Speed Beep

Co-worker riding in my car yesterday on the way to lunch: โ€œWow, this car is fast! Youโ€™re really flooring it!โ€

Me: โ€œUh, I have the accelerator about a quarter of the way down now. I canโ€™t actually floor it on this road because weโ€™d be doing over 100 less than six seconds from now.โ€

Most people have never ridden in car thatโ€™s really fast rather than some playtoy car that just looks fast on the outside โ€” especially most women, which my co-worker was (and still is, I presume), since they are not as often part of car culture.

After a year of having the SS, I can report that itโ€™s a great car. It has no flaws in anything I care about. Itโ€™s an extremely low-volume, special-interest car that has the bugs I expected, mainly in the electronics systems. The electronics portion was obviously tested for literally tens of minutes, likely by someone with a blindfold and listening to Metallica at top volume.

The most hilarious electronics bug is one that I ran into yesterday morning. It has a parking assist system that comes on whenever you put the car into reverse. Itโ€™ll park itself if you let it. I never have because thatโ€™s just not my thing. It beeps a lot. A whole lot. I usually hit the button to turn it off when it starts beeping. All fine and good, though annoying a bit.

But this is the bug. The above is just poorly-designed electronics stuff. What happened is that I hit the button to turn off the parking assist right as one of the periodic beeps was occurring and instead of stopping, the beep continued non-periodically and just kept goingโ€ฆand goingโ€ฆand going. I started pressing buttons until it eventually went off.

Truly, all the electronics could be removed (if such a thing were possible in a modern car) and thatโ€™d be peachy with me. I donโ€™t need or want any of it. The car itself is wonderful to drive. Utterly poised, capable, wicked fast, discreet and even gets decent gas mileage on the interstate for what it is.

If you want a car thatโ€™s a complete blast to drive and that cops donโ€™t even glance at, the SS is the one for you.