter, let’s look inside the car…….
Second impression – the smell. Not the typical new car smell, more like…silicone seal? Yeah it smells like silicone seal. Not leather or any exotically fume-ie glues…it’s silicone seal. Hey, it could be worse, it could smell like potpourri or AXE.
Third impression- there are a lot of fancy electronic gadgets in this thing including a 40 Gig hard drive! My laptop has something like 100 Gigs, but even with hundreds of videos and thousands of photos and a ton of other stuff I’m only at something like 12% of its’ capacity, so 40 Gigs, man, all I know is that for as long as I own this thing I won’t come close to figuring out all this car can do. I wonder how much all those gigabytes weigh?
Fourth impression – it is quiet. Really quiet. At least by my standards ’cause everything else I own is loud – so much so that I rarely make phone calls from any of my cars because the conversation consists mostly of the word “What???,” repeated many times followed by “I’ll call you later….”
This car is as quiet as a tomb. Problem #1 – I can’t tell what gear it’s in – 4th, 5th or 6th without looking at the tach and speedometer, something I’m not used to doing. I didn’t realize this until I drove this car, but normally (at least it’s normal for me), the way I know what gear I’m in is by sound. And this car has no sound. It’s a lot like a rental car. Problem #2 is that, as it turns out, I actually enjoy a loud car. I like the sound, I like it loud – and this car is not enjoyable for me because it’s so quiet.
This will be an easy problem to solve because the mufflers are destined to come out as part of the diet.
Other miscellaneous impressions: The chrome grills are too blingy for me, the tail lights are nearly 3 feet long, all in one piece of red plastic, the rear tailgate goes up and down by remote control – I wonder how much that little motor weighs…. and inside this car, the back seat is a little smaller than my 1,300 lbs. lighter Volvo 850R! The rear part behind the seats is a lot smaller. The Volvo is also shorter and narrower than this Fat Cad. Ah, progress!
For the money, though, it’s a really nice fast car. Waaaaay faster than the Volvo. At least in a straight line. Can’t beat that blown V8 grunt. No regrets. A tremendous value when you consider the speed and the handling.
I was worried about the weight of the car affecting the handling, but after a few on and off ramps I have to say that the engineers used their talents and combined together with some weird science, have found a way to mask the weight making it very hard to tell that the car weighs more than 2 tons. If I didn’t know it already I wouldn’t have been able to tell it weighs this much. Amazing, really. This is the automotive equivalent of a two ton girdle. It might be heavy, but there are no muffin tops showing on this car!
I’ll wait for final judgement until after the car gets pushed to its’ limits at our favorite street racing venue; The Speed By Spectre 341 Challenge. We call it the Nrburgring of Nevada and it takes place next month in Virginia City just south of Reno. Check it out: http://www.spectre341challenge.com/
So far, on the street for my first 70 miles in the car, the handling is unbelievable.
Next up: The initial weigh in, followed immediately by the initial weight loss for week #1 – the easy stuff; spare tire, owners manual, carpet mats, etc. etc. This is probably going to be the easiest week to lose 10 lbs……
See you next week!
Geezus, man … what do you do for a living? Auto stuff? You should be writing comedy for someone. And the compliment comes from a guy who used to do just that. Hysterical stuff; keep it coming.
Doc
SLC