Hello again everybody, I would like to say first and foremost that I will be doing this on a regular (hopefully) during this summer period as I have now moved into a new house and have an unbridled internet connection that should serve me well. I would also like to give a shout out to my GF Reah Romeo for graduating Cum Lade from Oakwood University and to all the other graduates for this year of 2010, Congratulations to all of you.
Well now that I have all the pleasantries out of the way I would like to get down to business, as some of you know, there isn't too much to do down here in Huntsville and to pass the time down here usually involves going shopping, going to the movies, or just going to the park. Well while I do those things from time to time, I don't often like doing them. My idea of a fun time is going test driving with my cousin Joseph Gilbert (or sometimes Jeff Livingston if he has time). So this week we decided to hit up some places on behalf of our friend Jessica Burns who is actually looking for a new car. They stopped by the Mazda dealership and looked at some cars, while I had no intentions of Zoom Zooming around town in those Japanese Fords; I decided that my girlfriend and I would go next door and check out some of the products from the Chrysler Corp. We wondered around the lot for about 20 minutes until a sales person came over to talk to us and asked us what we were interested in looking at. Reah told him that she was interested in some of the SUV's; I personally wanted to take a look at some of the cars that Chrysler had just come out with, namely the Dodge Challenger. What ended up happening was that I was put in for a real treat: first of all, they only had manual Challengers on the lot and all I had to do was give them some basic information and I could test drive them. To make matters even better, my sales guy got the keys to the ever so powerful Challenger SRT-8 version. To see my face, it was almost all I could do to hide the emotion that was bubbling inside of me, to think I was going to drive a 2 door sports car with over 450 HP.
When he pulled it up, I wanted so badly to just have the money and tell him "here I'll drive it off the lot from here, just let me get my stuff from my old pathfinder." But instead, he got out, let me get in the front, Joe got in the back and he sat in the front and we took off. Well kind of, seeing as how it had been some months since I last drove a manual car I forgot to take the parking break off and when I went to go put it in reverse to back out, the car kept stalling on me. Once I took it off, we were off and the first thing I noticed while we were on the city streets was how tame the Challenger was while I was going through regular traffic. I kept thinking I was going to work to keep those horses under control but while I was driving, I noticed that I had enough time to focus on other things the Challenger offered in the interior, the nice sound system, the sun roof, and all the bells and whistles the DVD touch screen navigation offered. After cruising and messing around with the interior, my sales guy told me to pull onto Research Highway to get some high speed driving in. I knew what that meant, typically when a salesman is comfortable with you, they normally don't mind if you punch the throttle on the highway just to get a good feel for the car. So when I pulled on to Research Park, I did exactly that, I buried my foot on gas and sent it all the way to the floor in second, launching the car from 20 mph to 80 in about 3-4 seconds. It was then I remembered that this car's zero to 60 is about 4.3 seconds. During this time I found it hard to talk to my cousin in the back seat, or he had a hard time hearing me over the roar of the 6.4 liter V8's exhaust in the back seat. Just to deviate for a minute, according to my cousin, sitting in the back seat was the most comfortable back seat he had ever sat in for a 2 door coupe. Getting back to the driving experience, it was breath taking, it felt like I was some kind of bad-ass black reincarnation of Steve McQueen and nobody could stop me. The steering and handling were nice too, just as long as you kept it in a straight line. At the speed I was going, I wouldn't have had too much control over the car in a high degree turn. Another thing to consider was that, since I had entered the freeway I had been doing an average of about 120mph and had not really slowed down much, I just thank God there were no cops around. Another thing I must say is that it has become a stable mate that Chrysler can make some incredible cars with some extreme power, but one thing I must put on for this car is that with great power comes great responsibility, when we got back to the dealership, my salesman explained to me that because of 2 accidents that happened when they first got the Challengers, they began to be very selective when it came to test drives for those cars. They deemed me a good driver, a driver the understood power and could respect it and use it wisely. Sorry to sound so super heroes like in this description but, honestly that's what the car makes you feel like, a superhero. It makes you feel like to you can take on all others (in red). I black, you feel like the anti-hero, the one who will save the day so it will at least be quiet. Either way it goes, wither be it a badass, the anti-hero, or just a good ol' boy, the Dodge Challenger will do what it needs to do.
After leaving the Chrysler dealership, expectations were high as we went across the street to the Nissan dealership, I was anxious to get into the driver's seat of the new Nissan Maxima and see how this front wheel drive car came so close to beating the Pontiac G8 in a comparison test by Motor Trend. When we arrived over at the dealership, we were greeted almost as soon as we got out of our cars by not one, but several salespeople. Jessica took one of the guys, my cousin got the person he had dealt with before, and I got this new lady who was very eager to get me off the lot with a new Nissan. I told her I was interested in a fully loaded Nissan Maxima and the next thing I know she had taken my license and got the keys and we were gone. Now it is at this point that I should point out that she was brand new to the job of selling vehicles, in fact she was brand new to the Huntsville area and didn't have an established route on which take her costumers test driving. Normally this would be fun, I can go anywhere I want and she's just along for the ride, unfortunately there was more to it than just that, I got to drive all over Huntsville but she didn't know squat about the Maxima, so while I was driving I didn't enjoy the ride because I was telling her things about the car that she should have already known. When she did stop asking me questions I was able to focus on the car and found out that I wasn't as impressed with it as I thought I would be. The ride was very sporty (by sporty I mean rough), the engine was quick and responsive and gas millage was good. The interior was very roomy, it also has all the bells and whistles that you would come to expect with Nissan, the only thing I didn't like about it was the touch screen on the Maxima. In the Challenger the screen is flush with the rest of the center counsel and is easily reachable from both the driver and the passenger, while in the Maxima one has to reach deep into a recessed cave to touch the screen. For the driver, this is no good at all, but to make matters worse, the wheel that you could use instead of touching it is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SCREEN. Now when I noticed that I was wondering "what stupid engineer in Japan said that this would be ergonomically and smart", cause the answer is that it's not. Now you may ask me, "Malcolm, can't you just use the steering wheel buttons and get over yourself? well yes I could if I understood them. I tried pushing one button that I thought was the enter button but turned out to be the horn. I was so confused and frustrated I just wanted to go back and get into my 1990 Pathfinder (which was looking more and more attractive in comparison to its newer sibling).
Vs.
So in conclusion, these (meaning the fully loaded Nissan Maxima vs. the Dodge Challenger R/T Classic) the Challenger I would have brought would have been exactly $40,340 including the destination charge, while the Maxima would have been at test driven prices of $37,560. Now that is a cheaper price tag on the Maxima but consider that you are getting a RWD V8 making 372 HP and a more ergonomically friendly cabin (not to mention the Challenger has 30GB of hard drive space in comparison to the Maxima's 800 MB hard drive). Now I know, by the pricing and by the types of vehicles these are, they really aren't suppose to be compared but I really did think that the Maxima would have been better the Challenger but instead I was treated to a much better cabin, more comfortable seats and a more fun driving experience then the Maxima. If anything I would say that the Challenger is the husbands car while the Maxima is the wife's car which was made more evident by how Reah personally liked the Maxima but she only liked me in the Challenger.
