The Metro Investment

A few weeks ago CNN reported an article on the rising cost of gas has forced consumers to get creative with ways to beat the costs at the pump. The Geo Metro, a forgotten piece of economical transport, the laughing-stock in automotive circles for its miniscule engine, a 3- cylinder powerplant producing a whopping 55 horsepower. One eBay listing was bidded up to the astonishing price of $7600 according to the article!! The price of one of these econoboxes back in the early 90's was around $9000, by my calculations those depreciation costs put almost every car to shame including such ultra-exclusive exotics such as the Ferrari 348 (cost of new example in 1992 = $94,000, cost today, about $44,000 for nice example). The Porsche Turbo from that same year cost $118K, and a used retail example according to Edmunds would only fetch $38,000 or so (still a hefty sum for a 16 year-old car).

In fact a look at eBay showed a top of the line LSI example of the Metro going for $2900 and this listing still had two days before the auction closed. As for the features on this faded puke-yellow example: it has a tachometer, automatic, air conditioning, and a flip up sunroof. No power windows, no power locks, no remote for unlocking the doors from halfway accross the parking lot.

To put things into perspective, a search of eBay for a Ford Bronco of a one-year newer vintage yielded 6 results and the only model with bids was a loaded model (leather, power seats/windows/locks, cruise control, etc.) and the highest bid was $710! Of course when one of these gas hogs gets 17 MPG tops going with the wind, it makes me glad that I sold my Grand Wagoneer a few years back!

GT-R: An exotic car for $70 grand?

The sports car world has, or soon will be, flipping its lid over this car:


Source: http://www.gtrnissan.com/download.en.us.html?img=nissan-gtr-image-gallery-exterior-1

Much like then Datsun did in 1971 with the classic 240Z, Nissan has done it again with the 2009 GT-R. At $70,000 this car eats Z06's for lunch and does circles around Porsche Turbos costing upwards of $125,000. In fact Road & Track tested these exact three cars, while the Corvette and the 911 lapped Buttonwillow at just over 2 minutes and 2 seconds, the Nissan accomplished the same lap almost 5 seconds quicker. A race course is truly the way to test the dynamics of a car, and by race track I don't mean the ovals NASCAR fans go crazy over. You see a road course type track with complex turns of various radii and some extended straightaways for high speed runs is what really separates the stallions from the herd. These types of courses allow a driver to fully test the handling limits of a car while also extracting the most out of the brakes when coming into a tight turn and what the go pedal does when blasting out of a turn or overcoming the wind on the straights.

Some other impressive numbers: the GT-R goes 0-60 in 3.4 seconds (only the superexotic Bugatti Veyron and Ferrari Enzo do it quicker), the Nissan can run through the slalom at 73.4 mph (faster than that aforementioned Enzo).

The GT-R is perhaps one of the most advanced cars in the world and proof of this is that fantastic lap time mentioned above while the car has the same horsepower figure as the Porsche 911 turbo yet weighs 250 pounds more than the German supercar. The Corvette has 25 more ponies than the other two, but just can't put the power to the pavement as the advanced all-wheel drive GT-R does. The GT-R is about to revolutionize the sportscar world.

Intro to Car Point

I'm a self-confessed car nut. It started when I was 4 years old and spent much of my time sketching cars on a desk my father built from solid pine, sweat, and laquer so thick you could of swore there was a sheet of glass covering the piece of furniture. I've read about cars since I was 12 (that was about the same age I actually started to enjoy reading, as long as it wasn't of the assigned variety). Does all of this make me an expert? Not exactly, but like a sports buff who can spit out the ERA stats of the Yankees back in '81, I can tell you the performance numbers of almost every Porsche built since the brand's beginning. I don't work in the industry so my views aren't overly jaded, although I do have biases based on experience and observations while sitting in gridlock along the 91 freeway (a notoriously gridlocked freeway here in Southern California).

As for this blog, my purpose is to educate, test, rant, rave, enlighten, repair, explain, discuss, break, install, damage, and not all necessarily in that order, about the car itself, products used to fuel it, fill it, clean it, repair it, and outright improve it. Stay tuned...