As an avid car fan I took advantage of the day off that Dr. King provided for me by driving a few cars. The first car i drove was the scion Tc, this car has a lot of buzz going around it, and at a glance it’s pretty obvious why, it’s a well featured car with a msrp of ~16k, it’s a good bargin for the stuff you get, but unfortuneatly that stuff doesn’t mean jack to me, I want light weight sports cars or at least sports influenced cars, anyways on with the drive. First i must mention something that since this was a new car
the dealer did insist on going with me, so i wasn’t able to do a fully through review. Ok the first thing i didn’t like about the scion is it’s a very short car, i a 6′ 3″ man was unable to sit in the car even with the seat rocked back without oppening the sun roof panel, the next big thing i noticed was everything in the car was made of plastic, most of it seemed to pretty high grade of plastic and some of it seemed really cheap plastic, the interior seemed kinda bland, and i like the fact that had a cover to go over the radio head unit to help keep the interior a nice clean look (although the unit i drove didn’t have any head unit, just a hole). Ok on with the drive, first the engine, a 2.4 with ~160hp, that’s pretty odd for a japanese car maker, but the engine was probably the best thing about the car, it had good torque and power through out most of the power band, the clutch was quite a bit stiffier than i was used to, but that could be the new car-ness of it, the transmission had a long buy solid throw. The huge disappointment was the preposterous brakes they used, i did a few brakes checks (somewhat convertly because of the dealer guy), and i found these sorely disappointing, i would never trust my family or friends to these things, they were very dismal, when i got out of the car at the dealer’s lot i looked at them and saw why, the brakes were single caliper brakes that were drasticly smaller than anything i’d seen on a japanese car, my honda’s stock brakes were 3-4 inches bigger. So the scion a nice car for driving if you don’t look around at the interior while driving or try to stop.
The second car i drove was a BMW M3, this is a car i know alot of you lust after, and so i do i, i only wish i could’ve afforded it, especially now after driving it. This was a car privately for sale, and the owner was a friend of my father’s so i got to take this
thing for a real flogging, this car was incredible. The first thing i noticed about this car was how clean and simple the car looked, but somehow had the stigma of a sports car about it. The interior was standard bmw with just some minor asethic changes, quality in build and design. The engine was great, i drove a regular 330 after this to get a comparison of the car and the engine, and although the engine doesn’t feel much more powerful at the top end, everywhere before that it’s has alot more torque and power, the car really moved when you wanted it to, the handling was even more impressive than the engine, the car would go exactly where you wanted it when you wanted it there, and turn off the DSC and get a little more aggresive with the throttle and you could go there sideways, it was incredible. So all in all on the M3, you need one, i need one, anybody who loves racing and spirited driving down backroads needs one.