EchoBooming in Birmingham

I want to hug their advertising company

Greetings live from Cheraw, SC.

I get giddy when my alarm clock is a 300HP Subaru Rally Car (even if it is 2 hours before I wanted to wake up):

We’re putting the band back together

Matt came down from DC, Shea, Jeff and I came up from Birmingham, and if Scoot’s tie-rod comes in today he’ll make the 8 hour drive up as well. That will put all the original BDSM (that’s Birmingham Drunken Subaru Modders you perv) guys back together for the first time since Matt moved to DC about a year ago.

Matt almost didn’t make it:
Matt stripped out and completely monkeyed up one of his brake calipers on his 04 WRX. Luckilly I had an extra 02 WRX front caliper laying around at the house so I brought it with me…. After a friendly parts store owner gave us a bolt that we needed, and a little lego action (thankfully Subarus are like Legos, parts from one car will just bolt up to another) Matt is almost back on the road…

Hopefully I’ll be able to post up some more info about the rally, but for more information about it, check out http://sandblastrally.com

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That’s right, nothing was interesting..

Biggest Letdowns

Nissan displayed their new Sentra, but you would have thought that it was a GM product from 3 years ago. After the beautiful Z, Murano, G35, and M35/45 that they’ve rolled out over the last few years, I expected more from them. Especially after the aggressively styled Sport and AZEAL Concepts that they rolled out at the autoshows last year.

Subaru brought nothing to the table for this year’s NAIAS. I was hoping for an STi version of the Legacy or at least the availability of the 6sp Manual throughout more of it’s lineup (it’s currently only available in the WRX STI) but instead they just showed the same B5-TPH Turbo Paralell Hybrid concept they debuted at Tokyo…

Chevrolet rolled out the Camaro Concept, and that’s all it is… a concept. It will be 2009-2010 before this car sees a showroom floor, if it ever does. In addition to that letdown, the car itself is a letdown to me. Dodge nailed the Challenger, and the car that started the Muscle Car rebirth, the Ford Mustang, is selling like hotcakes. Chevy needs to go back to the drawing board.

A day of big letdowns in my opinion. I’ll start off with the highlights.

Biggest potential

Honda’s got a Turbo Engine. Yay!
It’s got AWD. Yay!
It’s a small SUV. ~eh~
It only comes in with an Auto. Boooooo!

The new mini ute from Acura is called the RDX. Sharing a platform with the Element and CRV, the RDX is sure to be a hot seller for Acura but the big news here is the engine.

The 2.4L Turbo puts out 240HP and 260lb/ft of torque (the only time I can remember a Honda engine having more torque than HP) and it’s a K series engine (the same basic engine block that is in many other Honda and Acura autos). The potential here is huge. If Honda can roll out a manual transmission to mate this engine to it’s SH-AWD system, it will pwn the sport compact and sport sedan segments. Even with out SH-AWD, this engine would rocket Honda into the lead of the sport compact HP wars (currently being won by the Dodge SRT-4 and the Chevrolet Cobalt SS Supercharged).
Honda, if you put this engine, SH-AWD, and a manual transmission in to the next TL, I’d be in heaven.

Biggest tiny car

Volvo is bringing a new entry level car to the US market in the form of the C30. It is built on the same platform as the S40 and V50, but it comes in 2 door form. In fact it is nearly an exact copy of the European Ford Focus (which also shares the platform along with the Mazda3).
It should bring a younger demographic to Volvo, along with more sales.
I’m not sure I follow Ford’s logic when it comes to refusing to bring the latest version of the Focus, and instead re-skining the old Focus for the North American market. One would think that a Ford version of the car would sell many more copies than a Volvo version (that will undoubtedly be more expensive).

Let downs to come later…