free dinner and free rides

this evening i went to a GM thing to grab some free dinner and listen to a guy talk about his career path. kinda interesting, but afterward, i was rather happy to see that they had brought a couple of toys for us to play with.

first, is the chevy SSR. i didn't think i would like this car very much. who wants a hybrid truck/roadster? but the sound of a 6.0 liter v8 engine soon put things into perspective. i was pleasantly surprised by it, though the styling is still way too funky for my tastes.

then came the cadillac XLR, a direct competitor to the car i want, the SL500. they actually let us climb in and play around with a running engine, so i hung out in the car for a few minutes. pressed the button that made the hard top unfold itself so i wouldn't have to deal with the stares of other people. very cool. interior was nice, as was to be expected, and i got to play with GM's "keyless-go" system. i'm not sure what GM calls it, but instead of a key, you have a key fob that just needs to be in the somewhere in cockpit before you can press a button to start the car. overall, i thought it was a nicer car than i had originally given it credit for, but again, i'm not a big fan of its styling other than the shiny metal grill.

so those cars looked pretty cool, but any car looks pretty cool if you've been using two legs for transportation for as long as i have. they haven't quite swayed me over to buying an american car. but it's nice to know that at least one american company is going to be able to compete.