Category Archives: Cool Cars

The Cool Car Guy – Cool Car Shot 2005 Pontiac GTO

CCG Ad1Hey Cool Car Fans,

A client of mine, Rob, contacted me to help him sell his 2005 Pontiac GTO a couple month’s ago. Then gas prices hit $4 a gallon and people weren’t taking advantage of grabbing this very cool vehicle. Now, gas prices are back under $4.00 and what many people may not know is that this vehicle gets 25MPG on the highway with 400 hp. It 2005 GTO 1isn’t quite 30, but it is pretty close and considering it is a 6.0L and a fun car.

Here’s a list of some of the features that came included with the 2005 Pontiac GTO. We’ve got it priced right now for $19,995

Heart and Souls move

and if you’re interested you should contact me before it disappears or to find out if it’s still available, since this is a Cool Car Shot.

Mechanical Notes
ORIGINAL FACTORY EQUIPMENT – Exhaust outlets, split dual with single chrome-tipped outlets, Exhaust, dual with bundled single side tips, Engine, 6.0L V8 SFI aluminum (400 HP [297.9 kW] @ 5200 rpm, 400 lb.-ft. [546.7 N-m] @ 4000 rpm), Brakes, performance brake package with Red calipers, Brake/transmission shift interlock, automatic transmission, Suspension, Sport, independent rear suspension, Fuel filler door release, power, Fuel capacity, approximate, 18 gallons (68 liters), Traction Control, with on/off switch, Brakes, 4-wheel2005 GTO 2 antilock, Limited slip differential, Drivetrain, rear-wheel drive, Steering, power, rack-and-pinion.

Safety Options
Drivers Front Airbag
Dual Front Airbags
Anti-Lock Brakes
Security System
Keyless Entry
2 Keyless Remotes
Rear Defroster
Traction Control
Variable Wipers
Fog Lights

Comfort and Convenience Options

  • 2005 GTO 4 AC
  • Power Locks
  • Power Mirrors
  • Power Steering
  • Power Windows
  • Tilt
  • Cruise
  • Power Driver Seat
  • Dual Power Seats
  • Driver Lumbar
  • Passenger Lumbar
  • Leather Steering Whl
  • Daytime Running Lights
  • Auxiliary Pwr Outlet
  • Rear Spoiler

2005 GTO 3Mileage: 16,570
Exterior: Midnight Blue Metallic
Interior: Black Leather
Engine: ENGINE, 6.0L V8 SFI ALUMINUM
Transmission: TRANSMISSION, 6-SPEED MANUAL
VIN: 6G2VX12U15L348779
Stock: JB348779c
MPG (C/H): 16 MPG/21 MPG

36 Month Lease Option Achilles’ Love divx

* Check this out – You can lease this baby for as low as $325.00 a month, plus tax with just $1,000 down and the first payment. Payments are based on approved credit, a $1,000 cap reduction, a 36 month lease term at 12,000 miles a year with a $10,522 residual value at the end of the lease term and a money factor of .00235.

_________________________________________________________________________John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with JFR & Associates in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com

The Cool Car Guy Meets Jack Kaufman And His 1991 Toyota Camry

Hey Cool Car Fans,

OldCorolla

A few weeks ago I was out running on the Highline Canal in Littleton with some from friends of mine and we bumped into a family and criminal lawyer named Jack Kaufman who was heading out for a run as well. We invited him to go run with us since when you’re out running, the more the merrier, and we started talking about cars. Imagine that?

Jack shared with us how he has been driving an old Toyota Camry for quite a few years. In fact, he’s driven it so much he has almost 300,000 miles on the old beater and I said I had to get a photo of his ride to put on CoolCarGuy.com.

OldCorolla

Okay, so the car isn’t exactly cool at this point, but it’s pretty amazing that he has almost 300,000 miles, 286,000 as of right now, on this old Toyota Camry and he’s going for 300,000, so he says. We’ll have to see if he cracks and buys a new one from The Cool Car Guy before he hits that monster of a milestone.

His little corolla experience has inspired me to keep my Subaru Impreza WRX for at least a couple more years before getting a replacement vehicle for The Cool Car Guy. Who knows, maybe I’ll sell mine to Jack when I’m done with it since it will just be getting broken in.

Since that time Jack has become a regular runner with us, so find us on the Highline Canal on Saturday and Wednesday mornings around 7AM if you want to go for a run and talk about cars.

_________________________________________________________________________John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with JFR & Associates in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com

The Real Problem Facing The Pickens Plan For Getting Off Our Addiction To Oil

Hey Cool Car Fans,

Phil fueling stationRecently, I was contacted by a client of mine who is in the oil and gas industry informing me about how one of the big oil tycoons in the United States, T. Boone Pickens, is recommending that we get off our addiction to foreign oil by converting vehicles to run on natural gas. The very next day I had a client in Florida send me a link to The Pickens Plan website, where I read about the plan to focus on wind power and natural gas, so apparently this idea is catching on.

Houston we have a problem: First of all, I think converting to natural gas as a fuel source is a great idea, especially in Colorado where we have a huge amount of natural gas and since natural gas sells for less than $1 per gallon (equivalent) compared to regular gasoline prices.

There are millions of Americans getting creamed in the SUV and truck market when they try to sell their vehicles because of $4 plus per gallon gasoline and the majority of our oil is imported from countries that want to destroy the United States of America. If we can switch to a natural resource that we have an abundance of why wouldn’t we go in that direction?

Unfortunately, we have elected officials in this country who don’t represent our best interests. It used to be that we had politicians who actually looked out for the best interest of our citizens, but instead we have career politicians, which when we were all in grade school we didn’t really know that you could grow up and have “public servant” as a career.

At least when I was a kid we wanted to grow up and be a race car driver or a fireman, doctor or maybe even the President of the United States, but we all understood the concept that public service was a short term gig to serve your fellow citizens, after you had done something productive with your life. Today, politicians are more like actors and public relation experts than they are leaders and it’s not helping us.

The Pickens Plan is a great idea, but if you try to convert your vehicle to run on natural gas without going through the Environmental Protection Agency testing process, the EPA can fine you up to $5,000 a day for tampering with the fuel and emissions systems. How much does it cost to go through the EPA process? According to CNGPrices.com 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea film “these strict test requirements and the expense of getting a CNG conversion kit certified, there are very few EPA and/or CARB approved CNG conversions, and the conversions are relatively expensive, costing from $8,000 to $16,000.” That’s an average of $12,000 to convert your vehicle to run on natural gas and at even $5 a gallon for gasoline that’s 2,400 gallons of fuel or about 48,000 miles at 20 miles per gallon. At 20 miles per gallon for an average vehicle, 2400 gallons of fuel is four years of driving running on petrol for most people.

I’m not trying to be negative about natural gas vehicles, but I’m also a realist. My clients call me for advice about buying, selling, trading and leasing vehicles and my job is to save them time and money. I see what people earn for a living and the kind of real life financial struggles facing many people everyday. I couldn’t recommend a client convert their vehicles to run on natural gas when they can drive their current vehicle for another four years based on today’s cost of conversion thanks to our federal government.

Earlier today, Presidential hopeful Senator John McCain said that the problem with gas prices is not oil speculation, but that we have a finite amount of oil that is available and that’s what is driving up the price of oil to these record levels. According to The Pickens Plan website, “Natural gas is our country’s second largest energy resource and a vital component of our energy supply. 98% of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America. But 70% of our oil is purchased from foreign nations.” Someone might want to let Senator McCain in on this information, so that we can quit talking about finite oil and look at other energy resources beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other Middle East and Central America Dictatorships that have a hypocritical love for America.

The real problem for The Pickens Plan isn’t the availability of our natural resource, the infrastructure for refueling or the ability to do the conversions. All of these can be figured out quickly. After all, you can convert just about any vehicle to run on natural gas, we have natural gas pumped into most of our homes and there are even stations available in major metropolitan areas, you can go more than 40 miles on a charge (unlike most electric cars) and even Honda has seen the light and is working on releasing a new vehicle that runs on natural gas in limited supply, the 2008 Honda Civic GX NGV. No, the real problem is the government has not put enough incentives in place for people to convert their existing vehicles to run on this fuel source or made it easy. The cost is just too high compared to the rest of the world.

According to NGVAmerica, there are over 7 million NGV’s (natural gas vehicles) in use worldwide, but only around 120,000 of those are in the United States. Could it be that the $12,000 on average to convert a vehicle to run on natural gas, thanks to the EPA, is just too expensive?   Are conversions really that difficult that it should cost an average of $12,000 to convert one of the 250 million vehicles on the road in America to run on natural gas? That’s right, there are over 250 million vehicles on the roads in the United States and about 120,000 that run on natural gas. What does the rest of the world know that we don’t?  Even Iran is converting their vehicles to run on natural gas, so they can sell us more oil.

An article on compressed natural gas over at Wikipedia, explains that people living in Malaysia have been doing CNG tank installations at a growth rate of 500% since June 5, 2008 when they had their 40% price hike on gasoline. It’s apparently such an important issue that they’ve setup a website to educate the public on making the conversions. Malaysia isn’t the only location, but according to the same article to convert a vehicle to run on CNG is about $2,300 in Singapore compared to the United States.

In case you’re not familiar with Singapore, that’s the country where you will get forced labor for littering, they call it “anti-social behavior”, and yet they seem to be able to convert vehicles to run on CNG for just $2,300 U.S. dollars compared to here in the United States. Singapore is more concerned about their environment than the EPA is here, so it seems like there is something wrong with a $2,300 compared to $12,000 price discrepancy, but maybe it’s just me.

At the end of the day, I think The Pickens Plan is a great idea, but it’s still idealistic until we bring the EPA and our politicians into the same world that the rest of us live in. Tonight on television there was an ad for clean air through natural gas and that’s going to be the big buzz word, but until someone gets our politicians to make it affordable for people to do a conversion and bring the EPA into reality, it isn’t going to happen on any large scale.

_________________________________________________________________________ John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with JFR & Associates in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com

The Rise In Price Of Synthetic Motor Oil And A 1981 Prediction Of The Cost To America Of Importing Oil

Cool Car Guy Ad

Hey Cool Car Fans,

I took my 2007 Subaru Impreza WRX in for an oil change the other day and the guys at the repair facility I went to in Castle Rock informed me that the cost of their synthetic Mobil 1 oil went from $1,800 to $2,400 to fill up their tank, so I was going to have to pay more than previously. My immediate response was, “It’s synthetic oil, it doesn’t come out of the ground.” and the guy behind the counter said, “You’re the first guy to bring that up. We said the same thing to our sales rep.”

It’s quite strange when the price of oil goes up and suddenly the cost of non-petroleum based products made in a laboratory also go up in price. I also noticed that I wrote a post back in April and talked about how gasoline prices were $3.50 a gallon and now the price is over $4.00 in most states, so we continue to see the price of gasoline to drive our vehicles go through the roof.

I thought I would put a couple links in this post about changing your motor oil since the price of oil is going up daily and people are looking for ways to cut their automotive maintenance and repair costs. There is an interesting article over at AutoMedia.com

The Governor’s Wife aka Deadly Suspicion movie download that talks about whether you should run synthetic oil or conventional motor oil in your vehicle. If you are wondering the benefits, you might want to read this article. Just click on the link to AutoMedia.com above and it will take you to the article.

On the same day that I had the oil in my Subaru changed, I came across an article over at GreenCar.com entitled, The 3,000 Mile Oil Change Myth talking about how you really don’t have to change your oil every 3,000 miles. I had read this before, but this article has some very compelling data that you might want to take a look at, if you are interested in seeing what the latest research is on this subject. Especially, with the cost of oil continuing to eat your wallet.

Some of the readers of CoolCarGuy.com have asked me about my take on the oil crisis and I have some strong opinions on that subject, but since this post is about synthetic motor oil, I think you may find it interesting to learn there was an article written about The Role of Synthetic Fuel in World War II back in 1981 by a University Professor, Dr. Peter Becker that discusses what the Germans did about their oil crunch during the Second World War.

In the article he discusses how the Germans were producing millions of tons of synthetic oil because of limited access to crude oil back in World War II by using coal and he points out the need for the United States to look at getting off its addiction to imported oil. His words were written back in 1981 and are almost prophetic when you read them today. He talks about how the dollar can be devalued compared to other world currencies and the total impact rising oil prices have had on the American lifestyle.

Much of the article is a bit like a history lesson and somewhat technical, even boring, but there is some very interesting information contained within the piece. If you are interested in the subject of synthetic oil as an alternative fuel source this article may be something to read.

_________________________________________________________________________ John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with JFR & Associates in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com

The Cool Car Guy Hits San Diego For The Rock & Roll Marathon

San Diego Marathon Impact Pt II divx E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial trailer
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Hey Cool Car Fans,

Becky, Conroy, Corban, Bianca and I all arrived in San Diego on Thursday. We flew out at 7AM, so we were up pretty early to catch our flight. We came to San Diego with no plans other than to meet our friends Dr. Scott & Lisa Brody and their kids. Lisa and I will be running 26.2 miles on Sunday in the San Diego Rock & Roll Marathon.

This will be Lisa and my first marathon. I’ve ran the Georgetown Half-Marathon four times and since I run all the time I figured I should sign-up for a marathon. Lisa’s brother passed away in a car accident last year and she decided she wanted to run the San Diego Marathon in his honor, so I told her I would meet her here if she did it. Well, we both trained and here we are.

On Thursday we went down to the beach and hung out by the ocean where the kids went seashell hunting. We also went to Seaport Village, a popular area near downtown San Diego and the harbor with shops and free entertainment. There was a street vendor with a really pretty Macaw parrot who put the bird on Corban’s arm and Conroy’s head, which was really cool. Bianca passed on having anything to do with the bird with the big beak.

Yesterday morning, we went to the Rock & Roll Marathon Expo downtown in the Convention Center. There was everything you could imagine for running and more. There are 22,000 people who have signed up to run in this marathon and over the past 11 years this event has raised $122 million for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society – very cool!

In the afternoon, we headed up to see our friends Walt & Theresa Oleski. We hung out with Theresa and their sons Ryan and Colton as Walt was back in Steamboat Springs. We had a great time seeing the Oleski tribe and after we left we went down to the beach again where I tried to show the kiddo’s how to skimboard. I used to skimboard quite a bit as a kid, but now that I’m 41 that skill set isn’t what it used to be. My overconfidence got the best of me as I threw the skimboard into the water, jumped on, lost my balance and plunged into the ocean with my cell phone in hand. Not one of my best athletic moments for sure, but pretty darn funny, especially for the onlookers at the beach!

Tomorrow is the big run. We are heading out to breakfast now and I’ll have to post an update after the big event.
_________________________________________________________________________ John Boyd

Auto Consultant – John Boyd: The Cool Car Guy

John is an auto consultant with JFR & Associates in Denver, Colorado. He can help you save time and money on any make or model, new or used, lease or purchase – nationwide! Call or email John about your next vehicle! jboyd@coolcarguy.com Military Intelligence and You! trailer