2002 Pontiac Bonneville Ssei Supercharged on 2040-cars

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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

General Lee takes on Bandit T/A in classic Hollywood car showdown [w/poll]

You don't have to be born in the 1960s or 1970s to be able to recognize the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard and the Pontiac Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit. These old school four-wheeled stars seem to transcend demographics thanks to the miles of film that show the orange 1969 Dodge Charger and the jet-black 1977 Pontiac Trans Am performing seemingly impossible stunts.
The folks at Hot Rod magazine are obviously hip to this fact, and they put together a fun video in tribute of the instantly recognizable duo. Hit the jump to watch on as Sam Young and James Smith replace Bo Duke and The Bandit for a bit of dirt-road shenanigans in a pair of otherwise well cared for classics. We're not so sure we'd call it the best chase scene ever, but it sure looks like a lot of fun.
More importantly, which of these two cars would you rather own? Have your say in our poll below.

Junkyard Gem: 1992 Pontiac Sunbird convertible, with extremely rad W25 Appearance Package

Radwood has sparked a revival in the appreciation of goofy 1980s and 1980s automotive fashions, from neon-colored tape stripes to excessive TURBO badging to ads featuring horrifying Nagel-style women with radio faceplates instead of eyes. I see a lot of discarded cars that would have been ideal to bring to Radwood, and today's Junkyard Gem is even radder than, say, a purple Mercury Tracer Trio or a teal Chevy Beretta GT or even the elusive Dodge Daytona IROC R/T (yes, there were IROC Daytonas): a genuine Pontiac Sunbird SE convertible with the W25 Appearance Package and Bright White Star wheels. The W25 package got you a white Sunbird with kicky script badging, white wheels, and — if you opted for the optional 3.1-liter V6 — these candy-cane-influenced red-and-white displacement badges on the fenders. Now this is rad! The white interior got dirty fast, especially if the owner left the convertible top down, and these wheels were tough to keep clean for more than a few hours. This one appears to have spent many years sitting abandoned with the top down, judging by the completely trashed interior. The base engine for 1992 was the good old Cavalier four-banger, complete with 111 horsepower. This 3.1-liter engine made a respectable-for-1992 140 horses, for plenty of torque-steery, tire-squealy fun. As a J-Body car, the Sunbird was a sibling to the Chevrolet Cavalier in 1992 (the J-based Cadillac Cimarron, Oldsmobile Firenza, and Buick Skyhawk departed before the end of the 1980s). Starting in 1994, the Pontiac Sunfire replaced the Sunbird, continuing in production all the way through the demise of the J platform in 2005. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Where (in Canada) would you test-drive your Sunbird? Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.