...I'll take the Pontiac

I posted earlier about the worst car I've ever driven.

Just so we don't forget what an abomination this thing is, here's another picture.

Oh that's bad.

Something occured to me while I was driving around today, though: the Pontiac Grand Am that I rented when I was out in Seattle in January was about a million times nicer than this Classic. Here's the Grand Am.

Ugh, that's a terrible shot. The only good shot I have of the car has some goober in the way.

Now, I didn't really like the Grand Am when I got it. In fact, if this journal had actually existed, I would probably have noted my frustration with the underengineered interior and jarring road manners. In contrast with the Classic, however, the Pontiac was fantastic to drive.

Oddly, in spite of the Pontiac's improved handling, it was remarkably simpler to upset in corners. I suspect that the GM engineers figured increased spring and damper rates were all that were necassary to make the car "sporty" and left it at that. Little did they know that nuked the only redeeming characteristic of this accursed platform: its seemingly unflappable poise.

The point here is that given the choice between the Malibu (sorry, "Classic") and the Grand Am, I'd take the Pontiac any damned day of the week. And if all you've seen is Chevy/Pontiac/Buick dealership (and we all know people who get just that religious about this sort of thing), then the offerings from GM's body cladding division seem pretty sweet.

Update: Thanks to my occasionally recurring dyslexia, I managed to insert a picture of a DeLorean instead of the aforementioned Grand Am. Odd, how that works.