Marauder > Impala SS

The Marauder looks retarded. All the post-2003 Grand Marquis look like slightly mutated Crown Victorias since they started having to use the Vic's hood and fenders which meant adopting the same forward-rounded side light housings as the CV. The ass end is ugly as fuck, too- just a Crown Vic with the brakelights tinted and an unfitting, italicized "MARAUDER" written across the bumper.

1998-2002 were the best looking Marquis years IMO. I want to see a Marauder with the older style front end swapped on and those gross 5-spokes traded for the HPP wheels.

Case in point: who seriously looked at this and thought, yeah, that looks good? The least they could have done was base it off the Marquis' rear end with the horizontal striped reflectors/lights instead of using the Vic's gross finger-grip taillights and putting fucking nothing next to the reverse lights.

i like how the G8 GXP looks. why dont you like those?

What does the G8 have to do with Panthers?

That aside,
>Altezza lights
fucking gross

Impala ss is
faster
larger interior
larger trunk
roomier engine bay
better sounding engine
doesn't have that "dressed up cop car" look as much as marauder does.

Both platforms served as cop cars. It doesn't look like a cop car to you because they've been gone 21 years.

Crap 4l60 and optispark

You REALLY don't want to talk about Furd trannys.

they competed with each other
same fucking category

nobody likes trannys here

AOD is pretty stout. Can't say the same about the rest of their lineup though

...

exactly, the police association has faded from these models. they dont have the stigma lingering on them as bad.

They have a nigger stigma now

>they competed with each other
The G8 wasn't a thing until four years after the Marauder stopped production and TWELVE years after the Impala SS stopped.

To be fair, as mentioned in the Marauder is a lot closer to a Crown Victoria than it is to a Grand Marquis. It will always look like a cop car.

optispark moisture issues were pretty much done away with when the vacuum lines were implemented in 94-95.

And the panthers dont? if not worse?

If the AOD is the best Ford could do....

Wew lahd

Why the fuck would gm compete with themselves?

While is wrong that they competed with each other on that car, I think you could do with a little storytime.

The thing about GM is that unlike, say, Ford, where Ford, Lincoln and Mercury were always the same company simply selling their cars under different names, every GM marque has historically been its own company who answers to and is owned by GM. Oldsmobile, Buick and GMC (before being renamed to GMC) existed before General Motors itself. This was most prevalent up until the eighties- while the marques shared frames, wheelbases, and some sheet metal, every division had their own unique engines, styling cues, paint colors, marketing, dealerships, and most importantly, research and development teams. You could have a 350 Rocket powered Oldsmobile Cutlass, a Buick 350 powered Skylark, and a SBC 350 powered Chevelle, and despite being all A-bodies with some shared metal, they'd have completely different engines and ride characteristics.

The problem is that for pretty much its whole life, GM had no idea what to do with Buick, Pontiac and Oldsmobile, commonly referred to as B-O-P. Chevrolet was the everyman's car, and Cadillac was the top of the line luxury car, but what about the three in between? They were meant to be midrange but unlike Ford who had Mercury only, GM had three separate brands competing with each other for the same segment. Not coincidentally, pretty much anytime GM rolled out new technology, it was either invented by someone from those divisions or put in those cars on purpose, whether that be turbocharged engines, the Hydramatic transmission, anything- that way if the tech was a horrible failure and the public hated it, public opinion wouldn't affect their most profitable brands, the for-the-masses Chevy or the huge profit margins on the Cadillacs. So the three brands competed with each other, and constantly pushed the envelope on what was acceptable in the GM hierarchy, with no regards for rules like engine displacement.

Issues arose when the brands started competing with the low and top tier marques instead of just among themselves- you had more people buying Cutlasses than Chevy's equivalent offerings, GTOs and 442s were walking similarly priced Chevelles like they were dogs, and Cadillac's luxury barges were being ignored in favor of Rivieras and the then-revolutionary FWD Toronado. GM was cannibalizing itself and the extra money, rather than being put into the pockets of the bean-counters, was being used by BOP for new technology- working out the kinks on turbocharging, figuring out new suspension designs, experimenting with DOHC V8s, making totally new cars and concepts period. Pontiac in particular tried making their own sports car for literally decades, and every single time it was shitcanned because GM was afraid it would draw sales from the Corvette- and sometimes wound up being used as the basis for the next generation 'vette anyway. The first time, they got handed a Camaro and told here, make a new front end for it. This is what you get. The next time, they created the Fiero- slipping it under management's nose as a "4-cylinder, mid-engined economy car" and putting all the money back into it every year until it became a true V6 MR sports car with suspension rumored to be lifted from Lotus and performance getting dangerously close to beating the Corvette. Unsurprisingly, it was killed off.

The Corvette led to the death of lots of projects and took technology for itself constantly- at one point, GM decided that only the Corvette could use multiple carburetors, other divisions be damned. So they invented the Quadrajet. GM said only the Corvette could have direct fuel injection. They worked around that, too. GM said the Corvette had to have the most powerful engine. The other marques just rated their engine 5hp lower and offered build-sheet options to add another hundred horsepower without telling GM.

(con'td, character limit and have to poop)

both are shit

Over time, GM got tired of this shit- who did they think they were, taking money from OUR pockets and making cars more popular than the favorite child Chevrolet? So they started putting in place even stricter regulations forcing companies to share more car parts- not just the sheet metal but now engines, too. This had been happening for a number of years- options that would previously have included a manufacturer-specific engine were being replaced by the ubiquitous Chevy small-block- but came to a head in 1976/77, where due to a temporary shortage of parts GM started putting Chevy engines in Oldsmobiles and not telling anyone including the dealers until they opened the hood. While by this point the malaise era was firmly in place and power was a thing of the past, people still bought cars depending on what engine they wanted, and Olds people wanted the Rocket engines they'd known for decades- not least of which because the Olds V8 shares so many parts in varying displacements dating back to the original '49 that they were free to rip off the smog equipment and throw on whatever speed parts they had lying around if they didn't want to just put a different engine in. People- including the Olds dealerships- were so pissed off that they filed a lawsuit against GM, which GM actually lost and had to pay back to everyone who'd bought a '77 Olds and popped the hood to find an engine that wasn't supposed to be there. From '77 on GM started putting something along the lines of "Car may contain engines and parts from other General Motors divisions" in fine print in their car ads, and that was the end of that, or so they hoped.

As it turns out, if you replace your whole menu with shit, people will just eat somewhere else, and in this case that somewhere else was the sushi restaurant that just opened next door, with Japanese cars gaining more and more market share- and most annoyingly, the Datsun Z-cars making laughing stocks of the Corvettes and their 120hp V8s.

Yeah, like 8 years later.

So months turned to years turned to decades and over time GM's brand division became essentially nil- every manufacturer forced to market rebadges of the other, all with the same lousy engine, boring body, and corporate tight-wadness. Occasionally you had a burst of sunshine- the G-bodies in particular, with the Regal T-type showing just what turbocharging was capable of to an American audience that had previously proclaimed V8 or bust- but even that was stamped out in favor of beige boxes. Then one day GM had a crazy idea- what if we made a new company, and ran it the way the Japanese did?

Thus, Saturn was born. Saturn had all the initial funding of GM behind it, which made the other divisions angry, but more importantly they got their own designers, their own manufacturing plants, their own marketing, even their own engines AND transmissions- something the other marques hadn't had in thirty years! GM ignored their complaints and rolled Saturn out to market anyway, and lo and behold, it turned out to be a massive success.

Too much of a success, in fact. People loved their Saturns- there was even a yearly event where Saturn owners would drive in from all over the country to the manufacturing plant to watch the cars be made, talk to designers and engineers, and hang out with other Saturn fans. Saturn made money hand over fist, and was able to keep it for themselves, because GM had made them so independent from the start- and as such they were taking money away that would otherwise go to the GM suits, with something like 50% or more of Saturn owners being people who had previously purchased another GM car. So that wasn't okay.

Oldsmobile died a lousy death in the early 2000's after just a few years of making interesting cars again- the Aurora, Intrigue, etc, which sold okay to extremely well, but GM had already decided to can the division entirely. Meanwhile Saturn flourished, even after getting away from their much-advertised plastic body panels.

God I love this GM history, thanks for the post user, although I feel you've typed this before in another thread a few years ago.

Haven't you ever considered making threads on various parts of automotive history?

Because I would enjoy the fuck out of those

So all this and GM was still fucking losing money- they finally made something successful and it was just hurting them more. Saturn was making performance-oriented cars, too, with the Ion Redline being a sleeper hit and the Sky (and Pontiac rebadge, the Solstice) having only a few years of development before it would probably be competing with the 'vette, like every other sports car ever made and killed by a GM division. So when bailout time came, who was the first to go? Saturn- the company that did something right but didn't give enough money to the execs, and Pontiac- who was making fun cars again as well, including importing the Holdens as the GTO and G8 (something Chevy would do just a few years later as the SS- wow, it's like it was a good idea or something!) and preparing to revamp their model lineup to be RWD and performance biased, the same Pontiac who had troubled GM for literally decades with their toeing of the "nothing can beat the Corvette" line. Also Hummer but who cares about them, and Saab but Saab guys will tell you Saab was already dead the instant it was bought by GM in the early 2000's and the first thing they did was rape the 9-3 and get rid of the famous Saab hatchbacks.

Who got to live? Chevy, because Chevy. Cadillac, because luxury cars with huge profit margins. GMC, because why wouldn't you keep the ability to put a different badge on a Chevy and sell it for $20k more? And Buick, exclusively because the Chinese fucking love Buick, who now has little in common with the performance-oriented and innovative Buick of old or even the reliable Buick of the 90's who produced the ten million bajillion Regals and LeSabres you still see on the roads and whose three point eight liter heart still beats inside of who knows how many thousands of first-car hand-me-downs serving their owners faithfully.

tl;dr: GM's entire history is basically nothing but infighting and competing with themselves for pants-on-head retarded reasons.

Is all this buttfuckery responsible for the abomination that is the Aztek existing, or is the blame for that still on Pontiac's shoulders?

I've typed it a few times, and each time it gets a bit longer and lengtheir and hopefully with less inaccuracies; I know the thread you're thinking of, that was with the other user also posting fun stuff about why GM is made entirely of retards and glue-eaters. Glad you enjoyed it, though.

I only really know GM's various doings- my family had always been full of Ford guys and I drive a blue oval myself (really a silver circle because Mercury, but fuck it), but my dad loved his Oldsmobiles like nothing else and passed that love of the Rocket into me. This being the age of the Internet instead of having to say, "That Cutlass you had was so cool! Why don't they exist anymore?" I was able to do research and that wound up to learning the story of how GM continually fucked over everything for everyone.

Ford is just Ford, I guess, although it's more fun to track Lee Iaccoca's successes at Ford and Chrysler than it is to read about Ford's history itself- and I don't know shit about Chrysler except that weird bit with the rebadged Mitsubishis. Mopar guys are weird.

By the time the Aztek came around Pontiac didn't have much leeway for themselves, I can only imagine what had to be said to convince the suits to import V8, RWD Australian coupes and sell them as Pontiacs. So the Aztek was more than likely just "SUVs sell, how do we sell an SUV that isn't an SUV? Oh and make it look unique, that's what the youngin's like!" Had it come out a decade later, it would have likely sold like batshit, considering how popular weird-looking crossovers seem to be these days, but at the time it was too weird and too expensive. The Buick Rendezvous, despite riding on the same platform and having an equally ridiculous name, looked much less retarded and consistently outsold the Aztek by 2:1 up to a crazy 12:1 in 2005 if Google's stats are right.

GMC exists so dealers can carry GM trucks without carrying every single Chevy or Cadillac. They have a lineup which fully overlaps the truck division of Chevy and Cadillac from the base model Silverado to the Escalade. It's actually pretty smart if you think about it.

Agreed. The Aztek is like the Avalanche. Brilliant (in it's own terrible way) before it's time.

And they're all still fucking rebadges. I mean, good God, who is walking onto a lot and walking out with a $56,000 Chevy Suburban because it has different badges and angrier looking headlights?

It's all about trim, user.

People aren't necessarily buying a GMC or Chevy because of the looks, they're buying it because it's available locally. Plenty of dealerships in small towns offer only one or the other. If you don't want to drive 5 hours to get your Cadillac you just buy the top end GMC Yukon Denali that has all of the same shit and call it good.

Goddamn. Trim the fat of your company so you can put more trim on your crossovers.

I bet the minorities are behind this.

Marauder

vs

Impala
Everybody loses

youtube.com/watch?v=BRVgEKip_Us

...

Basketball Americans were a mistake.

I hear Ford was the same way with their Mustang in that they didn't want anything to outperform that for the consumer performance market. know anything about that?

I dont see your point, the Impala won and was kept pretty original looking. That poor donk'd marauder though...

Ford was protective of the Mustang, but it was a totally different market segment to the Corvette- remember that the Mustang's primary competitor was the Camaro, not the Corvette. Aside from that, as previously mentioned Ford is one big company that just uses different badges on their cars to differentiate between market segment, not actual companies, and as such had no qualms rebadging or modifying the Mustang for other divisions, i.e. the original Mercury Cougar to the first gen Mustang or the Mercury Capri to the Foxbody Mustang. There were also Fords that were faster, more luxurious, more expensive, what have you- Thunderbird, Galaxy, both generations of the new GT, etc. The Mustang is just the most popular by far because it's so ingrained into 'MURRIKA thanks to clever marketing and public opinion reflecting itself.

The issue is that GM and therefor Chevy was so protective of the Corvette that it was killing cars from its own sister divisions if they even looked at the 'vette funny.

WRONG
You have to go a little further back if you want to find the best looking marquis years

I disasgree. Best combination would be 93-97 rear end and 98-02 front end. 98-02 front is just a bulkier version of the previous front.

Agree
The 93-97s had everything going for them but the front end, especially the pre facelifted ones

I don't hate the aero Marquis, it's thanks to them we got the pre-facelift whale Marquis that in my opinion was the height of the Panther appearance.

Come to think, can you swap around body panels and parts between aero and whale Panthers? I know you can change stuff between the pre-03 and post-03 whale Panthers with no problem because they kept all the mounting points the same despite redesigning the frame, but could you take an '01 and put '95 taillights or vice versa?

ausfag here whos only just swapped from ford (au) falcon to holden commodore in the last 7 years i find this a very entertaining and enlightening read

Ironical how they have just killed off Holden here in aus as of October this year because our fork of the GM Zeta/Alpha Platform was too good so they stole all the tech from it and shoved it into Cadillac ATS CTS and newer 6th gen Cameros

Hell we redesigned the whole platform from SCRATCH in 2006 and we got no credit.

Fuck them

Fuck Toyota, Mitsubishi and Ford as well they did they exact same thing to us

>The issue is that GM and therefor Chevy was so protective of the Corvette that it was killing cars from its own sister divisions if they even looked at the 'vette funny.

Meanwhile dodge is killin it with challengers and chargers. Not a fan but god damn those things are everywhere.

>mfw waiting on a new Nova.

They don't, GM can't compete.

GM owner here but sorry, had to.

>Reminder that THIS is the Impala SS that was available at the same time as the Marauder

GM fangirls always forgetting the massive amounts of mistakes GM puts out

Literally Everything > Marauder and Impala SS

Are you a black Detroit native? They fucking love Marauders.

All of these cars are fucking hideous.

Pic related was the first car I owned with 300hp.

It was a great boat until the block cracked.

Northstar powered?

Yep.

>mercury is dead
fuck ford

Postin most kino Impala SS
youtube.com/watch?v=5gelX4LfiC0

Roadmaster > Impala SS > Marauder

fuck you, that was a nice reliable car.

>not a roadmaster wagon
get out

>mercury is dead
>pontiac is dead
>oldsmobile is dead
>plymouth is dead
>saturn is dead

Yet we go on living.

>change the grill
>otherwise identical

Oh ho ho it doesn't look at all like a caprice cop car you guise