Agree with all those choices. Add clean E38 7-series, especially “shortie sporties” with the sports package / Shadow Line trim, and the E31 8-Series.

Well, my daily driver *is* an S-Class, so I think I’m probably the target audience. (The real target audience is me but 10 years older.)

What people? My friends who are luxury car buyers, but not enthusiasts, mostly have no idea whatsoever what engine is under the hood of their car. They’re leasing 4-cylinder Volvos and Q7 2.0Ts for $800/month. They seem to be very focused on the interior quality, the level of reliability (or perceived reliability),…

It should really be the Porsche Mission E, but with an interior by Spyker. That would get the right kind of attention.

That’s fair. I was a shit mechanic when I lived in Chicago with no garage, because working on cars meant lying down in slush and trying to wrench with hands that had gone numb from the cold. Nowadays I’ve got a garage, and it’s basically the best thing about being an adult.

The Ciel (and it’s hardtop counterpart, the Elmiraj) made people completely lose their shit when Cadillac showed them at Pebble Beach. People would have written $100k checks to own something that looked like that.

Whew! I am relieved. Congratulations, guys!

The 718 is also too damn big to be fun on the street. And also not that comfortable. A friend of my wife’s just bought one, and as the local resident Car Guy I had to go out on a drive with him and make cooing noises to reassure him that he had made the appropriate midlife crisis choice.

Agree. The 991 is too damn big and inert to be fun on the street. The GT3 is a remarkable speed tool on-track, but that’s about it.

Wait - how?!

I would think it would be easy to be in a good mood if you’re Ron Jeremy. But it’s nice to hear that he is.

Jesus christ people, the Z3 water pump is $30 bucks on Rock Auto. The radiator is $82 bucks. 20-year old Miatas also blow water pumps and spring coolant leaks.

They were expensive when they came out. IIRC when I bought my ‘96 Miata new, it was $18k and the Z3 was like $32k. And the Z3 was really, really slow compared to the rest of the BMW lineup. So it felt like a poseur’s car: Not as sharp as a Boxster, not as fast as an SLK, way more expensive than a Miata. A cynical -…

That BMW 4-cylinder is pretty much bulletproof, and there is plenty of aftermarket support, so parts are cheap nowadays. Consumables like oil, tires, and brake pads are right on top of Miata prices. This would actually be a pretty economical car to run.

The American Motors product placement days were pretty egregious.

It’s so sad that the MX-3 was front-wheel drive. If it had been RWD it would have been a legend.

So true. There is a whoooooole lot of nothing between Salt Lake City and Reno. And that stretch of I-80 between Omaha and Cheyenne is so boring that even Jack Kerouac had nothing to say about it.

II Kings 9:20

It will be interesting to see if they develop a completely different block etc. for the Caddy vs. the Corvette. I can’t imagine they could justify the R&D and tooling expense, especially when they *already* have a perfectly wonderful V-8 engine family with the LS/LT.

They’re selling 2700 Escalades a month. If that’s not a land barge, I don’t know what is.