The Best 8 Cars According To Me part 1of 2

Written by: Jimmy Sesto

     As I sit here contemplating my favorite cars I start day dreaming of a world where every car made is at my disposal. Some people have a favorite car or even two but myself, well lets just say if I had the money my collection would rival Jay Leno's. Not much unlike old Jay, my favorites range from $12,000.00 up to $2,000,000.00 but this list will be for vehicles under $75,000.00. I thought it would be best to write out my favorite cars on paper first before writing this article. The problem I have is if I write about all these cars, then I will be here until next week since the list tops out at nearly 60 vehicles. So in a moment of rational thinking I believe I will shorten that number to 8. Problem one solved. The second problem that I have encountered is positioning of these 8 vehicles. So to save me the burden of ranking the cars I have decided to list all 8 vehicles in no particular order. After all, my rankings usually change daily, just depending if I am in the mood to go fast, go in luxury, go inexpensively or just go pretty. So without further delay.....

                                         

                          "The Best 8 Cars According To Me"

                                               "Part 1"

1.     Buick LaCrosse: Wow, where did this car come from? Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, and even Saab all dead when it comes to General Motors "reingiting" themselves as they say. Out of those four, I considered three of them to be better vehicles than anything Buick made. Then Buick came out with the LaCrosse which may be GM's best vehicle for the money. This vehicle does share a platform with the Chevy Malibu. No surprise, all car companies share platforms to save money. Luckily for GM the Malibu is a nice car as well. In fact you might say the LaCrosse is like the Malibu after taking a Lexus pill. I say Lexus because the LaCrosse is directly marketed to go after the Lexus ES crowd. In fact it looks very similar to the Lexus but with more class in my opinion. Its funny because the Lexus slogan is "The Passionate Pursuit of Perfection". Buick directly attacks this slogan in the Lacrosse commercial. The narrator states "If perfection is what you pursue then this might just change your course" while going into the Lacrosse slogan "The new class of world class". Buick is going after all age ranges again and this car proves it. The LaCrosse starts pricing around $27,000.00 and going on up to a little over $37,000.00 fully loaded. Not too bad if your considering the Lexus ES fully loaded at a price around $42,000.00. The LaCrosse has two motors available but the larger 3.6 V-6 at 280hp gets 27 mpg highway which is 1 mpg better than the smaller available motor. The Lexus is nice but give the LaCrosse a test drive, after all its free to do so.

2.     Kia Forte Coupe : Surprised? I almost am myself. Kia has been in business nearly 60 years making various items including bicycles. At one point they started making a low end model for Ford since Ford did partly own Kia. Time went on and Ford tried to take over controlling interest of the South Korean company, however Hyundai beat them to the punch and took full control of Kia. Now we are in the 2000's and Hyundai has certainly improved their quality level considerably while doing the same with Kia. In fact almost every vehicle with a Kia badge shares a platform with Hyundai. There is no doubting the fact that Kia has arrived as a serious player in the game of auto's. So back to the Forte. Kia just recently introduced this model to replace the Spectra. Allow me to inform you that they got it right. This car looks like the Honda Civic Coupe but better. I love the styling on this car in and out and the quality is right in line with Honda and Toyota. I will give you a quick comparison with the Forte and Civic Coupe's. I will use the SX for Kia and Si for Honda. The Forte tops out with all the options including leather for $21,430.00 but you can get a base model for slightly over $12,000.00 on the four door. The SX comes with a 2.4 inline 4 cylinder engine producing 173hp and getting 32 mpg. The standard warranty is 5 years 60,000 miles bumper to bumper with a 10 year 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. The Civic Si tops out just over $30,000.00 but included in that price are 18 inch wheels compared to the Forte's 17 inch wheels. The wheels on the Civic are over a $2000.00 option. Also in that price you do get an upgraded suspension and ground effects as well as some other accessories. The Civic does get 24hp more but gets 3 mpg less. On the Honda site you can compare the Civic to the Forte and it actually informs you that 5 years from now the Civic will retain 37% of its value while the Forte retains 39% of its value. The Forte deserves a closer look if your in the market for that type of car.

3.      Dodge Charger SRT8: This car is a bit odd to me and what I mean by that is I love this car but there are a few things I do not like about it. First let me start by saying that Chrysler has very few bright spots in its line up right now. They took the hatchet and starting chopping away at models. Just in recent times they stop producing the Pacifica, Crossfire, Aspen, Durango,Magnum and I am sure there are a couple more that I am forgetting but my point is this; Out of the "Big 3" this is the worst of the companies right now. They have had 4 different owners since the late 90's. They do have a few winners in their line up that they need to concentrate on like the Charger. A few things that make me unhappy about this car are things like cheap looking interior, quality still not where it should be, sell to anyone with a pulse. What I mean by that is every car company has a car that they fleet out for cop cars and taxicabs among other things. Ford does it with the Crown Vic, Chevy does it with the Impala and Dodge does it with the Charger. The problem with that is Dodge also sells the Charger as a high end American muscle car. Lastly the mpg's are just horrible, in fact they are so bad I couldn't find the mpg ratings for the SRT8 on the Dodge site, I had to get it elsewhere. Even knowing all this, the SRT8 still makes my list of top cars, why? Because this car is one BAD MAMMA JAMMA! I love old American muscle cars and the SRT8  is all American and Hemi Muscle. I would never buy this car as my lone vehicle but if I had the choice of any 10 cars, this bad boy would make the list. The Charger starts its pricing around $24,000.00 equipped with cheap wheels and cloth interior and 2.7 V-6 engine with 178hp that gets 26 mpg highway. Now the SRT8 comes with 20 inch wheels loaded with all the toys and a bad ass 6.1 Hemi V-8 that turns out an incredible 425hp. It only gets 13 mpg city and you will have to pay a gas guzzler tax of around $1700.00 bringing the total to $43,500.00. So if you can see past the cheap interior and bad gas mileage then you can get what I think is one of the best looking, power pushing, getaway cars made.

4.     Audi S5:  A little over year ago I set out to compare luxury cars around the 40 to $50,000.00 range. The cars were Audi A6, Mercedes C Class, Cadillac CTS, BMW 5 Series, Infiniti M, Lincoln MKS, Acura TL, Lexus GS and the Hyundai Genesis. I wasn't looking forward to going to the Audi store because I am not a big fan of VW and that is who owns and makes Audi cars. So my father and I went to Audi first thinking it would be the worst. I was in shock after getting into and driving some Audi's. These my friends are nice cars and you should know the following, VW last year over took Toyota in terms of the world's largest auto maker. How? You might be surprised to learn that not only does VW own Audi but they also own Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and the final company they merged with in 2009 to send them into first was Porsche. VW is HUGE. I have to tell you that Audi without a doubt has the best quality in any car I ever seen in the price range of less than $75,000.00. I am not a big 2 door car guy but this S5 won me over. I was debating to either put the A8, A6, or S5 on this list, so yes that's how many Audi's came that close to making it. I went with the S5 only because there are other cars in the A8 class and A6 class that I like just as much but not in the S5 class. I love the S5's more than usual aggressive styling Audi used. It comes with a 4.2 V-8 engine that delicately pushes out 354hp while still getting 24 mpg on the highway. It also comes with a quattro all wheel drive system that hugs the road with the most comfortable ride you can imagine. When I was sitting at a light I couldn't even hear the engine running and every magazine I have read claims that the Audi MMI system is the easiest to operate of all the luxury brands. MMI stands for Multi Media Interface and controls just about everything from your navigation to sound system to the climate control. If your going in the direction of luxury, test drive an Audi.