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Old 12-04-2019, 05:46 PM
unruhjonny's Avatar
unruhjonny unruhjonny is offline
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bentwheelbob View Post
Anyone that believes this is a 15K mile motor pulled after 2 years should please speak up. ...
I get what you're saying, but alot can happen in two years with a daily driver.

I have a drivetrain in my daily right now, that I pulled from a less than two year old wrecked car;
I bought my car (a 2009 model) brand new in February 2010, and in April, I bought a wrecked 2009 that had already been off the road for a good month and a half.
I knew the owner, and through a series of poor choices, he found himself uninsured with a wreck to deal with, all on a car he was still making payments on.
The drivetrain had roughly 19k miles on it when I bought it, and five years later I swapped it into my car (around the time I finally gave up on the idea of rebuilding the car)... still running strong (knocks on wood) which is surprising for how hard the guy was known to have driven the car!

I can only guess that in the early 1970's a daily driver Trans Am was something akin to my daily (go ahead, laugh, I understand);
A car that is driven hard, and often customized right out of the gate...

I knew people who had fully customized their Cobalt on a rattle can budget, often to make the car look like less than it was for some street cred.
I can only guess that many musclecars were done the same way.
Then again, it seems to me that within the first two years, more than half of these cars were written off...
What I am surprised about though, is the survival rate of the older cars... but maybe that's because they're not engineered to squish like a pop can in anything resembling an accident.

For those who care, this type of Cobalt was for a decade, the fastest production FWD car sold in North America according to the likes of Car & Driver: LINK
The Cobalt made the record in 2008, and it was only beaten in 2018 (yes, someone at C&D needs to check their math).
The car that broke it's record, while running with 46 additional horsepower (306hp vs 260hp), has also beaten alot of other records... and shamed much higher dollar cars.
Just some food for thought.

__________________
1970 Formula 400
Carousel Red paint on Black standard interior
A no-engine, no-transmission, no-wheel option car.
Quite likely one of few '70 Muncie three speed Formula 400's left.


1991 Grand Am: 14.4 @ 93.7mph (DA corrected) (retired DD, stock appearing)
2009 Cobalt SS: 13.9 @ 103mph (current DD; makes something north of 300hp & 350ft/lbs)