Dude... that link I posted is an article from CAR AND DRIVER. They, the unbiased anti american car people, compared the neon to the rest. The tests speak for themselves.

Any test showing the neon doing 0-60 slower than 7.5 seconds is showing what an AUTOMATIC neon can do, which is more like 8-9 seconds, running lethargic high 17s in the 1/4.

5spd neons are fast. Much faster than cavies, saturns, and about equal to the SVX.

- Rob

Yeah my bad...saw "neon" in the URL and figured i'd find one of those neon-lover sites. In cases like that, i don't even bother to check out whats on the other side.

That being said, there's still a problem with the article...it lists the 0-60 time of the "Cavalier Z24" as 8.1 seconds. However on the CAR&DRIVER SITE...they list the 0-60 time as 7.5 seconds, and the date of the test is listed as "10/97" (before the neon R/T test), so what gives? According to Automobile Magazine...the standard Cavalier runs 0-60 in 8.2secs and the Z24 in 7.4secs. So I think they may have been looking at the regular cavalier instead of the Z24 they listed it as.

The automatic vs. manual discrepancies are not uncommon...all the test figures i gave were automatics. The only 5spd Z24 test i found was in my march 2000 Road & Track, where they found it to run 0-60 in 7.2 secs.

AHHH figured it out. The article and specs ARE from Car&Driver, but the graphs on the right that show comparison between cars are not. NONE of those specs match what Car&Driver has listed on their site or in their road test archive. Nor do they match up with what other publications have found. This is why I didn't bother reading that link in the first place...they can't be trusted to do true comparisons.

thanks. i agree...i like unbiased sampling and comparison of data.

Problem is, that's nearly impossible to find these days. If this were not an objective numbers comparison, I wouldn't be using C&D as a reference...they are far from unbiased when it comes to subjective reviews.

Saturn
 

Hi Subafan, What have you been smoking. Here is the Saturn driver. Does not know how to drive. Pays list price plus for the car. etc. My brother inlaw bought a Saturn for his daughter.They had to replace just about every major componant, Like engine , tranny, and most of the little stuff like door locke, hinges etc. I would have to say that he is not to car savvy, coming from N.Y.City where a lot of people take public transportation. Take care, BOBB

Yeah I forgot to clarify, we're talking about people who KNOW how to own a car, not ones who assume the car takes care of itself. An ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine bought a 98 Saturn SC2...did not realize that oil requires changing...her engine lasted 18,500 miles. I think that's pretty impressive actually. Anybody who has to do that much work (as in your example) on a Saturn, or even a Neon in that case, actually in that case ANY CAR AT ALL, needs to learn how to care for a car.

Whether the oil gets changed or not, an engine should last longer than 18,500 miles. I suppose it depends on a lot of things, but that seems awfully soon.

i was surprised by this statement, too. a college buddy only changed his oil once per year (about every 20k miles) in his 84 chevette and it never gave him any problems.

What you probably didn't think of was that since this girl was so inept at car maintenance, that she also may have been a less-than-stellar driver. That is absolutely the case...I rode with her once, and swore I would never do it again. I am very tolerant of poor driving...unless i feel my life is really in danger, I usually keep quiet...so for me to be bothered by her driving...it had to be really really bad. Plus her car was a 5-speed...so that just made it even worse. As we all know, oil life depends heavily on how you treat your engine, and I doubt that the car had synthetic in it...so I think that based on all those factors, that car was a real soldier.

There are probably a number of things 'I didn't think of' - there's no reason to be rude about it. As I said, I didn't know the conditions, and I still don't.

Either 18,500 miles is really early for an engine to go bad or it just goes to show what a bad driver the owner was. I don't know.

I should have steered clear of this conversation from the beginning. It started with a GM, and I knew you'd be in here waving their flag (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that) and I have no desire to argue with you any more about it.

i couldn't agree more.

a guy i went to school with had a girlfriend with a Toyota (Corolla?) that went over 30k without an oil change. continued running good after he changed it, too. i'd be curious to see how long that sucker held up.

Plenty of people are going to have stories about US, Japanese, German and Ukranian cars going for long periods without changing the oil, or breaking because nobody changed the oil. Individual results and anecdotes are insignificant.

i know its not proving anything, just thought it was pretty insane that someone could drive a car for 30,000 miles and not even consider changing the oil. :rolleyes:

i hear Ukranian cars can run without any oil at all.