The Red Rocket is dead ... Long Live Vader Jr.

**Don M** · 01-15-2016, 09:37 AM

I know I haven't been on in a while, I've been busy with work and family. But I recently did my civic duty and got a drunk driver off the streets before she could kill anyone ...

No names have been changed to protect anyone ...

I was driving home from work Friday night (12-11-2015) and had just stopped at Burger King for the kids and decided that some onion rings sounded good. Well, I continued heading home and the odor of fresh onion rings was filling the car. I made the turn onto the main road that leads to my street and just as I started to accelerate, I had to SLAM on the brakes because a woman pulled out of the Taco Bell parking lot, without stopping right in front of me ...

... I ALMOST missed her, but my left front corner smacked her left rear quarter panel. I stop, but she keeps going! I spin around, beat her to the intersection and cut her off (This is not something I recommend anyone doing). I get out of my car (had to force the door) and approach her window. She's sitting there puffing on a cigarette and then throws it out the window at me. (she didn't know I was there!) Then she says: "Oh, did I hit you?" I tell her she did, noticing the "I don't know where I am or what's going on" look on her face and thought to myself: "Aw, hell, she's bombed." Traffic is starting to back up and with her wedged in and not able to go anywhere, I start waving traffic around (while still keeping an eye on her). After a minute or so, I saw headlights pulling up and I started to wave it away, when I noticed it was the locals. OK, cool. Let them handle this.

I hand off my insurance and DL to the officer then go back and lean up against my crumpled fender, lighting one up to help with the adrenaline rush (I know, a bad habit...). A second local quickly arrives and I am told to drive my car into the bank parking lot adjacent to where we were so we could clear traffic. I pull around to the front of the bank and they pull her car to the rear of the bank where they dealt with her. They seemed to want to keep us separate, because no one came to talk to me for several minutes. Finally the officer comes back around and said: "You ARE NOT at fault," with a funny tone in his voice. I look at him and ask: "Drunk?" He looked away and said: "Well, I can't really say, but it IS the holiday season and what is it people do a lot of during the holiday season." So I thought, OK, she's drunk, figures, just my luck. They cut me loose, so I just happened to drive around to the back of the back to get to the main road, and I see them giving her the Field Sobriety Tests and from the looks of things, she's not doing a very good job of it.

I drive away with my inner fender rubbing against my tire (I only drove it away because I was less than 100 yards from my house). I felt good in spite of the accident because I got a drunk off the road before she killed someone ... BUT ... this was the 2nd time I got hit by someone pulling out of this Taco Bell, and what's WORSE...

... That's when I realized that my nice, hot onion rings hadn't survived the crash. They were now cold and scattered all over my dirty floor mat on the passenger side, and all I was left with was their lingering aroma ...

... UPDATE

I got the police report from my little accident Friday night. Seems that the woman who hit me, blew a .206 at 5:00 o'clock in the evening Roughly 2.5X Ohio's legal limit of 0.08. At 62 years old, I would have expected more common sense than that, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

PS: I still don't know how much $ of damage was done to my car, BUT her insurance company told me during a taped interview, they are taking FULL responsibility. At least I have a nice, late-model Jeep Patriot to play with.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

**Don M** · 01-15-2016, 09:51 AM

It has been an interesting holiday season for me. First my car was totaled by a 62 year old woman with a Holiday Cheer Content of 0.206, almost three times the limit of Holiday Cheer in Ohio.

Then, I talk to a few personal injury lawyers (I wasn't hurt), but I thought I deserved more than the $3,700 they offered as a settlement. But no go, I was stuck with what they offered.

Now I drive about 100 miles a day to work and back, and my wife is big on saving, so I assumed she wanted me to find an new economy car. So off I go on Cars.com with a price cap of $10,000 and a filter requiring a manual trans (whatever I got, it HAD to be a manual).

I'm looking and I find a few possible cars, test drive a few drove an hour and a half to drive one, but no matter what I looked at, the wife shot it down, saying "Too many miles on it." Now I'm figuring that she wants me to look at newer cars instead of 10 year old, high-mileage cars. But, I DON"T LIKE any of the newer economy cars. Then she tells me I need to look at GM cars ... I hate to say it, but I REALLY don't like the GM economy cars that I think she wants me to look at ... the Sonic and the (gag) Spark.

I suppose I could live with a Sonic, IF it was a stick and IF it was a sedan, not the hatchback ... too ugly. As for the Spark ... a 1.4L engine, CVT trans, ~84 hp/~83 torque???? ... need I say much more?

So I'm at work Wednesday and the wife calls me. She tells me that there are two cars she wants me to look at ... at a dealership an hour from work and two hours from home. BUT, she won't tell me what I'm supposed to be looking at! Thinking I was smart, I googled the dealer and looked up the least expensive cars with a standard. But instead of two cars, I found three, all Sonics, a 2015 (still brand new) and 2 new 2016's. The 16's were hatchbacks ... *SIGH*... but the 15 was a sedan ... *Hope*

So I go to the dealership, hoping for the 15 Sonic, but still fearing a Spark ... I get to the dealer. Once there, I find the salesman is in on it. He won't tell me what I'm there to see either. He just tells me to wait there and he'll bring the cars around. So I wait for an almost unacceptable amount of time, when I see this black car come around the corner ...

ACTUAL DEALER PHOTO

To say I was in shock would be an understatement ... here I'm expecting automotive purgatory, and what I get is Nirvana.
It has the 3.6, 323hp V6, 6 speed manual that has a highway MPG rating *just* a bit lower than my totaled car and it only has 25K on the clock (one owner, clean CarFax)

I've owned 2, third gen Camaros, an '83 and an '89. Both had the 5.0 engine, the '83 was an auto, the '89 was a manual, NEITHER one of these cars had the power of this V6. The handling of this 5th gen was way out of the 3rd Gen's league

Best of all, I pick it up tomorrow (12/27/2015) at noon, and I don't even care that it's black, let the de-swirling begin!

I'd already nicknamed it Vader Jr when I first saw it Wednesday

Mike Phillips · 01-15-2016, 10:40 AM

Sorry to hear of the accident

Glad to hear your safe!

Congratulations on the new car!

Hope you know what you're getting into....

"Black is not a color, it's a full time job"

**OTSDetail** · 01-15-2016, 01:19 PM

Good stuff. Not a fan of the V6 anythings (since I'm a total muscle junkie), but they're making good power out of V6s now. Only real gripe is that fact that I absolutely HATE those wheels. They're so ugly!

Other than that, sorry about your luck, but at least you were deemed not at fault!

**Don M** · 01-15-2016, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by Mike.Phillips@Autogeek

Hope you know what you're getting into....

"Black is not a color, it's a full time job"

In addition to being my 3rd Camaro, this is also my 3rd black car. I think I've progressed enough in skill and maturity (Ok, maybe not maturity) to handle another black car

**Don M** · 01-15-2016, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by OTSDetail

Good stuff. Not a fan of the V6 anythings (since I'm a total muscle junkie), but they're making good power out of V6s now. Only real gripe is that fact that I absolutely HATE those wheels. They're so ugly!

Other than that, sorry about your luck, but at least you were deemed not at fault!

I actually liked the wheels over the fancier spoke rims, I thinks it's a cleaner, simpler look and I'm going for the 'sleeper' look. And I think that they are easier to maintain.

I understand about your V8 feelings, I would also like to have the 6.2 LS3, but for now my priority is MPG and lower insurance rates and getting 323 hp out of a 6 and performance that blows the doors off of my previous Camaros is a nice compromise.

**Klasse Act** · 01-15-2016, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by OTSDetail

Good stuff. Not a fan of the V6 anythings (since I'm a total muscle junkie), but they're making good power out of V6s now. Only real gripe is that fact that I absolutely HATE those wheels. They're so ugly!

Other than that, sorry about your luck, but at least you were deemed not at fault!

Yeah...they're getting "good" power out of V6's today:

Not trying to give you a hard time here but that "muscle" mentality people have needs to go the way of bias ply tires. I guess I have a sore spot for this type of thinking because I used to own an 87' GN and I had some people say that wasn't a muscle car because it was a V6 and turbo. At this point I began to look for the stone tablets where this ruling was written but I could never find it but I did find out that my 87' GN made 355 ft/lbs at 2000 rpm....stock, my car was far from stock, infact it had 120k on the clock with a tired trans and worn valve springs and ran a best of 12.6 @109 mph w/ a 1.91 60 ft time.

I'm also aware of FWD Regal GS's running fast too with the blown 3800's, fast V6's are out there and I'm only scratching the surface.

Oh yeah, in the early 1990's the Jag XJ220 had a twin turbo V6 making 450 hp and a 3.8L. This was during the era when the ZR1 made 375-405 hp out of a 5.7L with DOHC heads.

**Klasse Act** · 01-15-2016, 06:39 PM

Originally Posted by Don M

It has been an interesting holiday season for me. First my car was totaled by a 62 year old woman with a Holiday Cheer Content of 0.206, almost three times the limit of Holiday Cheer in Ohio.

Then, I talk to a few personal injury lawyers (I wasn't hurt), but I thought I deserved more than the $3,700 they offered as a settlement. But no go, I was stuck with what they offered.

Now I drive about 100 miles a day to work and back, and my wife is big on saving, so I assumed she wanted me to find an new economy car. So off I go on Cars.com with a price cap of $10,000 and a filter requiring a manual trans (whatever I got, it HAD to be a manual).

I'm looking and I find a few possible cars, test drive a few drove an hour and a half to drive one, but no matter what I looked at, the wife shot it down, saying "Too many miles on it." Now I'm figuring that she wants me to look at newer cars instead of 10 year old, high-mileage cars. But, I DON"T LIKE any of the newer economy cars. Then she tells me I need to look at GM cars ... I hate to say it, but I REALLY don't like the GM economy cars that I think she wants me to look at ... the Sonic and the (gag) Spark.

I suppose I could live with a Sonic, IF it was a stick and IF it was a sedan, not the hatchback ... too ugly. As for the Spark ... a 1.4L engine, CVT trans, ~84 hp/~83 torque???? ... need I say much more?

So I'm at work Wednesday and the wife calls me. She tells me that there are two cars she wants me to look at ... at a dealership an hour from work and two hours from home. BUT, she won't tell me what I'm supposed to be looking at! Thinking I was smart, I googled the dealer and looked up the least expensive cars with a standard. But instead of two cars, I found three, all Sonics, a 2015 (still brand new) and 2 new 2016's. The 16's were hatchbacks ... *SIGH*... but the 15 was a sedan ... *Hope*

So I go to the dealership, hoping for the 15 Sonic, but still fearing a Spark ... I get to the dealer. Once there, I find the salesman is in on it. He won't tell me what I'm there to see either. He just tells me to wait there and he'll bring the cars around. So I wait for an almost unacceptable amount of time, when I see this black car come around the corner ...

ACTUAL DEALER PHOTO

To say I was in shock would be an understatement ... here I'm expecting automotive purgatory, and what I get is Nirvana.
It has the 3.6, 323hp V6, 6 speed manual that has a highway MPG rating *just* a bit lower than my totaled car and it only has 25K on the clock (one owner, clean CarFax)

I've owned 2, third gen Camaros, an '83 and an '89. Both had the 5.0 engine, the '83 was an auto, the '89 was a manual, NEITHER one of these cars had the power of this V6. The handling of this 5th gen was way out of the 3rd Gen's league

Best of all, I pick it up tomorrow (12/27/2015) at noon, and I don't even care that it's black, let the de-swirling begin!

I'd already nicknamed it Vader Jr when I first saw it Wednesday

Glad your ok, that's the most Important thing here for sure!

Now, about those wheels, maybe a set of Torque Thrusts

**Klasse Act** · 01-15-2016, 06:47 PM

503 hp...V6

**Don M** · 01-15-2016, 06:56 PM

Originally Posted by Klasse Act

Glad your ok, that's the most Important thing here for sure!

Now, about those wheels, maybe a set of Torque Thrusts

Thanks, I was fine, a little ... "miffed," ... yeah that's it, miffed,

but I'm usually ready for this kind of thing and my reflexes are as sharp as ever.

As for the wheels ... any mods I do are going to be for the engine to keep the car a sleeper (I should say: "any mods she LETS me do"). The only real plans I have for the wheels/tires are getting some better tires than the BF Goodrich Radial T/As that are on there now. Yes, they are 18" rims with T/As on them and a "T" ~118 (or so) speed rating. Once I do that, I can have the speed limiter bumped up a notch to 155, not that I would go that fast, just knowing that I could is good enough for me, heck, I haven't even broken triple digits in it and I've had it almost a month.