An Army buddy of mine, Joe, a good friend, has two cars in his background that I got to enjoy due to his ownership: a 1993 Cadillac Eldorado and a 2001 or 2002 Chevrolet Corvette Z51. The Cadillac was his baby…he bought it after making a staggering amount of money in commission sales as a teenager as a used car, and he made me re-think what it meant to be fastidious about a vehicle. At one point, he chastised me for sitting down too hard in the seats. But he would let me drive it fairly often (usually because I would play the role of designated driver and he was blitzed out of his head after an enjoyable evening out with friends) and before I knew what a temperamental bitch the Northstar V8 was, I was sold on it. Smooth, torquey, and oddly rev-happy, the Northstar gave the otherwise fat-GT Eldorado purpose. Shame they were front-drive, because that was the only thing I couldn’t stand about the car. Okay, the second thing…the first was that it was an emerald-green car with a diaper on the roof that matched the interior color.

If the Caddy was his first paycheck blown, the Corvette was his mid-life crisis that he had when he was in his early 20s. Truth be told, it was after our first deployment. We all had money and quite a few of us bought cars. I traded in a truck for a Buick Regal GS, one guy bought a TDI Jetta, another bought a Dodge Ram Daytona, and Joe bought himself a Corvette. It was a couple of years old, “LOOK AT ME!” yellow, and with the no-name aftermarket mufflers, sounded like the exhaust of a tugboat at idle…and it was an automatic, for the final insult. But that car rocked…that is my current land-speed record car (172 with a +/- of 3mph on a public highway…yeah, I know, stupid, but it happened) and it proved that even a plasticky C5 had magic. The suspension was a gift from GM’s most benevolent side, and the LS…whoo, when they come on, they come on strong! Good car.

But someone in GM had a brainchild one day: why not combine the stuffiness of a Caddy with the sportiness of a Corvette? It’s not a bad proposition, but the XLR wasn’t the greatest combination. They look the part and the interior is comfortable. The Northstar is a time-bomb, they were expensive new (the supercharged XLR-V was well north of $100,000), and there’s only 15,460 or so of them. If there was ever a car that was truly deserving of an LS swap, the XLR is it…that is the missing piece of the puzzle. Or is it? All we will say is that depreciation is a bitch, and we can’t wait until they are cheap enough that a gearhead makes an XLR into what it should have been all along: Everthing a Corvette was, with a nice suit on.

Language warning: Mr. Regular’s usual colorful commentary is present. You’ve been warned.