Chevy Finally Caves

Written by Sid BridgecloseAuthor: Sid Bridge Name: Sid Bridge
Email: sid@thesidagency.com
Site: http://www.theendive.com
About: Sid Bridge, APR is Senior Editor for Parcbench. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Endive, an online humor magazine for conservatives. As Parcbench's Senior Editor, Sid enjoys working with a diverse team of writers, each with his or her own unique personality. Sid is a happily married father of four, and a rare breed - an orthodox Jew who likes muscle cars and wears cowboy boots.See Authors Posts (74) on October 6, 2009

Car lovers: Sympathize with me for a second. You know the feeling – Cruising down the interstate, not really noticing or caring how quickly you’re breezing by the rest of the traffic.

At least, until you see those lights in your rearview mirror.

As soon as you regain your composure, there’s always one fleeting thought that drifts through your mind as you come to a halt and prepare yourself for the pre-ticket banter:

That patrol car is pretty sweet.

I mean, usually. The boys in blue know what’s best when it comes to pursuit, capture, and all-out-automotive abuse: An old-school American rear-drive sedan with plenty of V8 power under the hood.

For years, Ford has provided the quintessential police pursuit vehicle in the Crown Victoria. This body-on-frame monster is a throw-back to the 1960’s and a testiment to a tried and true automotive formula.

Recently, it’s been joined by the evil-looking Dodge Charger. I’ve actually given thought to joining the police force if I could be guaranteed a Charger for my patrol car. The lights and brush guards just add to the general awesomeness of Chrysler’s highly successful rear-drive retro muscle car.

Then, there’s Chevy. Chevy thought it was looking toward the future in the early 1990’s when it put an end to the rear-drive Caprice and tried to pass off it’s mid-size, front-drive platform as the new Impala. Even with a V8 squeezed transversely under the hood, it’s still as lame as every other cookie-cutter front-wheel-drive piece of garbage America has produced in the last twenty years.

Front-wheel-drive architecture has been seen as “the wave of the future” since the 1930’s when it was pioneered by an automaker called Cord. It offered the advantage of putting all of the engine’s weight on the drive wheels, providing more traction in bad weather. It also got ride of the “transmission hump” that split the center of every muscle car’s interior.

That’s all the advantages, now on to the disadvantages:

Since the dawn of front-wheel-drive, engineers have tried every trick in the book to overcome “torque steer.” That’s what happens when you hit the gas in a front-drive car. If it has too much power, it causes the car to veer in a certain direction. Having all the mechanicals up front also throws off the car’s weight balance, making handling somewhat unpredictable and uncharacteristic of a true sports car. For you drag racers out there, front-drive puts you at a major disadvantage. When you floor the accelerator, all the car’s weight shifts to the back wheels, which in your case, gives you less traction.

Oh, and here’s a shout out to all you silly ‘tuners’ in your hot rod Honda Civics. You know that gigantic plastic spoiler on your trunk that puts downforce on the back wheels? It’s not helping you at all if you have front wheel drive.

Finally, here’s where the cops had a problem. When your transmission blows up (and if you have a GM car, it’ll blow up at some point, trust me), you need to yank the whole engine out in order to put in a new one.

The police force reluctantly accepted the Impala into its fleets alongside the Crown Vic and the Charger, but it lacked the practicality of its peers. It also lacked the menacing looks. Getting pulled over by an Impala is a little bit like getting pulled by some random guy in an Avis rental car. It also had a tiny trunk and not-so-much space to cram the perpetrator into.

Well, with bittersweet joy, I can finally announce that Chevy has caved. In 2011, it will begin marketing the Caprice Police Patrol Vehicle (PPV) to law enforcement types only. The PPV is based on the Australian Holden Statesmen, a large, rear-drive sedan with V8 power.

It’s a bittersweet victory for a few reasons. First of all, why the heck did it take GM 20 years to figure out how much we all hate front-wheel-drive? The truth is that the switch to front architecture in 1989 was one that GM would never be able to afford to undo. After that time, such new platforms became to expensive to develop.  Secondly, it’s not even an American car. Like all of GM’s new rear-drive cars, it’s based on an Australian Holden. Short term, I’m sure it’s more economically sound to adapt the Holden for use in the USA, but in the long term, it would probably be cheaper if we had a rear-drive platform of our own.

Finally, They aren’t selling these cars to us. They’re only available for law enforcement officials, and maybe (maybe) after a few years, they’ll give us a rear-drive Caprice again. Have they not noticed that people love the new Camaro? Have they not noticed that Chrysler and Ford’s rear drive cars are successful? Need I mention rear-drive entries from Lexus, Infinity, BMW and Mercedes?

My heart goes out to those of you who will never get the chance to dive through a curve in a rear-drive car, letting the back end cut loose just a little bit and counter-steering while the adrenaline rush puts a silly grin on your face.

You can’t do that in an Impala.

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Sid Bridge, APR is the Senior Editor of Parcbench, Editor-in-Chief of The Endive (a satirical news magazine temporarily relocated to theendive.wordpress.com) and a stubborn guy who refuses to buy a front-wheel-drive car.