evan's drunk car reviews

Last year, my friend Matthew got married and his bachelor party was a trip to the Tail of the Dragon and surrounding mountain roads.  Our friend group frequents the forum and has a beautiful fleet of mediocre cheap cars befitting a group of terrifyingly less and less recent Georgia Tech Wreck Racing graduates.  During this trip, I had the opportunity to drive each and every one of them and as a result developed my own "biased and nonstandardized review system for random cars people let [me] drive" based loosely on the Doug DeMuro DougScore.  This new standard is the "most important metric in car ownership known to man."  I reviewed all of the cars I drove, and I hope to enlighten all of your future car purchases with my deep and nuanced understanding of all of these vehicles.  For reference, my daily driver is a manual 4.3L V6 Vortec (formerly, now 5.3L V8) GMT-800 and I wrote all of the reviews under the influence of several beers.

Allow me to introduce to you: the Evan Williams E36 M3Score.  If you disagree with my verdict, go find a friend with the same car and drunkenly post a rebuttal.

BigDaddyDeek's 735i:

              The Flagship looks nice.  Very classic BMW.  Understated luxury, you wouldn’t realize that the owner is an extremely wealthy individual.  The roof rack makes it look as though the owner might do outdoorsy things, but it doesn’t fool those in the know.  The Flagship is slow, but the clutch is exactly where you would expect it to be and feels right.  When going around corners, it handles like a boat.  This boat is confident in where you take it, though, as though it has a jet drive which allows for precise control.  It knows exactly what it is, and it makes no compromises in achieving its goals of providing a comfortable cornering experience.  The car is fun, but not too fun.  Just a normal amount of fun.  The cool factor is a perfect 10.  This is an executive’s vehicle and those that see the Flagship go by will appreciate it for what it is—a manual Flagship is a big winner.  As always, a BMW scores a perfect 10 on fear factor as the pinhole in the head gasket widens and increases the misfire rate while steam cleaning your cylinders.  The noise is noisy, this is not a quiet engine and the misfires and rattles from an old engine are ever present and increasing.

              I didn’t get to experience all of the features this Flagship has to offer, but come on, it’s a classic 7 series so you know it’s a winner.  The accoutrements of the 80’s are just right and I’m sure you could find a place to powder your nose or ash your cigarette.  The Flagship is so comfortable in the right ways from the comforting headliner droop to the plush suspension and seats.  The value cannot be understated as a hundred thousand dollar car for under $5000 is an unbeatable deal.

              The Flagship scores an 81 out of a possible 100 points.

I'm looking forward to this series, hopefully you keep getting behind the wheel of our cars. If I remember correctly this started with me being too hungover to drive my Lexus, no? 

Evan Williams said:

If you disagree with my verdict, go find a friend with the same car and drunkenly post a rebuttal.

This seems like the most fair solution. I'll allow it.

The SC400 unfortunately starts off weak on styling, as a long coupe with the ugliest berkeleying wheels I’ve seen on a car combined with a suspension that somehow makes it look lowered and lifted at the same time drops it down in the looks department. Moving on to acceleration, I had to rate it holistically because it has neither a tach nor a speedometer.  The butt dyno says it’s decent, but not excellent. Going around a corner it felt planted and competent, but the luxury suspension also soaked up the largest of bumps because I didn’t even feel the gravel mound we went over.  It is an incredibly fun car to drive, all V8 cars should have manual transmissions and heavy clutches.  It feels like a combination dump truck sports car, perfect points here.  In the same vein, the cool factor is off the charts.  Who has a manual luxury V8 DIY coupe with a lightswitch used as a starter safety?  Moving into the fear factor, if you’re not familiar with my rating system here, the more a vehicle scares you when you drive it, the higher the score.  The SC feels well-balanced, and you only have minor fear from the homemade rotating assembly and quarter shim on the clutch, so not much to write about here.  As far as noise goes, it makes good ones.  My only gripe is the volume, it should be more ear splitting if possible, there’s no reason for other people not to hear you coming and dive for safety.

              Ordinarily I would give high marks for few features, but in driving a manual I like to be able to see my tach.  A true speedometer is also missing here as you have to use the GPS to approximate your speed, which is unwieldy and inaccurate.  The SC400 gains some points here for the light switch neutral safety and all electronic seat and steering controls.  Despite those features, the comfort leaves something to be desired.  The steering wheel and seat combination was not designed for a manual transmission vehicle and I found my knees bumping the steering column trim and my hands got into my legs on more extreme turns.  The shifter was also weirdly sized and shaped with no texture to it.  Finally, when into the triple digits of speed (maybe, we don’t really know) the driveshaft picks up a terrifying vibration and you get to experience the pants-E36 M3ting fear of having a driveshaft impale you as it catastrophically fails.  All of the typical luxury comforts were present though, so it gets to keep most of its points here.  This vehicle of course wins perfect marks on value as it delivers so much with so little invested besides dumbass wheels.

All told, out of a possible total E36 M3score of 100, the SC400 wins 73 points.

one of these days I'll wire the clutch switch in, but I'm not sure I want the hit to my e36 m3score....

In for the scientific objective reporting!

In reply to Evan Williams :

Suggestion...

Try putting the pics near the beginning of each post. It will read easier on mobile devices. 
 

...unless we're drunk 

User name checks out.

              The M2 is not a pretty car.  BMW missed the mark when they cut the hood above the kidneys.  The lines flow from the blunt nose rearward to the feminine tail lights that don’t the match the rest of the vehicle.  The lackluster lines catch some help from the delicious Alcantara steering wheel and the red leather seats, but the bloated modern look takes over the exterior.  The car accelerates quickly, but to where?  Speed limits exist, and this car is more than capable of going much faster than you can ever take it, even illegally.  The car is also hampered by the extreme turbo lag below 3000 RPM which tricked me into downshifting too many times—turbos are intoxicating when they come on, but there ain’t no replacement for displacement.  This car handles extremely well, much better than I can.  Driving a car so far from its limits is numbing and disconnects you from the road.  The clutch is also fairly numb and extremely forgiving which is a detractor.  It is a generally fun car to drive if you keep it in the rev range where the turbo lag isn’t as noticeable, coming out of turns and getting hard on the gas is a fantastic feeling as your head is shoved back into the headrest.  However, it is not a cool car.  It looks just like every other contemporary BMW on the road and only the color turns heads.  As always, BMW’s score a perfect 10 in fear factor as German engineering fails catastrophically with no warning and even this recently built example has some interesting gear mesh coast noise.  This vehicle also makes no exciting engine noises except for a slight blow off woosh—I’m not convinced anyone can make a four cylinder sound good.

              This car scores low in features.  It has heated seats, manual seats, manual steering wheel adjustment, and some sort of fancy writing and pictures on the dashboard that move but has no correlation to what is happening to the vehicle.  No gauges that matter except for the tachometer and speedometer exist.  Weirdly enough, the features that exist are nearly exactly the opposite of the ones that this reviewer would have chosen.  The car is comfortable—maybe too comfortable.  I’m not exactly sure how to quantify that.  Value wise, this vehicle actually managed to score a 0 which is thus far unheard of.  I am a firm believer that no vehicle can possibly provide more than $10,000 of value and even that is a stretch.  The listing on Facebook confirms that the owner values it at more than triple the maximum possible value of a vehicle which is why it scored so poorly.

              Overall, the M2 scored a 44 out of a possible 100 points.

I miss my M2 (actually a manual 228i track pack with a tune, but they made fun of all the m badges and called it the M2), even if it did get the worst E36M3 Score yet  

I think maybe Evan switched from tequila to mad dog between reviews?

Evan,

Don't know how drunk you were, but that ain't no picture of an m2 :-).

Do you also perform the test drives drunk as well? Would make an amazing series I would tune into as long as it was performed on a closed road course.....

I like this series!  I think the manual Lexus looks great and even dig the wheels.  Hopefully more reviews to come.

              The E39’s appearance is uninspired.  It’s a normal middle management vehicle that was somehow made worse with stupid ass headlights and yellow fogs that make me think that it’s a 2001 Honda Civic that a 13 year old got a hold of as the 17th owner.  It’s redeemed by the dirt nasty low M sport springs which slam it to a ridiculous height that you could never hope to get over a speed bump with.  Acceleration is good, but not great.  It goes when you tell it to go.  Eh.  It handles well, and I appreciate the steering wheel which puts your hands in a very good position and locks them in place properly so that even if you start to sweat and your hands try to slide on the steering wheel it won’t get dangerous.  It’s a genuinely fun car with all of its decent marks adding up to a sum that’s greater than its parts.  Going back to the cool factor though, as I said it’s a middle management car that’s just not the coolest thing you can get your hands on.  As with all BMW’s, the fear factor is a full 10 because the Germans are terrible electrical engineers and love to overcomplicate and reinvent the wheel in their mechanical designs.  It seems happy living in exciting drives, the true fear comes in when you start to use it as a mode of transportation and not a toy.  It gets low marks for noise because a 10 year old liked pops and bangs and ruined a perfectly good engine calibration to get a couple of giggles.

              This car scores well in features, my favorite is the stereo which plays the frequency of the alternator extremely loudly through the speakers.  I guess BMW has been prototyping the piped in engine noise for longer than we realized?  Comfort wise, low score here.  If I had more time to play with the seating position I think that I would have been able to give it a higher score, but the position was strange and stuffed into the steering wheel while somehow being far from the pedals.  The seat was also crooked which led to my left arm being thrust into the bolstering which is a safety concern on critical turns.  Value wise, I believe this vehicle was sold for a reasonable price to the current owner, so it scores very well here.

              Overall, the E39 wins 64 points of a possible 100.

Olemiss540 said:

Evan,

Don't know how drunk you were, but that ain't no picture of an m2 :-).

Do you also perform the test drives drunk as well? Would make an amazing series I would tune into as long as it was performed on a closed road course.....

Test drives are strictly sober, I like driving broken cars too much to risk my license or someone's life.  That's mgfoster's m-sport track pack 2 series that we made fun of because of all the M badges.

On a separate note about the E39, I gave it a low score, but for some reason like I said in my review, the sum of its parts is greater than the individual components and I really loved driving it.  Once I sell my $2000 F10 when the challenge is over, I'm going hunting for an E39, either mechanically totaled to LS swap or in very good condition.

              The 280z looks cool as hell.  Clear coat? No. Rust spots? Yes. Grille? berkeley you. Bumper? House paint. Exhaust? Well it’s kinda weird but it fits the vibe.  Perfect marks.  Acceleration is perfect.  This car is not fast.  It may have been fast at one time, and it may have been designed to be fast, but why go fast when you can put the hammer down and go slow?  You have more time to enjoy your induction noises and exhaust noises at any given RPM, I think it’s better this way.  Handling is great, it feels like a go kart on rails.  There’s no limit to the grip in the dry, but it does have a slightly spooky bump steer that with no power steering is going to kill the driver one day, especially once he upgrades to the faster rack and hits a pothole on the highway.  There were times when it felt like the car was driving me more than I was driving it which is a dangerous thing.  But my God is it fun. It’s like being 3 years old and while the attendant is looking the other way your dad pulls you into the kart at Andrettis and gives you the wheel.  And you can’t quantify the cool, everyone looks at it, everyone wants it, you’re the dude.  Back to the fear factor, the 280 scores a perfect 10 as any number of things could go horribly wrong from the driveshaft letting go at 100 mph to the engine exploding to bump steering off a cliff, if you want to be not scared, then drive another car.  Finally in the weekend category is noise, which I think we all enjoyed greatly as the car very slowly winds out to seven grand.  While you can hear it even from the car in front, you can’t really say you got to experience it until you were sitting in the passenger seat having a conversation at full throttle up a hill,  what a machine.

              On the daily side, we start with features.  This car has none. Nothing else to say, perfect 10.  Comfort wise, with the grip the car has it really deserves some deeper seats.  I found myself bracing as we were going around corners because if you don’t you’ll slide off the seat or break your neck.  Get some deeper seats or bolsters.  Value wise, easy win here as well since these cars are very desirable and this one ran with no extra encouragement at little more than scrap value.