[debullitt]

So here I am driving home Friday afternoon from work. Kind of dealing with our wonderful Silicon Valley traffic heading north on Hwy 680. For you locals, you know that once over the Sunol grade it starts to open up bit. Well, as I am going up the grade I notice this white sedan with blue rally stripes screamin through traffic. I wasn't quite sure what it was, looked like a Grand Am or Chevy sedan. Once over the grade it takes me couple of miles to maneuver through traffic to finally get behind this guy. By the way, he knew I was coming to, because he was doing everything possible to stay as far away as possible, but to no avail.

I finally get behind him doing about 85 miles an hour, and lucky me the car in front of him pulls into the middle lane and what do you know, he jumps on it. By this time I had downshifted to 4th and mashed it. Well, it took me absolutely no time to close a 4 car gap. We must of been doing about 100 mph, and things got a little interesting when we hit a twisty section of the freeway. Obviously, we are not driving Porsches or Ferrari's, because we both were hanging on around this long high speed corner, with a couple of ripples right at the apex. I gotta tell you, first time I was a little scared in this car. But the Bullitt hung the corner pretty well(at about 85-90 mph). Once we hit the straight, back up to about 110 mph then he peels off. Pull up next to him and its a Monte Carlo SS, either a 2000 or 2001, really nice. Anyway, I pull next to guy to give him a quick wave and he snubs me. So while I'm cruising at about 85mph next to him, I drop it back to 4th and mash it again and give him the old "see ya later" wave. Never saw him after that. Did some research on that model and apparently the new Monte Carlo SS's only put out 200 HP and 225 Torque, but with a 3.8L V6. Felt like I was picking on a little guy. Oh well, it made for an exciting drive home on Friday before the weekend.


Mike
DHG #3463
San Ramon, CA.

 

[mustang 1]

He is lucky you didnt drop into 3rd!

 

[rancorkeeper]

Yeah, the new Monte "SS" really disappoints me. The Monte had a fine heritage, but they didn't even supercharge the new ones. It's pretty pathetic; GM's full of idiots these days.

 

[Lt. Bullitt]

My first "new" car was a '73 Monte with a 454; back in those days, they had detuned all of the big blocks for better mileage and I think it was rated at a meager 220 hp or so. Much later in life, I found myself driving a '99 Camaro SS; at first I thought I had something really cool; after all, it WAS an SS! Then comes along that silly 3800 V6 Monte sporting my same, precious SS moniker! What an insult! To me, the SS name had value! I actually began to feel "stupid" driving my SS, primarily because it was built by a car company that is apparantly happy to insult it's customers intelligence. Lately I've heard rumors that Pontiac is thinking of slapping a V8 in one of their FRONT DRIVE platforms and calling it a GTO. Is nothing sacred to those people??? Now the Camaro and Firebird are "Dead Men Walking" and you have to wonder what garbage GM has coming down the pike in the way of performance cars? I've even heard there's a battle within GM to take the Corvette away from Chevrolet and market it as a seperate marque along side Cadillac. All those Ford haters who want or need a new, affordable priced rear wheel drive sports car that seats 4 are going to have a real problem! To GM's credit, they do seem to build some decent trucks and SUV's; maybe they should rename the company to "General Trucks". They don't have much inclination to build real performance cars anymore!

 

[sinner]

FYI - On I-95 in the Baltimore Washington area, state troopers are running in plain Mustang GTs. Maybe he thought you were smokey.