Some cars keep a nice low profile. Nobody notices a silver Toyota Prius, or a white Chevy Express van; they just fade into the background. And some people like that. But others have to stand out, and choose flashy vehicles, or make their existing vehicles flashier. Today’s two contenders are not for introverts; you will get noticed in these.
Yesterday I gave you a ridiculous scenario and two terrible cheap old cars to choose from. The overwhelming majority of you decided the rusty Chevy Tracker was less horrible, and chose it for your imaginary cross-country run. The Ford Aspire had a few fans, but far more detractors.
I think I’d go the other way. The Tracker seems all right, but the Aspire is such a simple little thing. I feel like I could more easily keep it running for three thousand miles. Oh, and my choice of car, if I successfully completed the trip? A pristine Mk1 VW Scirocco. You never forget your first love.
Today’s choices stick out like a sore thumb. One has an obnoxious home-brewed paint job, and the other was obnoxious to begin with, and then it crashed into a Pep Boys and everything stuck to it. Let’s see which one you’d be more willing to be seen in.
1991 Pontiac Bonneville – $4,500
Engine/drivetrain: 3.8-liter OHV V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Odometer reading: 94,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Pontiac Motor Division was known for years as the high-performance arm of General Motors, even though most of its cars weren’t any faster than comparable Chevrolets. Its best-known performance car, the Trans Am, was famously adorned with a giant bird on its hood. Owners of other Pontiac models have added the “screaming chicken” to their cars’ hoods, but this is the first time I’ve seen one on a Bonneville. It looks hand-painted, too; someone put some effort into it.
Under that hand-painted bird is one of GM’s best old engines: the 3800 V6. This thing was produced forever, found its way into a wide variety of cars, and has gained a reputation for racking up trouble-free miles. It isn’t invincible, but with some careful preventive maintenance, it will serve you well. The 4T60 automatic transmission attached to it is robust too, as long as you keep clean fluid in it. This car has only 94,000 miles on it, so it should have lots of life left. But here’s something for you to ponder: since the engine is mounted transversely in this one, should the bird on the hood be sideways instead?
The ad is short on photos; this is the only look at the interior we get. Based on the fake woodgrain, I’m going to guess that this is an SE model; if I remember right, the LE just had gray plastic. The back seat is in good shape, but I wonder about what they’re hiding by not showing the front.
Apart from the screaming chicken, this car has a few other personalized touches, like a rear spoiler, aftermarket wheels, and dual exhaust. Somebody really wanted a Trans Am, but this is as close as they could get, I guess. The paint is dull and faded, but since it’s an Arizona car, it shouldn’t have any rust.
2006 Hummer H3 – $4,500
Engine/drivetrain: 3.5-liter DOHC inline 5, five-speed manual, 4WD
Location: Portland, OR
Odometer reading: 205,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Hummers are just plain silly. I guess the original Hummvee makes sense as a military vehicle, but for civilian use, it’s just so big. Too big, really. And I think GM knew this, which is why it followed up the original H1 with the H2 and H3, each getting progressively smaller (like the HTML code for header sizes, as my wife just pointed out). But even the H3, based on the midsized Chevy Colorado platform, seems larger than life.
The standard engine in the H3 is a 3.5-liter five-cylinder, which was also the top engine in the Colorado at the time. Most of them came with automatic transmissions, but a five-speed manual was available, and this truck has one. I’m not sure how much the manual adds to the H3 experience, but it’s likely more durable than the automatic. The seller says it runs and drives well, even though it’s past 200,000 miles.
The interior isn’t really as gaudy as it looks, those aggressively red seat covers are aftermarket. I’m hoping the tan seats are in decent shape under them. The seller does say that the air conditioning works well, which is a plus.
Outside, it’s the second-most obnoxious H3 color (the yellow beats it by just a hair). The twenty-inch chrome wheels don’t do anything to tone it down, either. It also has a huge aftermarket brush bar on the front, but at least it’s black and not chrome. It’s in good shape, but honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these scruffy. I guess the owners must take care of them.
As ostentatious as they are, these are both pretty good, durable cars, and $4,500 isn’t a whole lot in today’s used car market. You could do worse. It’s just a matter of which one you’re less embarrassed to be seen in: the bird-painted Bonneville, or the Hot Wheels-looking Hummer?
OK, y’all are thinking about this Hummer all wrong. It’s already 3/4 of the way to being a whorehouse on wheels, so the thing to do is finish the job. Get some chrome on that brush bar. Find the guy who painted the screaming chicken on the Bonneville and have him replicate it on the hood and both front doors. Get one mud flap with the Playboy bunny and another with the naked lady silhouette. Get a bumper sticker with “Compensation? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” on it. Embrace the doucheness.
You can even put a screaming chicken under the hood, since a supercharged 3800 should be an easy swap 😉
Again, I don’t want either of these. If the Pontiac hadn’t been hooned (my assumption based on the screaming chicken on the hood) I’d probably have chosen that, but after some consideration, I picked the Hummer because it’s a stick and it can carry some cargo. First thing I’d do though is get rid of those extremely red seat covers.
This is word for word my logic for the Hummer as well.
As much as I didn’t want to, I chose the baby Hummer. Take off the red seat covers and trade those horrid rims (someone will want them) for better ones, and you’ll have yourself a decent ride. With a 5 speed manual, no less.
I didn’t realized how bad the hand-painted screaming chicken was until I zoomed in on it. It’s simply atrocious, to the point of being unforgivable.
At this current time it would be the H3, mainly because I’ve been looking for a second car as we have been sharing one vehicle for the past two years and I want something we can load up on the weekend and explore the trails and backcountry with.
I would ditch that wheel and tire setup first thing.
No photo of the Bonneville’s glorious button-encrusted steering wheel? That is one of its greatest selling points!
I inherited my dad’s 1988 Bonneville and drove it across the country and back. What a great car.
Bonneville easily, despite the misplaced screaming chicken. Well sorta misplaced, at least it’s a Pontiac. These were pretty nice cars aside from the soft plasticky little tykes controls.
H3. Lose the dubs and throw on some steelies with 35″ mud tires and this thing will be a hoot. These came stock with 33’s, 35’s should be very little work with the sawzall. These look goofy, but they have legit offroad chops.
Gotta go with the bald eagle’s call and pick the H3 today. Between that red mini-monstrosity, my white ’94 Fleetwood, and my daughter’s blue ’87 Corvette, we’d have the most ‘Murica driveway on the block.
I’d rather clean the bird poop off the hood of the Bonneville than drive the H3.
I always like that generation of the Bonneville, and it’s displacing more cubic inches than the H3 too. If it gets too boring, I can slap a supercharger on the 3800 from a Buick or GTP to make it interesting again.
The Big Baby Hummer for the win.
Probably Robert Crumb influenced. (-;
Gah! No Hummer in my neighborhood! For the Bonnie, I’d pull out a buffer or grinder, etc. If nothing else, paint the hood black.
Same.
I love a good Bonnie, especially this vitnage, but that sticker is just plain dumb. Hummers and especially the H3 get a lot of hate. Rather than associate them with those who gravitated towards them back in the day, I see them in the light of what they seem to be at heart – boxy and capable SUVs which are now at the bottom of the depreciation curve. Once you un-dumb it, this one would be a really good secondary vehicle for me…enough towing for my purposes, certainly capable in all weather conditions, and the manual gives me one less thing to worry about in a 200k vehicle.
If the Hummer had lower mileage, it might have swung my vote. And I always liked the look of that gen of Bonneville. I would even keep the screaming chicken.
I picked the Hummer because of a memory.
About 20 years ago or so, I was in Florida visiting my parents when a massive accident happened in front of me. Someone in a F-150 had not been paying attention and tried to cross a road marked 65 mph without looking. He pulled out right in front of a red H2 like this one that was going at least 65 mph.
When the H2 hit the front corner of that F-150, the front corner of the F-150 sort of formed a ramp and launched that H2 in the air where it flipped several times before landing upside-down in a ditch.
Fortunately, just behind me was two Emergency vehicles full of firemen/EMTs that were coming back from lunch and they rushed to help.
Also, my dad was with me. Dad was in his 80s, had two replacement knees and was legally blind. He was also a WW2 combat vet that had fished multiple pilots out of the sea and was captain of a small ship that pulled survivors out of the sea from the USS Indianapolis when they were discovered. Dad went back into the mode he had honed 60 years before and took off running towards the accident scene
I followed as quickly as I could and found the EMTs talking to the F-150 driver who was unhurt but extremely upset. The EMTs were grabbing bags which I assume had the Jaws of Life and were heading towards the H2 when I saw my dad help wrench open the passenger’s door and help a woman crawl out of it. As she walked away, with my dad supporting her, she stumbled and dad struggled to keep her upright as the EMTs rushed in.
Ends up that she had broken a heel off her fancy high heeled shoe. She was extremely disoriented, but other than her make up being messed up and the broken heel, she appeared fine. Given that I was certain that it was a closed casket funeral given the damage that H2 took from the impact, I am still shocked.
So, although I might not enjoy driving the H2, I would 100% feel much safer in it than the older Bonneville. Modern cars (and it’s weird to call a 20 year old car modern), are dramatically safer than the older ones.
Hell of a story and much respect to pop
That generation was amazing. A big part was that so much of their lives was insane and they thought it was normal. By the time he was floating in a boat in the Pacific, dad had survived, Mumps, Scarlet Fever, TB, Measles, a truck full of fireworks crashing into his school play yard, a car falling on him, a mule falling on him, flipping a tractor, playing with an entire box of dynamite, being forced to repair a roof (related to the dynamite) and a billion other injuries, near misses and the like. Dad wasn’t unusual for that generation. They had no concept of safety for anyone, especially children.
So, when you see interviews and there’s some guy saying “I jumped of the boat and ran up the beach and just knew that the guy next to me was going to get it”, that is because in their lives, at 18 years old, that was exactly the experience they had. Other kids got badly hurt or killed or the like. Other kids died from being sick. They didn’t. So to an 18 year old, it was logically to know that the kid next to them was going to not make it on that beach. It wasn’t arrogance, but experience.
It was like that entire generation was weeded out for luck. Those that had it, did great things, those that didn’t.. didn’t survive childhood.
Thanks for sharing that story! Also, pops sounds like a badass, hats off to him. I give much credit to anyone of his generation that made it through WW2.
(Anyone not familiar with the Indianapolis should look her up, it’s quite the horror story. )
It’s the most captivating oart of that movie. You know the one. With Bruce.
You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Dad talked about how he didn’t see any real bad parts of the war. Except, later on I found out the Indianapolis and what Pelilieu was like. Dad’s stories were kid rated. Catching a Shark, swimming with Barracuda, running out of water and needing to drink beer unti they could colllect rain water from monsoons. Getting around coral reefs, fishing pilots out of the drink etc.
The first time I saw what it was really like was when everyone was encouraging people to take WW2 vets to see Saving Private Ryan. Dad flat out refused and was horrified that anyone would even think to take him.
My uncle was a different thing. I knew he was a combat infantryman at times and a cook at other. My mom kept a list of where he was and it was a who’s who of where you didn’t want to be, Torch all the way to Northern Italy with all points checked in between. He told me one thing about his adventures. “be careful when you go to Germany, all the girls will throw themselves at you to attempt to get married” Almost 40 years after his experience, mine was the opposite as girls ran away just as fast as they did in America.
I had two (great) uncles, both were in Europe in WWII. Uncle Fritz was an MP and had side duties in the motor pool. He talked about the war freely, mostly about stuff on the base and attempts that he and the other motor pool guys took at hot-rodding jeeps.
Uncle Harlan was infantry and got a purple heart. That’s all I knew for a long time because he never talked about it. He was very kind and jovial, but had no interest in war stories or war TV/movies. He wasn’t nasty or anything when Fritz brought it up, just nodded his head without offering anything.
One summer when I was about 13, he and I were alone at our family bungalow at the NJ shore. He opened up…calmly…and told me his story. He was a highly ranked marksman and rose to Sargent. During the battle of the bulge, he and his squad were coming up a road when machine gun fire rained on them. It came from a German tank which was disabled but hidden by improvised camoflage on the side of the road. It was pointed slightly up so the gun couldn’t train all the way down to finish them off, but it also meant that nobody could escape either because getting up or moving backward meant the gun could elevate and find them. He laid there injured, with the sounds of his guys hurt or dying all around him and the knowledge he could do practically nothing to help them. Overnight, a squad came around the flank and took out the tank. He lost most of his platoon and came home with a purple heart.
I don’t remember talking about anything that afternoon that would have triggered that story, but it has stuck with me to this day. Reflecting back, I think he was just waiting until he thought I was old enough to hear it.
My uncle had one war story ever. He was sleeping in a 3 man tent. He woke up and found that the guys on either side of him had been killed in the middle of the night. As a result, he couldn’t sleep without having a knife under his pillow. His widow buried him with that knife under his pillow so he could rest easy.
Where in Italy it was and what else was going on, I haven’t a clue. He had a life before the war, the war happened, and he came back and resumed the life he had before the war, without any indication that he had been in a war. No medals, no promotions, no nothing. He turned in his uniform and went back to life before. Other than that knife.
My dad knew a lot of vets. He said the guys that had seen the most generally had the fewest stories, to anyone that wasn’t there, at least. Late in life, Dad seemed to attract fellow vets that wanted to talk about stuff they never told anyone else.
One of my grandfathers was a Seabee in the Pacific. He never talked about it, and I didn’t really even learn what that was till after he passed. I’d have liked to hear some stories, but I understand why he never spoke about it.
I had a regular customer when I pumped gas as a kid in the late 90’s that told me he was at Normandy. My eyes must have gotten big, because he laughed and said, “I was in the sixth wave, I just walked right up the beach”. He told me a story about how he got chewed out by his CO for getting a Jeep stuck in a shell crater at night, he was running back and forth between CP’s, he and a few other guys had to go back and get it the next day.
The Hummer is objectively the better one but…no.
I can’t vote for the H3, but the Pontiac needs something more (or less) to really stand out. Then again, I’d be okay driving it with just the wild hood.
The Bonnie isn’t getting enough love in the comments.
One of the best daily-driving engines ever, tons of torque down low and it absolutely snoozes on the highway to give you plenty of MPG for road trips for a car so large. Nevermind that you travel on plush 90s GM suspension parts, even moreso by virtue of probably being almost worn out, all while sitting on a comfy couch in the front or back with up to 5 of your buddies.
Make sure the few trouble spots are taken care of and you have a perfect highway cruiser.
the manual in the H3 is enticing, but for what I would use it for the Bonnie is more desirable. though I would want them to drop a grand off or repaint the hood. the screaming chicken is not good on this grandpa car.
How reliable are those 5 cylinders? Besides those hideous seat covers, H3 for me. Would be fun to wheel and beat to crap.
it is not the 5 cylinder that would be the problem it would be the plastic transfer case fork, the weak 10 bolts, lack of lockers and probably cooling issues that would do this one in, but we all know an LS fit in there once the drivetrain needs upgrading, so there is that.
The Atlas engine family is pretty good. The GMT 360s they went in were absolute garbage.
I think tue H3 is a GMT355 derivative, so you’re probably safe.
I’m used to being noticed anytime I drive my air-cooled Beetle. I could park it next to a six figure car and people would still be more interested in the Beetle. But it’s all good attention. The Pontiac would probably give people a good laugh given the hood adornment, and that’s just fine. But the most common reaction I’ve seen to Hummers is “ew, a Hummer.”
Hummer through gritted teeth – straight pipes on it might make it sound like an Audi Quattro?
Aside from the hood, I really like that Bonneville. The Hummer gets points for the 5-speed, loses them for general stupidity. Having helped someone attempt to load a few kitchen chairs into the back of an H3, I concluded it’s essentially useless. As is so often the case on the Showdown, it comes down to what’s more mortifying–here, the screaming chicken or the wheels on the Hummer–and which would be cheaper and easier to fix.
Oof. As solid as that Bonneville is, I still think it’s overpriced for a 35 year old car. Sure, the miles are low, but at some point age starts to dictate what fails unpredictably. The Chicken adds character tho.
Then we have that Hummer. My gut told me to say no based on brand alone; then I heard an echo of my mother’s voice telling me to not judge a book by its cover. Still pricey for something north of 200k miles, but a 5-speed manual, you say? You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention. Hmm, lose the seat covers in a dumpster somewhere, pick up a less obnoxious set of rolling stock and sell those 20″ chrome monstrosities on Marketplace to help defray the cost.
It pains me to say it, but I’ll take the obnoxiously red douchemobile today.
I’ll take a gear for every cylinder. Changing the back plugs on that Bonnie is a major PITA.