The New and Improved ROKNROL

     When I shop for new cars, I'm a car salesman's dream.  I usually know what I want before I go into the showroom.  And I usually make up my mind on the spot.  I did some studying of cars on the Internet, drove some rental vehicles and talked to some people about different cars.  It all came down to reliability, comfort and price.  And that led me back to the Chevrolet Impala. 

I picked up a new  Chevy Impala this week from Bruce Foote Chevrolet in Monmouth, IL.  They had a white, 3.9 liter engine 2008 model on the lot with leather interior.  I went down to drive it and found that it had the split bench seats with the shifter on the column.  I told the sales guy, "I want bucket seats and a floor shift." 

He said, "Oh, I can find one for you." 

Now, the American car industry isn't doing too well and the small town dealers are feeling the brunt of the economic slowdown.  We have a number of large Chevrolet dealers in the Quad Cities, but I prefer to work with the small town guys.  We've bought three vehicles from Brad Deery Motors in Maquoketa, but I decided to shop around this time.  Finding a vehicle on the Internet in Monmouth meant a little bit of a drive (see map), but I find the small town guys are usually a little more hungry and will bend over backwards on service and price - especially if they're taking a sale away from a larger dealership.

The sales guy - Grant - found a car for me from another dealer.  An Impala 2LT with leather bucket seats, 3.9 liter V6 engine, and a smattering of features that are now standard on most General Motors cars including XM Radio and OnStar.  We haggled on price a bit, gave me what I thought was a fair and reasonable final price and I had them get the car.  I picked it up on Wednesday - the day I published "The Death of ROKNROL".   

While it doesn't have a lot of "creature comforts" or "bells and whistles", it's a very comfortable car to drive.  I was more interested in the engine as the old Impala had the 3.8 liter V6 engine.  And like I said before, the engine was still sound even if the transmission wasn't.  In talking to my local mechanic friend, he told me, "The GM 3.8 or 3.9 V6 engines are the best out there for the money.  Solid engines, great mileage and they have the get up and go when it's needed." 

The new car also doesn't have a sun roof like the old ROKNROL Impala had.  Honestly, I found that I didn't use the sun roof all that much.  Driving down the road at high speeds with the sun roof open made the sound in the interior of the car too loud.  You couldn't hear the radio all that well and you had to shut everything up when you got a phone call.  Yeah, the sun roof was nice, but it wasn't a deal breaker. 

One thing that sort of sold me on the Impala again was the "flip and fold" feature they have for the rear seat.  While the old Impala also had a rear seat that would flip down for the carrying of longer items put in the trunk, the problem was that the head rests would not allow the back of the rear seat to fully go flat.  Because of that, you would have little clearance with the opening between the trunk and the rear seat area. 

This one is different.  The head rests are fixed in the top deck of the rear seat.  The bottom of the rear seats fold up, and the back of the rear seats fold down making a flat surface on which to place objects.  There's about 18 inches of clearance between the deck and the top of the opening between the rear seat and trunk.  I could easily put a pair of large floor standing Focal speakers in the car, virtually eliminating any need of having to rent a van or an SUV to carry product in the future. 

The trunk, itself, is huge.  I used to joke that you could carry three men and a boy in the old Impala's trunk.  This one, I believe, is actually bigger.  With the rear seat flipped down, you could literally sleep in the car.  It's 75 inches (6 feet, 3 inches) from the back of the trunk to the back to the flipped up seat.  You have to move the front seats forward three or four inches from the fully back position, but there's so much leg room up front it's hardly a nuisance. 

Two things that I was going to get on a new car came standard with the 2008 Impala - satellite radio and a remote start.  I got Cindy a remote start for her car for Christmas about 8 years ago and I still think she tells people it was the best gift I ever got her.  I knew I wanted one on my new car.  And with the merger of XM Radio and Sirius (now called Sirius XM Radio), people with existing XM or Sirius receivers will be able to get a service in a couple three months called "The Best of Both" which will allow subscribers of Sirius and XM Radio to have cross programming.  (About the only thing I'd like to have on XM that Sirius didn't have was the access to NFL games.) 

(As a side note - Sirius XM will be offering "ala-carte" programming that will be more focused in nature.  Subscribers will have to get a new combination Sirius XM receiver to get those services.) 

And the jury in my mind is still out on is the OnStar feature, a comprehensive communications, security, GPS and diagnostics program offered on a number of new GM vehicles.  When I went to pick up the car at Bruce Foote Chevy on Wednesday, the sales manager took me through the sign up process of OnStar. 

OnStar is actually a little nifty.  You have three buttons on the rear view mirror - an emergency button, a hands-free phone button and a contact button.  He pressed the contact button and an OnStar operator came on through the radio (the microphone is in the mirror, as well).  Now, he warned me that they were going to try their damnedest to get me to give up them a credit card number for activation of the hands-free phone service (about 40 cents a minute, give or take a couple pennies depending upon the package).  I told the rather perky and bubbly operator that I didn't want the service at this time. She came back trying to answer my objections, but I kept saying no.  Especially at 40 cents a minute.

Then she talked about OnStar's subscription policy and the like and out of the blue she asked for a "credit or debit card number" again.  I politely said, "No" again, looking at the sales manager with an expression on my face of "Jesus!  They DON'T quit, do they?!"  After she went away, he said to me, "See what I mean?  That's why I always warn the customer in advance and go out with them during activation to make sure they don't get talked into something they don't want." 

We did try the OnStar "Turn-by-Turn Navigation" on Wednesday night.  I have that free for 30 days.  I let Cindy drive the car and I hit the button on the mirror.  She was saying, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm getting directions to the restaurant."

She said, "I don't need directions.  I know exactly where it is."

I said, "I know, but I want to see how accurate it is."

An OnStar operator came on and said, "Good evening, Mr. Veber.  How may I assist you?"

Cindy said, "They know your name?"

I gave him the name of the restaurant over in Moline that we were going to and he found the address and plugged it into the computer system.  OnStar then sent out a signal to my car and - voila!  We had turn-by-turn navigation via voice commands and map diagrams on the radio.  At first, Cindy was sort of like, "Well, this is kind of dumb.  Will you ever use this?"  

By the time the OnStar navigation got us right in front of the restaurant about 10 minutes later, she wanted one for her car.  She asked, "Will it tell us where to park, too?"   I mean, the navigation was so precise, it was literally down to inch of telling us where we needed to turn, where the destination was, etc.  I've used voice navigation services before in cars I've rented from Hertz, but this was better and pretty damn slick.

The OnStar package with the road assist, diagnostics, security, automatic crash detection and turn-by-turn navigation runs about $299 a year plus tax.  Without the navigation, OnStar runs around $199 a year.  Why OnStar wants your credit card is so they can automatically renew your service without telling you it's come due.  You have to tell them you don't want the service any longer and even then they may go ahead and charge your card, then refund your money a couple three months later.  It's somewhat of a scam.  I'm going to play with it in the coming days and see if I like it.

I drove the car to St. Louis on Thursday and back home yesterday.  It runs nice, gets good gas mileage (gas mileage that will only get better as it gets broken in), and it's very comfortable.  And the satellite radio means that I won't have to try to find anything good to listen to in the middle of nowhere.  Although I do miss the old ROKNROL, the new and improved ROKNROL will most likely make me forget about the old car pretty quickly. 

Comments

[Robert Coleman]

Are you sure that's not a new LTZ Impala? My son bought one about three months ago and it has the same wheels as your new car. He told me those wheels are only on the LTZ or the SS.

[Will]

Actually, that is the 2LT with LTZ wheels on it. The dealer told me a guy bought an LTZ but didn't like the 18" wheels. He asked if he could swap for a set of the cheaper 17" wheels on a 2LT. Well, the dealer didn't have any problem swapping out more expensive wheels for cheaper wheels. He just left them on this car, so I got a pretty good deal on the wheels, as well.