This was my second dream car. It raised the question; “Can a dream car really serve as a family car?”
I hadn’t thought too much about Cadillacs for quite a few years. I had been busy with married and family life, and was currently driving a minivan! But I had held onto my ’77 Sportster, which I rode most of the time, motorcycling was never just a weekend activity for me. I had already dabbled with a couple of older Honda Civics as hobby cars.
My Wife had noticed that I was constantly looking through copies of the Auto Trader, and she knew that I wanted another special car. She then made this suggestion: “Instead of looking for an old car, why not look for something almost new?”
As I’ve mentioned before, when the family CFO makes a suggestion like that, I’m all ears and action!
I pretty much knew what I wanted. When the ’92 Seville and ElDorado debuted, they impressed me in much the same way as the ’77 DeVille had. I gave a thought to the new Riviera, since I had a couple of those before. But the Riviera wasn’t nearly as nice a car as the Cadillac.
This is a brochure shot. All images from the web.
I had also considered a later model Mercedes, especially an SEC coupe, which had been another dream car, but these were a fairly old model by then. A late model S Class seemed pretty attractive, and I’d gone to look at a couple. Yet, I found that the Seville outperformed the recent S Class and even the old 6.9 model. Better performance, and a newer car seemed to be the best plan. And best of all… it was a Cadillac!
I had initially wanted to get an ElDorado, but I’d promised my Son that I would get a car where he would have his “own” door.
A terrific but troubled engine.
I started looking at a few used Sevilles. I even test-drove an earlier model with the 200 hp. 4.9 engine. This is a very good engine and I found the performance to be satisfactory. But of course, the big thing was the 4.6 NorthStar. It’s not like I got to buy a nearly new Cadillac every day, and most importantly, my wife was all for it!
Eventually, I found my car at St. Claire Cadillac in Santa Clara. It was a ’94 STS. Black inside and out. It had a set of ’96 year model chromed wheels, which made it look like the newest model. I was really into it, and had the dealer send it out to have a moonroof installed.
Okay, here’s a detail shot of Zebrano wood. That’s what the catalog called it. The web called it zebrawood.
A black car with chrome wheels, what a cliché. Ask me if I cared!
This was the most expensive car that I’ve ever bought. It had 22,000 miles on it and still looked and smelled like new. The STS had the more powerful 300 hp. engine, tighter suspension, and a slightly fancier interior. I hadn’t felt so special driving a car since my ’77 Coupe de Ville, which was also three years old at purchase. The styling was clean and modern, very substantial looking. It looked like a Cadillac without looking like a cliche. A claim the previous ’90’s models couldn’t.
The interior was the nicest ever from Cadillac. Reviewers had reported that it looked like it could have come out of an Audi. The instruments and the switch gear were modern looking and operated with the proper feeling. The dash, console, and doors were trimmed in a “rich Zebrano wood.” The STS carried the wood across the tops of the back doors. The interior was spacious, with plenty of leg and hip room in the rear seat. However, the twin bucket design made a middle passenger a bit uncomfortable during a long ride. We were down to two kids, the oldest was now away at college, so that was fine. There was no trace of Brougham in this cabin!
A nice example, but showing its age.
Lots of space back here.
Business-like and beautiful.
Man, was that thing fast! The acceleration would pin you back in the seat and it didn’t seem to lessen until the speedo needle swept past 100 mph. Car and Driver and other magazines reported that average quarter mile times were in the high 14’s, o-60 was under 6 seconds. Top speed was pegged at 145 mph. This was a muscle car in a designer suit. It re-established Cadillac’s image as a legitimate road car. There was still some torque steer under sudden full throttle acceleration, but that was a small price to pay.
The ride was firm but comfortable, the car handled very well and was confidence inspiring. Yes, it was FWD, so there wasn’t the opportunity to use over steer to rotate the car in curves. But really, at my age, why would I want to grind the tires down just to go a bit faster in the twisties? This was a car for Grand Touring.
If it’s good enough for Sly…
If you’d like to see a Seville really wrung out, check out the Stallone film, Get Carter. There is a chase scene between a Seville and an older Jaguar XJ6. It’s interesting to see how a Seville behaves under extreme circumstances. The car in the movie is the next gen model, but I believe that the ’94’s performance would be similar.
One night we were driving down to the Central Valley for a family wedding. I pushed it and kept it near 100 mph. for long stretches. Normal cruising speed was 85+ mph. Really, any speed that you felt comfortable at. It never broke a sweat, being able to cruise at high speeds for extended periods. Fuel economy was usually in the low to mid-20s. It did require premium fuel.
It was “my car” first, but it was also our family car, and we took a lot of trips in it. Every time we drove somewhere I felt that we were living out one of those old Cadillac magazine advertisements that showed a lucky family living “the Good Life!”
I was pretty fussy about the car and kept it immaculately clean. I didn’t want to drive it as a daily. So most of the week it spent a lot of time in the garage. My Wife didn’t think that the car should be sitting in the garage while we were still making payments on it. It was depreciating every day that it sat, better to get more use out of it. She was right of course, but it sure stayed cleaner parked there. Black cars are so hard to keep clean!
It was always a dilemma for me, because I wanted it to be my hobby car. That meant less use, but it could also be kept in immaculately clean condition. However, the car was being paid for out of “house money.” It hadn’t been purchased out of my hobby car fund, (I really didn’t have one at the time). Depreciation was also a factor, so it didn’t make sense for the car to sit. It was a real car that should be driven.
I told my Wife that she should drive it, as I was still primarily riding my motorcycle to work. So she did. It became one of her favorite cars.
As the miles increased some problems developed. Early on there was a problem with the coil packs that resulted in a slight roughness under load. That was repaired after an extended diagnosis process. Later the electronic transmission module went bad, and that was replaced. Both repairs were performed under warranty. Then the warranty ran out.
The starter went bad and I decided to replace it myself. The starter is located under the intake manifold. Don’t laugh, there are other OHC V8s like Lexus and Infinity that also have it located there. I changed it out for a new one, but I unknowingly damaged the idle control motor. I had that sorted out by the dealer. After this, I wouldn’t buy another vehicle with this same starter location. This was the first fuel injected V8 that I ever worked on. However, I improved my skills and would later find it easier to work on my fuel injected 4.6 Mustang.
The thermostat went bad, but that was easy to replace. This had caused the engine to start to overheat as soon as it warmed up, due to the thermostat having stuck closed. Another time coolant started gushing up around the top of the engine, it looked like a blown head gasket, but it was only the leaking water pump. The pump is a small cylindrical device that is fitted into one of the heads. It was easy to replace with a special GM tool. I’ve seen several NorthStar Cadillacs offered for sale on CraigsList at a low price, due to a similar leak that makes it appear as though the engine is toast. As long as the car hasn’t been allowed to overheat, it’s a simple repair.
Then it needed a radiator replacement, it consists of an aluminum core mated to plastic end tanks. It split along one of those seams. Then another starter, which I let a shop replace this time. Then another radiator! Back to that same shop.
I kept the car for an additional 140,000 miles and over ten years. It still looked great inside and out. My biggest gripe was that it had developed an oil leak from the motor. The leak dropped oil on the exhaust pipes which made the car smell like burnt oil. It wasn’t bad enough to cause a fire, but it did make a mess wherever I parked it. I learned that it was from a bad main seal.
The repair required dropping the front subframe, removing the engine, then removing the oil pan. I got a couple of estimates, and most shops advised me to just replace the entire engine with a rebuilt unit, instead of dismantling it and fixing it. I had the car now for around eight years and I wasn’t keen on spending thousands of dollars to fix the leak.
Then the a/c went out and the driver’s window stopped working, at least it died in the closed position. I didn’t want to invest in even these minor repairs. Not that I never worked on the car myself. I had replaced a failed alternator after buying some specific tools that made the job easier. The car was now over ten years old and had depreciated to a low level. My enthusiasm for the car had also dropped to an equally low level. The car had also picked up a couple of scrapes and a small dent.
This car also marked a turning point in my wife’s understanding of my automotive mania. She had felt that once I’d bought my dream car, that I would be satisfied and content to maintain and preserve it. At least for a while! She did not expect me to continue thinking about, and to keep looking at obtaining additional hobby cars! She realized that I’d never be content and satisfied with any car, not even a relatively expensive one. This resulted in her becoming a lot less sympathetic to my hobby. The new plan was for us to have a good family car that I liked well enough, and that I could spend my enthusiasm (and money) on a series of cheaper and older hobby cars.
I have to admit that she saw the situation pretty clearly. I really can’t see that I would ever find a car that I would be completely satisfied with. Something that I would own for a long time, maybe even a lifetime car. I guess that I might have been burned out by my old Sportster, which I held onto for twenty years, eventually growing tired of it. I’ve come to accept the reality of this, but it hasn’t stopped me from buying a lot more hobby cars!
Such a beautiful, desirable, and powerful machine, still in pretty good cosmetic condition, the interior still looked great. How did I get tired of it?
My car also suffered from moisture intrusion into the tail lights, but not this bad. NorthStar, Make a wish!
Writing this account, it’s pretty apparent that this car needed lots of expensive repairs, even if you factor in the extended time that I owned it. Honestly, I’d forgotten most of the specifics of all those issues, and remember the car in a much more positive light. My Wife told me that she also has primarily pleasant memories of the car. At least it never broke down and left me and my family on the side of the road.
It was actually pretty trouble free until the odometer passed the 100,000 mark, and I kept the car well past that point. I ended up selling it through Wheels and Deals for 1,600 bucks. It had a bit over 160,000 miles on it by then.
I decided to take a break from fancy cars, at least newer ones!
So ends the saga of my Dream Cars. At this point in my life, I don’t spend much time or energy thinking about them. I still like cars, I still have a couple that I’m quite fond of. There has been a long line of hobby cars that have provided me with a lot of pleasure since then. There will probably be a few more to come.
Further reading:
Curbside Classic: 1992-97 Cadillac Seville – Forgotten Contender
The only thing I don’t like much about these Sevilles is the large airbag cover, but that was the norm in the 90s. Probably Cadillac’s best dash design ever. The newer ones are too busy and screeny.
It’s one thing to fall out of love with a car, and another to be done with it. I’ve reached the latter with my 08 DTS Platinum, but I haven’t yet found another newer car that doesn’t have at least one serious drawback for me (besides price). DTS Northstars don’t have the head gasket issue, but the water pump belt tensioner pulley loses its lube after 80k miles and takes the water pump with it. I had no engine problems in 10 years and 50k miles, but a small oil leak has started. It will soon need new plugs and trans fluid, but it won’t be done by me. My once-trusted mechanic just screwed up the automatic level control when replacing the rear shocks.
Great writeup. I would say that 10 years and 140k miles out of a car was an automotive lifetime, especially for a ’90s Caddy. That’s a long time to keep a car that needed all those expensive repairs.
In ’95 or ’96, my grandfather bought a brand new Eldorado in triple cream. It was a stunning car, and he seemed enamored with it shortly after the purchase, but he only kept it for about three years before trading it on a Lexus, the brand he ultimately switched to for the rest of his life.
As much as people love to pile on the Northstar and its problems, it could have been worse. My brother bought a low-miles example of a Caterra in the early aughts, and it was a textbook lemon. It was toast by 85k miles. I don’t remember what did it in anymore; maybe a head gasket? Whatever it was, he only got scrap value for its corpse.
Keeping the proportions in mind, I identified with the text.
I fell into the same trap. In the good sense.
“Almost new” cars for constant use with mileage start to require maintenance (electronics, sensors, etc.). I understand that the ideal, for a hobbyist, would perhaps be cars from the 50s, 60s with few options. Robust, comfortable and easy to maintain.
What a beautiful Cadillac.
Great story, Jose. That’s a beautiful car and always has been. A few minor exterior and interior updates and it would look right at home as a brand new model year 2024.
It provided satisfactory service life and good memories, which are the most important attributes. The list of problems also doesn’t seem excessive for an expensive luxury car.
But what gets me is the 97% depreciation from new to 160,000 miles. Part of that may have been the condition (sounds like it still had failed ac and main seal?), but I’m guessing you determined the car wouldn’t be worth enough post-repair to bother with fixing it, and that speaks to the car itself. That’s the risk of owning a luxury car, I suppose (a 160k 12 year old lexus LS ain’t worth much either), but I can see why it dampened your enthusiasm for the breed.
Great write up that documents the process of a car eventually working its way out of your good graces. Still, you made it past 10 years, which at least in my book qualifies as an acceptable length of ownership. It’s not that you need to get rid of a car after 10 years, but it starts to be ok if you do. (obviously just my opinion)
Fragile radiators and oil leaks? Hummmmmm…are you sure you haven’t owned a BMW? 🙂 Those plastic tank radiators. Grrrrrrrrrrr. I’m on my third on my current car. At least I know how to change them in under 30 minutes now.
I felt Cadillac had gotten its groove back with the 1992 Seville.
Something you would would be happy to have in your driveway.
Unfortunately, it took time to straighten out the Northstar and other issues.
Maybe a ’95 or ’96 for sanity of long term ownership.
Issues arise with any vehicle, Toyotas included as I can attest to.
As a girl in our office used to say, “Get used to it, its the luxury tax of owning any car”.
When I was in college, for a little while a friend and I had the use of his girlfriend’s father’s 1992 STS. It was brand new, and it was possible to drop jaws by remotely opening the trunk while pushing my groceries towards the Cadillac at the discount grocery store in Blacksburg. I remember thinking it was crummy of Cadillac to release the car a year before the engine it needed to compete with Lexus and Infiniti was ready. That was before it became known that the NorthStar was far from ready for prime time even when it was released. The only other criticism I can recall for the STS then was that the rear seat cushion was much too low for a luxury sedan.
Jose mentioned that Lexus used the same starter location as Cadillac for their 4-cam V8s. I didn’t know that, because I don’t know anyone who has ever had to replace an LS400’s starter, even though I ran a shop that maintained several of them, many with hundreds of thousands of miles. All of the Cadillac NorthStar’s assembly issues are known, because inaccessible components failed again and a again until the owners gave up. I do agree that this was the most desirable Cadillac made after the 1977-1979 de Villes though.
I feel your pain, or more realistically, I’m trying to feel your pain, as I’ve managed to avoid this kind of slow painful burn.
It’s almost the polar opposite of the experience with my W124 300E; I had it for about 120k miles and almost ten years without almost any issues whatsoever, and then sold it for $13k.
Cadillac finally got it about styling, performance and handling with this generation Seville, having bench-marked Mercedes and BMW, but they didn’t get the part about durability and reliability.
That said, ten years later, Mercedes-Benz (along with BMW) also struggled with durability and reliability…or, more to the point, stopped caring about those attributes in many models. And even now, it’s a last-place priority for expensive cars, with more of them having prohibitively expensive maintenance or underbaked engineering than not.
So…maybe Cadillac beat them to the punch?
Cadillac burned through 60 years of brand equity in a decade. BMW had consistent brand values for half that time, and they’ve been living well off of it for over thirty years with no end to their current status as a Veblen good in sight. Cadillac’s quality declined faster than the quality of their customers. The Germans have been timelier so far.
I would argue that’s true of various brands, particularly Toyota. They’ve been resting on their laurels and living off of the brand equity they built in the 90s and back. I got into a friend’s current-generation RAV4 and was greeted with crooked panels that still had plastic flash on them, an unrefined 2.5-liter, a confused transmission, and seats better suited to lawn-chair duty.
It reminded me very much of a 90s Cutlass Ciera in terms of a car that’s relatively unrefined and unappealing, but also unlikely to ever break. Only GM never got as much praise as Toyota does for making such cars.
GM’s cars always broke. Toyota changed what was expected in terms of dependability and durability. You can say that Toyotas now aren’t all beautifully made, but they don’t fill up back lots waiting for back-ordered essential warranty parts.
Terrific write up as per your usual, Jose – highly engaging. For all the problems that eventually surfaced, you got something like 118,000 miles out of it (sorry if my math is wrong – I’m multitasking this AM). I’m so glad to read that your experiences of this dream car were so great, on balance. I had always wanted to like these Sevilles / STSs, as the styling was a knockout and they seemed to deliver the goods. And it’s human nature to keep looking, even when we already have something, so I get that you kept checking for the next toy. Me, I’ve been working on taking inventory of what I have before making more purchases – albeit not as substantial as a car. 🙂 Thank you for this.
I remember riding to lunch with a client who had just bought a new one of these. It was my first time inside one, and I was impressed! Then he nailed the gas pedal and that Northstar V8 did indeed shove me hard into my seat. I remember thinking that Lincoln was going to have trouble competing if Cadillac was going to offer cars like this.
Your maintenance experience mirrors that of my long-term 90’s vehicle – my 94 Ford Club Wagon. By the 90s the American companies had figured out how to make an appealing car that performed well. But where they lagged the Japanese companies was in the quality of the parts they used. Lexus may have put the starter under the intake manifold, but I’ll bet they used a far higher quality part than Cadillac did. Radiators, a/c compressors, window regulators, starters, alternators and all the rest – those of us who kept US cars for a long time paid to have most of these replaced, at least once.
Finally, your story reminds me of the lessons I learned watching my father go through a series of really expensive Lincolns in the 1970’s – in the end, it is just a car, no matter how nice it was or how much it cost. It will get old, break down and get dents and scrapes just like a cheaper car, and eventually it will no longer be special.
Is this the last Cadillac that was “special?” I was 15 when these came out, and I remember all the magazines making a big, big deal about them. I saw them on TV and in movies.
Sure, the media rightfully gushes about the new high-performance sedans, but their sales are so poor that they never really hit the mainstream. The Escalade is mainstream and successful, but nobody in the media seems to make a big deal about it because it’s so obvious what GM is doing there – printing money by selling a fancy Tahoe.
The XLR was a blip, as was the ELR. Cadillac’s been trying pretty hard, but aside from the Escalade’s being somewhat ubiquitous, is this the last Cadillac that really made a splash?
Definitely not. I’d argue the CTS was just as successful, if not more so. But, yes, the gen. 4 Seville is *one of* the last Cadillac sedans that the market really took notice of.
Saw soo, so many of these never thought of them as “extra ordinary”, except of course the price.
Favored the dark green color as I recall.
“I really can’t see that I would ever find a car that I would be completely satisfied with.”
Hear, hear!
My last COAL article was for the 2008 Lexus LS 600h L I bought in November 2023, the same month I wrote the article. That Lexus–which I grew to hate–is now gone, and I can’t see myself buying another fourth-gen LS ever again, having had two of them. The powertrains are solid, but they’re surprisingly needy cars.
I have also purchased two new cars since then, which I’ll write about in the future.
As far as your fourth-gen Seville, these are great. I thought it was cool to see how Cadillac brought back the heavily sloped rear window and forward-canted shape of the fixed quarter panel window on the second-gen Seville (which must have *really* stood out in an era of upright, formal-rooflined Cadillacs and other GM cars).
I wasn’t even alive when the fourth-gen Seville debuted, but I imagine it must have made a big splash. It was clean, but clearly a Cadillac. The materials were top-notch. It had as much performance as you could conceivably expect out of a transverse-FWD car at the time, but was a better effort (on both styling and performance) than crosstown-rival Lincoln’s latest Continental. It personified the whole “Imported from Detroit” thing that Chrysler formally named with its 2011 Eminem ads.
That said, if you look at the greenhouse and add a wraparound rear windscreen, it has an uncanny resemblance to the original W-body Oldsmobile Cutlass of the same era and perhaps even to the original Saturn SL.
I always liked these, the fifth-gens that succeeded them, and the sixth-gens, which were just called STS. As I mentioned before, a family member of mine has a 2006 STS-V, with the supercharged 4.4-liter Northstar.
A guy at my work bought one of these when first offered .
My then young son was already a batter driver than I ever was and was with me one Saturday when we (all the guys at work) trooped down to see Tom’s new Caddy he was bragging about .
He talked up the power a lot so my son asked him “? how many HP Tom ?”.
‘I dunno but its fast ~ want to test drive it ?’ (maybe 100 miles on it) ~ my so looked at me and I nodded okay but told him in Spanish “have as much fun as you want but DO NOT wreck it please” . ~ I wisely demurred and they took off, came back a while later and big rough touch Tom was white as a sheet and stumbled out of the car saying ” ! I didn’t know it’d go _THAT_ fast !” .
A week later Tom came off the freeway a bit too fast and rubbed the passenger side on the cloverleaf off ramp’s guard rail and tried to blame it on “GM put crappy tires on it” .
Yes, I thought and still think these are fine looking cars .
The starter motors location makes the whole car a non starter for me .
-Nate
Another enjoyable read Jose.
When I worked at the car lot the big boss had a 92 Eldorado which I don’t think had the big power yours had. As lot men we spent a fair bit of time running it around and dropping off clients. There were plenty of late 80’s Cadillacs we were running around in but they did not feel in any way special. But running the Eldo on a Friday night on South Granville made you feel like a player. It was a very satisfying feeling.
My wife and I are going in the same direction on me getting something I want. I’ve been looking a ton at Kijiji and I see a bunch of things that were in my thoughts at the time but hold no interest now. Probably why I won’t end up spending too much on my next hobby conveyance.
“the big boss had a 92 Eldorado which I don’t think had the big power yours had”
You’re right; it didn’t. The ’92 Eldorado only had the 4.9-liter Cadillac HT engine. The ’93 had the HT as a base engine and the 4.6-liter Northstar as a new option. After ’93, the Northstar was made standard on the Eldorado and Seville and HT engine was pretty much retired…though GM inexplicably kept it as the base engine on the newly redesigned Sedan DeVille for ’94 and ’95.
The flagship AllantĂ© was the only Cadillac that had the Northstar standard in ’93, its last year.
The early to mid 90’s was when several cars hit the 300 hp. mark. The Corvette, Twin turbo 300 ZX, the twin turbo Dodge Stealth/ Mitsubishi 3000 GT, and Supra were solidly in the 300 hp camp. Others like the Camaro, Trans Am, Mustang Cobra took a bit longer to catch up. performance was back in a big way! The NorthStar was actually 295 hp/300 ft.lbs. torque in my car. I do have a habit of rounding it up to 300. Later there would even be a supercharged NorthStar. The turbo Porsche 930 had been around for a while, but at a much higher price point.
There were limitations imposed by the FWD platform, the Dodge/ Mitsu was AWD which probably improved the handling, that’s the route that Audi also took. As I mentioned, check out the chase in Get Carter, and see how the Seville sticks in the front and swings it’s tail out, not too pretty. But enough about performance.
Like every enthusiast I can get carried away about a dream car, but they are all just machines. You drive them, and they degrade over time. Yeah, you can keep them in good shape, but there’s always the forces of entropy that weigh on your enthusiasm, as well as the financial considerations. Then there is the disappointment of having something that doesn’t quite measure up to your expectations. The car could have been better, but it was pretty good up until it went past the 100,000 mile mark. I’m glad that I bought it, I enjoyed it for quite a few years, so I would say that I was satisfied with the experience.
It was a stretch to buy that car, as I’m only a working guy, and I haven’t stretched that far since, and don’t see that happening in the future. My Wife has been pretty cool with my hobby, though she doesn’t really “get it.” I know that she won’t be buying into any plan that I had to buy another expensive car, but that’s okay. There are always cars that I find interesting, and can afford to buy as hobby cars. So far I’ve had around twenty of them, of all types! So I’m still having fun.
I’ve always kind of been the anti Cadillac guy. But when this and it’s Eldorado sibling came out I was surprised and impressed. Not exactly my cup of tea styling wise, but not bad, not bad at all. 300HP? That’s impressive. Supposedly they were putting decent suspension on them too. Granted it wasn’t in my price range, but perhaps that was a good thing. I heard later the suspension wasn’t all that good and reliability was not good at all. But hey, good looking and good styling was 2 big plusses Cad hadn’t had in quite a while. 2 out of 3 ain’t bad?
The ’92 STS was a real game changer for Cadillac and Robert Stempel, a true engineer, was given a lot of the credit for pushing Cad in that direction. But it was a tough time period for GM and imo he was unfairly blamed, he’d hardly been CEO for long when he was pushed out in favor or Wagonner, a bean-counter who didn’t have a clue. I wonder at times what might have happened if Stempel had been given a real chance, things may have been very different.
There was a period from the late 90s all through the 00s you would encounter these here in Austria on a regular basis (they were officially imported) and, to me, they did not look out of place among the usual German suspects. And then they disappeared, victims of all those maladies Jose mentioned PLUS the head bolt issue. I have a neighbor with one but he’s an Ă–AMTC (Austrian equivalent of the AAA) tech and… has two more for spares.
Great story. I miss when Cadillac used names for their models not the letter nomenclature bullcrap.
I’ve 3 Caddys…A 73 Coupe de Ville(1st car), a 76 Coupe de Ville and a 75 Sedan de Ville. Love and miss them all.
The worst thing Cadillac did was substituting that awful Northstar boat anchor for the reliable 4.9 ltr V8.
I don’t what blows more head gaskets Northstars, the Subaru 2.5s or BMW engines. Lol