Went to Seattle / Vancouver BC this past weekend.

National Car Rental Reservation : Large Car.

Drove it Thursday to Monday. 677 Miles driven.

Impala was the first choice. I asked about upgrading to Park Avenue, it
was $99 a day. The Large car was $55 a day, but I was getting it for
$29 a day. I got a good travel agent.

Tell the counter guy I'll take the Impala if you got one - Berry Red or
White please.

Fills out the paper work, then we go downstairs to the pick up area at
SeaTac Airport.

HF - Got a reservation for a Large car, hopefully Impala.

Clerk - Or first available.

HF ( Pointing to the stalls )- I see two Impala's over there.

Clerk - Those are reserved.

HF - Well...... maybe one is RESERVED for ME !

Clerk - We got a Rendezvous ready now.

HF - I don't want a Rendezvous, we want a " car " with a trunk.

Clerk - You'll have to wait then.

So we wait a few minutes, Looking over at the Impala I notice its the
base model with the 3400 V6.

MMmmm some nice Devilles in the next row - oh wait those are $99 a day.

After about 6 minutes we see amber DRL parking lights approach the
booth, car dripping wet, 04 Buick Regal LS - hey that has a 3800 V6 ! I
hope we get that.

Clerk - We got a Regal ready.

HF - I'll take it, its faster than the Impala's you got sitting over
there.

Silver / Graphite Interior, Power everything, Auto Climate Control, AM-
FM -CD. Leather seats, no lumbar adjust thank god.

Ride & handling was good, Although hard to tell on Interstate 5 around
Seattle area - due to poor quality pavement that made the tires roar
like a lion. I would hate to live there & have to drive that road
everyday.

Didn't bother with checking the gas mileage for this car.

Drove in both wet & dry conditions. V6 had 205 Horsepower / 230 Torque
Acceleration was good. Better than the 1991 3800. Loads of legroom up
front. Headroom was fine, but a higher seat setting and your head would
brush the door frame opening but cleared the headliner still.

The radio sound was decent - I didn't bring any CD's. I programmed the
Volume speed control to OFF.

Visibility - Front & Rear was good.

Exterior Power Mirrors - Big, Good rearward vision. Interior mirror had
reading lights on the bottom which were very bright.

Good trunk space, flat floor & deep. Fold down rear seat. Non intrusive
trunk lid hinges.

Wet Arm Wipers ( Washer Jets on the wiper arm ) really flooded the
winshield good.

A green " Cruise " light, lights up on the dashboard when the desired
speed is set.

You know me, there ARE some grievances ---------~~>>>>

Intrusive footwell for drivers left foot at the far left side of
floorboard. Toes also hit lower dash trim.

The Auto Climate Control, while it worked just fine, setting it while in
motion was risky. You have to push a paddle button for the Blower
Setting, the Temperature setting and the Air Flow setting ( where the
air comes out from ). etc. 10 different buttons in all.

Plus while pushing the buttons you have to watch the digital settings /
bar graph readings to see that you got the settings you want.

Here we go with the Power Driver Seat again - Unfortunately it was a
back killer for me. It would of been a super comfortable seat if only
the side bolsters on the backrest were 2 to 3 inches further out. There
were pressing to hard against my sides. The seat cushion was great, firm
support. The tennis racquet style headrests--- well lets use them as
tennis racquet and not headrests, they were useless.

DRL's & Automatic Headlights --- GRrrrrr. At night - you had to turn the
headlight switch dimmer down to " MIN " every time you got out of the
car. This way, when you hit the Lock button on the Remote Keyless Fob
the headlights and tailights would go out immediately. If you left the
switch set near or on " MAX " the exterior lights would stay on for a
loooong time. When you would start up again at night you would have to
then turn the headlight switch dimmer up to MAX again so the gauge
cluster could be seen again..

Wiper delay --- When turned to the delay cycle position the wipers would
make the jerky single sweep at a unusual high rate of speed.

With the floorshift & center console there is no room to put anything.
The storage armrest was good, but there was no room to set a map or road
atlas anywhere. The door panel pockets were too small. One AAA book
filled it. It was too narrow for sun glasses. The flip out cup holder in
the console was ready to flip your cup out on turns & hard stops. The
bottom of the front seats had plastic trim right down to the carpet
making it difficult to tuck things down next to the seats.

There is no P R N D L1 L2 indicator on the console trim plate for the
floor shift.
Its a digital read out on the dash.

The console armrest for leaning on & holding the wheel with the right
hand was way too low and too far back. The storage area under the flip
up ashtray door, although it was deep - you had to reach way in to
retrieve anything behind the ashtray. In doing so it looked like you
were elbow deep in a barracuda's mouth. And forget about visually seeing
anything you had in there.

The Climate Control unit is to low in dashboard.

No Climate Control buttons on the steering wheel hub - only radio
controls.

Fog Lights - Who lit those candles? Not to bright.

Elbow OFF Door Sills - Impossible to rest your left arm on top of the
door sill with the window up.

Visors are to small.

Kilometer numbers on speedometer very small to read.

While in Vancouver Canada I didn't see any Canadian Tire Stores or Ian,
our GM Mechanic.

04 Buick Regal LS - another car I can cross off my To Buy List.

=========
Harryface
=========

1991 Pontiac Bonneville LE
3800 V6 ( C ), Black/Slate Grey
_~_~_~291,400 miles_~_~_

~_~_~_~_U.S.A._~_~_~_~_~_

~~~The Former Fleet ~~~
89 Cavalier Z 24 convertible
78 Holiday 88 coupe
68 LeSabre convertible
73 Impala sedan

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:34:32 -0500, harryface (AT) webtv (DOT) net (Harry Face)
wrote:

twi-light delay & dashlight dimmer knobs (sounds like the bean
counters have been at it again).
dirt/snow...
general comfort level then? You think that on this continent they'd
start putting in useful cup holders. If we can't get England's "B"
roads or Germany's Autobahn's for God's sake give us a nice
comfortable living room to drive !
focus groups didn't address that issue when they were suggesting low
profile "Z" rated tires for luxury cars.......
basic controls on the steering wheel.
that everyone want's to drive a Lotus all the time. Have these people
forgotten that most of us use our vehicles within the parameters of
the law "most" of the time.
cover both side & front with additional plastic slide outs. A truly
brilliant design.
it that they went for a traditional "Look" dash?

Arn't Regals W-bodies like Impala's?

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:47:03 -0700, "Paradox" <parallaxaz (AT) cox (DOT) net>
wrote:


The Impala and Park Ave. share a platform. My mom has a Regal LS,
same car Harry got as a rental only hers is a 2000 and doesn't have
leather, the Impala was A LOT bigger. More headroom, larger trunk.
My parents and I shared one when we went to Oregon, I was there for a
weekend, they were moving on to a cruise of Alaska. My sister was
also there for the weekend. You can imagine the luggage we had to fit
in that car, EVERYTHING fit in the trunk.

Road noise was tremendous, we were in the Portland area, those roads
SUCK. you can barely hold a conversation in your vehicle while driving
on them. We were on 205 and 5...

"Mike Levy" <mike-newsgroups (AT) levyclan (DOT) nospam.us> wrote

Yep.

Nope, the Park Ave, Bonneville, and LeSabre all share the same platform.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Face" <harryface (AT) webtv (DOT) net>
Newsgroups: alt.autos.pontiac,alt.autos.gm
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 12:34 AM
Subject: 04 Regal LS Rental Report


The original Goodyear Eagle LS tires on my '99 Regal LS roared on course
pavement. The next set of Firestone FT-70c's were much quieter, a bit
smoother, had much better wet weather traction, but at the sacrifice of some
handling. Currently, my third set of tires are Goodyear Eagle GA's. I'm back
to my original complaints. They are even noisier and impossible to balance,
but they were given to me. I'm trying to wear them out so I can buy
something I like better.

Over 82,000 miles since new, I've averaged a bit over 22 MPG. I average
about 60% city, 40% highway, often have a heavy foot, and I idle a lot. I've
gotten as high as 28 on a highway trip and as low as 14 during city driving
exclusively.

The Concert Sound II sound system is sufficient for most people, but a 10"
subwoofer and amp cured my desire for a tad more bass.

I guess I've never been offended by the footwell nor have my toes ever hit
the lower dash trim.

After you've lived with the car for a while, you can operate the climate
control blindfolded. 99% of the time, I prefer to leave mine on the AUTO
setting and let it do its thing. One exception would be that in some mild
temperature conditions, it prefers to direct cold air to the windshield and
warm air to the floor. It results in what feels like an uncomfortable cold
draft from the front of the car. I usually override it and direct the
airflow to the floor temporarily.

I've yet to find a vehicle that suits my body in terms of long trip comfort.
The closest I ever came was the seats in my '95 Probe.

I'm a bit confused by the wording of this comment. The MIN and MAX settings
on my headlight knob exclusively control the brightness of the instrument
panel lights. It has nothing to do with the delay of interior lighting
unless it's set to the "dome lamp on" detent just past the "MAX" setting. In
that case, the interior lights will stay on until the battery saver feature
cuts power to them (about 20 minutes). Otherwise, they fade out in about 40
seconds or shut off immediately when you press the LOCK button on the
keyfob. Perhaps this particular example was defective?

Interesting. Very interesting. Mine has shift indicators in the instrument
cluster and down by the shift lever itself. So do two '04 Regals on a local
Buick dealer's lot here.

I agree that the armrest is too low and too far back - particularly the
further forward and the higher you have the seat adjusted. LOL @ the comment
about the storage area behind the ashtray! Many '97-up Regals were actually
equipped with a lamp assembly inside the ashtry storage compartment,
however, it's not connected to anything. Some of those Regals also had a
microswitch activated by the ashtray console lid making the lamp functional.
Mine has the lamp, but not the switch. Maybe I'll add it next time I have to
pull the console for some reason.
Personally, I've never desired duplicate climate controls on the steering
wheel for anything more than show or entertainment purposes. The AUTO
setting seems to do just what it's designed to do in my opinion. I akin this
to having a RF remote for the thermostat in your home, walking around
changing it everytime you feel a degree or two too warm or cool. )

Yup. Purely for cosmetic purposes. I even resorted to installing lower
wattage bulbs in my fog lamps after the original wattage bulbs kept
resulting in cracked plastic fog light housings.

Eh, poor driving posture anyway. You should have both hands firmly on the
wheel at all times. <grin>

I wear sunshades.

Not an issue for US Regal's drivin in the US. The MPH markings are plenty
large.

I've put 82,000 trouble-free miles on mine since I bought it new in '99.
Although a bit of a grandma car in non-GS form for someone 26 years old, I'd
buy another one when this one dies. However, that's a moot point (unless I
buy a used one) since its replacement - the LaCrosse - arrives in a few
months. I'll miss the availability of the SC 3800, but I'll reserve final
judgement until I drove a LaCross CXL with the new 3.6L VVT V-6.

Roger

Same platform as the Olds 88,98 of a couple years back. Are ya sure the
Impala doesn't have the same platform as all of these cars? I checked out
the Impala's dimensions a few months ago (to replace my wife's '97 Olds
88), and the dimensions of the Impala and the Olds 88/Park Ave/Bonneville
are essentially the same, within an inch or so.


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"Justin" <justin1138@REMOVEnet> wrote

Positive, the Impala is W-Body. I know for sure that the LeSabre and Bonne
are on the H-Body. I can find out what platforms go with what cars but it
may take a little bit of time.

It's my understanding that the Impala and Bonneville share a platform.
The Grand Prix and Regal share a platform and the Century and Grand Am
share a platform. This would put the LeSabre and Impala on the same
platform, right? The Impala IS bigger than the Regal, no question...

On 15 Sep 2004 18:09:06 -0500, Justin <justin1138@REMOVEnet> wrote:

"Mike Levy" <mike-newsgroups (AT) levyclan (DOT) nospam.us> wrote

Impala, Grand Prix, Century, Regal, Cutlass, Monte Carlo, Intrigue and what
used to be the Lumina are all W-Body.
Firebird, Camaro are F-Body.
Cavalier and Sunfire are J-Body.
Malibu Classic, Grand Am, Alero, Achieva, later model Cutlass, Skylark are
N-Body.
Corvette (and maybe XLR) are Y-Body.
Park Avenue is C-Body.
Aurora is G-Body.
H-Bodies are the LeSabre and Bonneville, Eighty Eight, LSS, Regency
Seville and Deville are K-Bodies.
Montana, Silhouette and Venture are U-Body.
2WD S-10/Blazer and all those are S-Body.
4WD/AWD of the above are T-Body.
C-2WD Sierra/Yukon..etc
K-4WD/AWD of the above.
L-2WD Astro, Safari
M-AWD of the above
G-Express, Savana
A-2WD Aztek
B-AWD Aztek
E-Eldorado

Those go back to 98..some go before that. Got it all from Mitchell
On-Demand.