ITS GOT AN LS BRO IT’LL BE RELIABLE BRO: the devious general motors electronic control unit looking me in the eyes.

So there I was, an unwise teenager who thought I NEEEEEDED to have at least 400hp and willing to sacrifice anything to get that treasured 400 under 10 grand. Boy was I in for a mistake. This heap of shit forced me to learn how to work on cars regardless of me being a soft handed libtard going to college instead of being a real man and working in the coal mines. THE only thing worse than the coal mines is trying to diagnose electrical issues on your 160k mile pontiac. They told me it would be reliable, its got an LS. Well you see thats the falacy of general motors. Sure you dont have consumable rod bearings (BMW) or engine out AC compressor jobs (hi Audi owners). But you do have the quality control of a drunk mid westerner who knows he’s on the next list of lay offs. Or a drunk austrailian, who knows with the once right hand drive Holden product. GM probably lost the paperwork of the guy who built it when they went bankrupt.

You see in the great falacy of the 400 hp car under 10 grand you get lead to one sad conclusion. You are buying a horrifically depreciated and 100% service record free german thing of your choice, or you are buying the most clapped out C5/GTO/Mustang 5.0 on marketplace. Being the reckless fool that I was, I headed to baltimore from a tolerable columbia SC (it was december, the only month that city is tolerable). and gladly bought a car with a shaking rear end and the least thorough inspection and test drive ever. (else id of learned of the horrors that would later befall me). Just one full throttle shift from 1-2 was enough to know that I had been properly taken a fool.

Well for better or worse. The thing made it from VA to SC with no plates, passing only a dozen state troopers. I guess they must just be asleep and using lidar, because why else would they *not* pull over a V8 car with no plates. I mean that spec is the theives dream. Fast, not subtle, and with no tags to identify itself to the government. Perfect for “cutting up” and “takeovers” which is what all the tik tok losers are into these days and based on my cars condition, it probably ate a few curbs in its unfortunate life. Well I have the car home, it needs tires, yesterday. The rear tires are different brands. Only 2 of the 4 are the same. The limited slip diff chatters at low speeds and doesnt engage at all at high ones. Oh well, thats only 1500 to fix if you remove the diff yourself. Still think German cars are a bad idea? The rest of the story will make you WISH I had just bit the bullet and bought an N54, as God wants all teenagers to do. But it was so hard convincing my parents to check out anything with me that after driving 12 hours I *had* to have my first ever fast car.

The first Issues I had with the car here simple luckily. I got the AC replaced at a total ripoff and had the brakes inspected. A cool 1200$. All of which would have been saved by simply buying a better car. But then the fun began and it started with my cooling system. Car overheated, oh well it was a bad thermostat, easy college parking lot fix. Then it blew a line off because I did a piss poor job bleeding the coolant, lesson learned. The line touched the accessory belt ruining it. GM so I simply walked to an auto parts store and immediately had a new one in my hands. Then the real suffering began. The electrical issues that I never solved after almost 2.5k$ of parts chucking. The car had a recurring issue, nothing would happen when you turn the key or it would not rev above idle. First time this happened was easy, battery and alternator replaced, no issue for the next month. Then it would not idle in a parking garage trying to get home, replaced the throttle body after it threw some codes related to that. Sometime later it returned saying my pedal position was inaccurate, okaaaaay. After some head scratching i found out that half my ECU was slightly loose. The plastic clip holding in one of the connectors had given up so it was held in my gravity. A new ECU? An aftermarket one is a cool 700$ before any programming, with which its highly advised you go to a dealership.

At this point you must be asking, what was actually fun about this car? Well it was the journey. I wasn’t very good at working on things before I had this car, and I still have tons to learn. But the GTO took me from panicking when something went bad to calling all the boys for the cars 11th bump start of the month, 3700lb curb weight of little to no use. And the car was truly fun and would have been lovely if it was not so badly neglected. Because I was in College I didn’t need to have a car that started every single day, worse case I simply walk to the store. I suffered to keep that thing on the road, and I loved it when it was driving. But the dozen breakdowns wore me out, and how I ended up with an Obese Cobalt SS as my next car.

I learned the most important lesson, assume anyone on Facebook is lying to you if they’re trying to sell you something. Never even touch a performance car with mis matched tires (if the driver had more than 3 brain cells they would at least put matching all seasons on all 4 corners). Never accept a short test drive or a sellers dumb excuses like his wife being afraid of bridges. On an app where most people are avid members of your local white supremacist group and whole heatedly believe vaccines have computer chips in them, its best to not trust what sellers have to say. Leave the deal at the first hint of a lie. If a deal is too good to be true and is listed for more than a week: it is too good to be true, run. In retrospect, my requirements were ridiculous. If I could turn back time to when my automotive choices were still trusted by my hobbies two greatest sponsors (thanks mom and dad) I’d have bought a manual BMW 128i. The last small NA BMW, light, simple, not corolla reliable, but with proper care will gladly last well into the 100k range. Even more important, if you’re a young driver, horsepower is a complete waste of money. It will get you speeding tickets and “bragging rights” (nobody thinks your car is cool when they’re pushing it up a hill) Spend your spare cash on seat time and traffic lawyers. First one is self explanatory, second is the occasional necessary evil.